The people hired to lead the public consultations for design of the new convention centre complex are either pragmatists trying to make the best of a bad situation, or “pretend ‘progressives’ who are cashing in,” as commentator Adrath Whynacht put it on mediacoop.ca.
There was never a true public consultation about whether the Nova Centre should be built or not, and the consultations now being undertaken are literally window dressing—determining what the windows should look like, as well how the buildings should be massed and other design details. “The convention centre is going to be built whether we like it or not,” says Tim Merry, a spoken word artist hired to lead the consultations. “We may as well make it as good as we can.”
Merry is being paid $200,000 for the consultations. Half the bill is being paid by developer Joe Ramia, but the province is paying the other half, confirms a spokesperson from the Department of Infrastructure Renewal.
The consultations began Monday night, with something of a bizarrely staged kumbaya sensibility. The session was at St. James Church, seats set up in the round. Participants walked into a hall as new-agey acoustic music played, and the meeting was opened with a prayer given by native chief Terry Paul. Merry presided, and after the fact summed up the comments with his own rhyming couplets. Speakers included many in the tourism and events management industries, and were overwhelmingly in favour of the convention centre.
The consultations continue Thursday night at Pier 20, then roam the province, with events set in Sydney, New Glasgow, Truro, Wolfville and Lunenberg. Why anyone in Sydney would be interested in the design of a building on Argyle Street in Halifax isn’t explained.
This article appears in Jul 19-25, 2012.
Oh my God, this is too funny. Obviously off to a good start with this project. Its like living in an episode of Portlandia around here.
Sure didn’t take long for the touchy-feely arty crowd to line up to the trough, did it? Fuck me, and they actually justify gorging themselves at the tit by telling us that they really think they’re going to make a difference, and they know themselves that it is bullshit. Slow clap, mother fuckers, slow clap.
“Merry presided, and after the fact summed up the comments with his own rhyming couplets”… CHEESEY!! (wtf?!) hope there was wine to go with the CHEESE!!
You know what they need to take on the road with them? A “Rapping Faerie”. That would just put it right over the top, right there.
A few things:
Is Tim Merry being paid $200,000, or is that the fee for consultation? Does it include payment to the others working with him? Does it include travel and supply expenses? Fees for the livestreaming by Craig Moore of Spider Video? Your article will lead readers to think that Tim pocketed $200,000 dollars for his role here. Could you please clarify this?
You also could have described Tim as a professional facilitator, instead of a spoken word artist – I’m not sure why you would choose to describe him as such. I wouldn’t disregard your professional status when referring to your work, so I’m not sure why you would do that in this case, other than to downplay the value of Tim and others’ work.
I’m as frustrated by the lack of public engagement in this city as anyone, but I’m not sure that belittling those who are trying to raise the consultation bar is the way to improve our state. I know most of the consultants involved in this project, and would trust their sense of personal ethics above most others’ – they are committed to improving our collective state, and are likely just as frustrated by the lack of process as the rest of us, while trying to play a role through the only opportunities that have been available, and hone their craft while building relationships in the process.
I agree that consultations in other areas of the province are probably not the best way to deal with polarization that is primarily felt in the Halifax metro area. I’m glad you pointed it out.
The problem with public engagement is not nearly so much that we have bad facilitators as we have poor habits of communication – as government and community organizations, businesses and members of the public. We criticize when we should listen. We joke when we should be serious.
I sat beside a critic of the convention centre who proceeded to scoff and speak aloud while others were speaking throughout the evening, and had to say “sorry – I’d just like to hear what this gentleman’s saying” multiple times. It frustrated me, as I saw speaker after speaker perpetuate this conflict of false dichotomies, when I think that we all could have been much more mature than our conduct revealed. Part of the reason that consultation doesn’t work well is that we bring our baggage to new sessions and forget that we have the power to make the conversation we’re IN one of respect and importance, and we perpetuate all the bad habits we’ve learned at city-run ‘face-off’ consultations for years.
Tim, I respect your work as a journalist in this city more than most. But playing watch dog on-everyone-all-the-time is a form of journalism that I believe is falling out of favour. I would never suggest that you drop your sarcasm, wit or critical eye, and I think that you do a great job of suggesting solutions to problems whenever possible (Solution journalism – http://dowser.org/about/). But there doesn’t always have to be a ‘bad guy’, though this article seems to be trying hard to find him – possibly to the point of fabricating one.
If everyone becomes the enemy, I really have no idea who or what we’d be fighting FOR any more. This city is small enough that we shouldn’t have to rely on watchdog journalism to solve all our problems, if we develop processes that we can trust.
Food for thought::
“Journalism is the business of building communities”
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/people/robert/20090…
So please, criticize the consultants, and do it directly as well, so that they can get feedback and improve things as we move forward – I know for a fact that they’d welcome it. Just don’t confuse our collective inability to organize our thoughts and speak to one another respectfully and articulately with the failure of one man to pull us all together by himself.
Holy crow! It’s the stadium “consultation” all over again. I’ve been railing about this knowledge cafe thing for a couple years so I won’t repeat it all here, but using these over-paid lovebombers as the troops to placate the citizenry with their nerf version of a public town hall meeting is maybe the most enraging element of this entire process. It’s faux democracy at its worst.
Knowledge Cafe is a subversive tool of cult indoctrination used to goad people by using their own politeness and natural fear of speaking out in crowds to operate a kind of social control.
It’s a type of public paralysis.
It’s key feature is that it absolutely absolves all the participants, organizers and facilitators of all responsibility for the inputs and outcomes of the process.
NeilJohn,
To struggle against these “enemies”, and against apathy and mediocrity, is to find the purpose of life.
First the library,then the stadium and now the Nova Centre. I went to the first 2 and it was not consultation, it was ‘follow me down this pre-planned route’. It is a waste of our money and our time.
NeilJohn – somehow I don’t think you were around when David Bentley and his friend started the Bedford-Sackville News which became The Daily News and the reaction was similar to your views. How dare an upstart foreigner come here and start writing about our warts ! And then along came Frank…….thank goodness.
The Media Coop piece you cite comes across as “I didn’t get a piece of this action, so I’m taking my ball and going home”. Really, it does. Very immature.
Kudos to NeilJohn for his comments. Especially the bit about Tim calling Tim Merry a “Spoken-word artist” to denigrate his qualifications. Much like how Tim called Joe Ramia a “dining room furniture salesman” for the same reason. Really, Tim, really.
The guy sells “slam poetry” CD’s off of his business’s webpage.
You’re absolutely right, John – this IS like the stadium consultation, and the process leaves me wanting like Oliver Twist. It’s too little, too late, and I don’t hold out a lot of hope that my participation will significantly change the result. I am expecting a ‘conventional centre’ will be built, with some minor modifications. It’s frustrating, and a testament to how far we need to go. Which is why I fully support your stance on non-participation.
What I don’t support is ignorant and sarcastic remarks such as “You know what they need to take on the road with them? A ‘Rapping Faerie’.”, or the belittling of someone’s profession. I don’t support making ‘enemies’ of people in our community, and even if I did I would want to see some evidence that doing so would change things for the better. I don’t see that. I see attacks, flippant rhetoric and derision dominating the ‘dialogue’ here, and elsewhere.
Further, Knowledge or World Cafe wasn’t used during the session I attended on Monday, so I’m not sure why you’re criticizing it at the moment. It is one of many tools used by facilitators, and in the right context, it can be powerful in illuminating collective thought processes. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work well when people would rather break into camps and fight with one another, so I think that it’s a great idea to question the applicability of the medium in these processes. It’s not about holding individuals personally accountable – it’s about gathering another level of insight in large groups. I’ve seen it work well, and I’ve seen it work poorly. I personally used it as one of our tools in the Dal leadership program, and was not unhappy with the results, or the feedback received. I would strongly encourage anyone to suggest different facilitation tools that they have had experience with to Tim and the other facilitators through constructive feedback. Facilitation is a nuanced thing, and the tools are only as useful as participants’ motivation to participate leads them to be.
The problems with the overall process are:
1) We weren’t engaged earlier.
2) The ‘pre-planned route’ was set out before the consultation process.
3) HRM hasn’t publicly committed to drastically improving the process of visioning and early engagement, with at least a statement of intent and direction.
The problems with the current facilitation sessions in question are:
1) They lose value when decisions have already been made.
2) Very few people show up.
3) Those who do show up perpetuate ludicrous dichotomies and fail to listen to one another and get engaged.
Of course, if #1 is true, it negates the value of showing up. I would rather see no-one come, and make the collective statement that we need a wholly different process, or see ‘everyone’ come – to listen, share, and build a vision that we can find consensus on.
The worst things we can do are:
1) Not be critical of the process.
2) Fail to give constructive feedback.
3) Show up and fight (directly, or passive-aggressively)
4) Stop listening to one another.
5) Aspire to the status quo.
Read a great article by John Ralston Saul yesterday, who might just be the Canadian public intellectual whom I respect the most. I believe that some of it applies to the issues at hand.
“Our reality is that several generations have refused to imagine themselves as making changes. Instead, in the role of the angry outsiders, they have called for the people they do not respect to make the changes on their behalf. “
“After all, how we see ourselves shapes what we can do. And what we think we can do. We believe we live in an era of facts and of proofs. Yet what we don’t feel able to take on has little to do with those facts and proofs. It has everything to do with a failure of imagination.”
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/102/john…
For the record, Tim Merry introduced himself as a “spoken word artist.”
It’s rather condescending to run public consolation sessions after the most important decisions have already been made. It’s like someone buying a sports car with my money and than asking me for my thoughts on the color. Our leaders love the word “democracy” but hate the definition.
While my views on the Nova Centre do not align with Tim’s or with JWChisholm’s I have to, in fairness, agree with their statements about Tim Merry. I have worked in consultations led by this rather charismatic spook and I can confirm that he does indeed lead the audience very much down a pre-determined path while using well-practiced “cult indoctrination” techniques wrapped up in a “bizarre kumbaya” aesthetic to lend it the air of being “soft”, “community focused”, almost communal. And, Merry does in fact make much of his spoken word / slam poetry persona during his consultations, and uses those skills (*ahem*) during some of his consensus building exercises. (Never mind that they are not building consensus, they are isolating the outsiders and sending them packing, in the nicest possible way of course. (“You’re either with us or against us.”) This guy is a snake charmer, and you, the public, are the cobra that his clients want mesmerized. Our government seems to have taken a particular liking to him.
“public consolation sessions”
Freudian slip?
@Jammie:
“I can confirm that he does indeed lead the audience very much down a pre-determined path .”
Really? Or has Tim been hired by the HRM to play a role within a constrained framework? Do you think that opening up the dialogue and asking people to discuss alternative uses of the site is within Tim’s mandate as the primary facilitator? I sure don’t. And that’s the difference between trying to facilitate a process that IS SITUATED ON a pre-determined path, and LEADING people down a pre-determined path. Quite different, the two.
The criticism that I would entertain in this case is why they agreed to facilitate the process if it was already on a ‘pre-determined path’. Tim could have refused to participate, and made a statement similar to John Wesley Chisholms, and I would have respected that. Yet, just as I chose to attend the last meeting, they chose to facilitate it, and I won’t slight them for that.
The HRM has a flawed engagement process, that allows too little input, too late. Developers and the public have done little to improve this issue, and so we are left with processes like the one at hand, which facilitators are hired to facilitate. That’s it. They are not hired to transport us back through time and start a whole new visioning process.
Also not sure where you pulled the “You’re either with us or against us” quote from, either – I certainly don’t remember Tim saying that.
I CAN confirm that when I helped organize the Dalhousie Leadership program, the positive influence of Tim’s “bizarre kumbaya” was quite appropriate, and when working with students who had not yet calcified their world views and lost their ability to empathize and approach issues with creativity and enthusiasm, it yielded results. What’s more, I can’t think of a single student who participated who became ‘indoctrinated’ into Tim’s ‘cult’ – though I can think of many initiatives (a music program for those living with mental health issues, buy local initiatives, coffee houses, discussion groups, tours of the city, etc) that were a product of those events. And for that, I am extremely thankful, because without people like Tim offering to sit down and talk about creative approaches to engagement, we would have come up with yet another stale forum/summit/conference that mirrored the ones that academia has been using for generations. Instead, Brains for Change has become an engagement tool that has allowed another level of community to flourish at Dalhousie, and it wouldn’t have happened if we had used the status quo tools of years previous.
I just don’t get this misdirected hatefest, and basic lack of respect for dialogue and creativity. There is nothing wrong with using poetry as a facilitator, and I find it sad that we have digressed into such pettiness that we would criticize a local father and engaged member of the community for selling a $10 CD, when 5000 Haligonians payed $200 for tickets to Tony Robbins’ show (which, if my math is correct, amounts to $1 million dollars for a single show – 5 times the $200,000 paid to organize and facilitate 11 consultation sessions around the province), and shelled out five times as much for his DVDs.
http://www.thecoast.ca/RealityBites/archiv…
Seriously, folks. Not everything is a conspiracy. Sometimes things just suck, and we have to work to improve them. Don’t make Tim the red herring of our collective dissatisfaction with public engagement. Then we’re just ‘snake-charming’ ourselves.
@Hockeynut: Couldn’t agree more.
@Tim: Thanks for clarifying.
@Cranky: Good eye. That was probably the best comment of this thread. 🙂
@ NeilJohn. i think the question of who pre-determined the path is an interesting one. Clearly, the consultant is not the one who put the initial parameters around where he could lead the conversation. But he does in fact lead it; he is very slick, very good at allowing the appearance that the audience is actually in charge, but he is taking them ever so gently to exactly where he has been told to take them. He is not a mere facilitator; he’s a salesman. Look, he is very likeable, very charming, and probably s great guy in his personal life. I don’t mean to make this sound like a personal attack, like he’s a bad guy. But he has been hired to lead a discussion in a certain direction, and he is very good at steering very steadfastly in that direction while allowing the audience to feel it’s input is meaningful, when it really isn’t. I think we’re saying more or less the same thing. I’m just adding that the government and the developer chose a particular individual who is great at the fine art of selling people someone else’s ideas and convincing them that they were their own. A great many, or perhaps most, consultants work in very much the same way.
At the end end of the day, I think we agree the consultations are a public relations campaign, not true public “engagement” – no matter how engaging the consultant might seem.
“You’re either with us or against us” was not a Merry quote. I think George W Bush used it. The point i was trying to make was that kumbaya sessions are great for building a sense of community amongst people who are pretty much onside already, but they can have the rather convenient side-effect of totally isolating and marginalizing people who aren’t on board, so that their input becomes seen as not constructive, not participatory, but “other.” They get figuratively shoved out the door and no one who is part of the in-crowd will listen to them anymore. It’s really good for reinforcing those false dichotomies you talked about, but making one side out to be invalid.