Local Living Economy

Vision: 

Like Aesop’s Bundle of Sticks Fable, separate initiatives working to improve our region’s community and economy can be stronger if bound by unifying goals — connections, not meant to constrain, but strengthen separate initiatives — to help us create a local living economy.

Monadnock Local Living Economy Community Project:

The Monadnock Local Living Economy Project is an emerging community project of the Hannah Grimes Center that will encourage separate initiatives to work collectively to improve our region's community and economy. For more information, contact the Hannah Grimes Center at 603-352-5063 or jen@hannahgrimes.com.

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What Does a Local Living Economy Mean?

In November 2009, a group of community members gathered to explore the concept of a Local Living Economy. The BALLE Network has its own definition, but what does it mean to us – citizens of the Monadnock Region? Here is a small sample of ideas shared.

The Monadnock Local Living Economy is a place where:

  • All citizens can have a great quality of life.
  • Our basic needs are met within our community and region.
  • Individuals realize that they are beyond the worth of their jobs.
  • Leadership helps identify common ground and overarching community goals.
  • Citizens are creating a new definition of what our needs really are.
  • Individuals and banks are investing in social capital.
  • We are working cooperatively and collaboratively.
  • All citizens are engaged and feel included.
  • Celebrating our community.
  • We are thinking of our community as a system.

Past Activities:

April 2010 Local Living Economy Event

How is our region exploring our strengths and challenges collectively? Could one problem be another's solution? The Spring Local Living Economy Event on discussed these and other questions. Community members, businesses leaders and organizations were all invited to explore a new and innovative framework for problem-solving highlighted in the video "Restoring Los Angeles: Healing the Nature of Our Cities." In this video, Andy Lipkis from the non-profit organization Treepeople shares an integrated approach to solving problems - where all stakeholders work together to find sustainable solutions. This approach helped the city of Los Angeles uncover a solution that resulted in better environmental and social benefits at an actual cost-savings for the city. Want to borrow this video to show to your networks? Contact jen@hannahgrimes.com.

November 2009 Local Living Economy Event

This event, a collaboration of Keene State College, Cheshire Medical Center’s Vision 2020 Program, and the Hannah Grimes Center, was the next step towards building a stronger community and economy and was part of the Keene State College Biennial Symposium: From Local to Global. The goals of the event were to:

  • Identify common ground and unifying overarching goals among movements within the Monadnock Region (Are they more connecting than we think?)
  • Create an opportunity for open discussion among Keene’s community leaders that inspires creative thinking about the Keene Master Plan process.
  • Encourage participants to develop a plan of action within their existing vision, mission, and isolated work plans that contribute to a LLE (What do you want to come out of the workshop?)

Featured invitees included:

  • Judy Wicks, a pioneering voice in the local, living economy movement over the past thirty years, is the owner of Philadelphia's celebrated White Dog Café and a founder of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE).
  • Tom Wessels is a terrestrial ecologist and a professor at Antioch University New England in the Department of Environmental Studies. In his book, The Myth of Progress he writes that, "people with a richness of life created through their connections with community, place and themselves have no need to compulsively consume the 'frivolous accouterments' that we tend to think of as making us happy, but which really don't."
  • Margaret (Marge) Bruchac, PhD, is an Abenaki Indian with roots in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, and deep research interests in the Connecticut River Valley of Vermont and Massachusetts.
  • Mike Welsh, PhD, is Keene State College Professor of Political Science and Chair of Keene Master Plan Committee.