Imagine Fox Cities
Launched by community members for community members, Imagine Fox Cities is a coalition of local change-makers, working as stewards, to create a thriving region for the residents of today--and for generations to come.
Community Initiatives partnered with the Imagine Fox Cities founders and community leaders to co-design strategy, build capacity through coaching and training, develop dialogue and measurement tools, and provided facilitation across convenings. Community Initiatives also supported photo and interview documentation for communicating the local story of change.
Imagine Fox Cities Design Strategy
The Fox Cities Convening Committee adopted a four phase strategy for listening deeply, discerning and reflecting what had been heard, sharing the findings back with community, and moving into action.
Phase One: Engaging and Discovery
Imagine Fox Cities started by gathering a diverse group of 32 community members and designing how they could take the pulse of the region. They then set out to listen. They listened to understand why people like it there. They listened to how people celebrate their past and what they have accomplished. They listened to learn of ongoing efforts to strengthen their community. They listened to understand what they could collaboratively improve. They listened to each other grapple with challenges faced there. They listened to learn people’s dreams for their children and grandchildren who might make the Fox Cities their home. They listened in order to reflect, to imagine the Fox Cities in years to come, and bring that to life.The Imagine
An engagement team enrolls the community.
An invitation to community conversations.
Phase Two: Discerning and Reflection
Fox Cities listening process used multiple approaches and was conducted over a six-month span. They conducted a well-being survey with nearly 3,000 community members that reflected their community demographics and, with the help of 28 facilitators, convened 81 small group conversations.
Fourteen community members used the Appleton Public Library as a central, public space to review and display thousands of comments from the conversations and surveys, place them on sticky notes, and combine them to find key themes.
What they heard…
1.) We Have a Strong Sense of Community, but Not All Are Feeling It
2.) We Prize Our Cultural and Natural Assets
3.) There Is a Will—and We Are Looking for Ways—to Ensure Meaningful Employment and Livable Wages
4.) Education Is a Critical Bridge to Our Shared Future
5.) Our Mental Health Is Clearly on the Collective Radar
6.) The Future Will Require New Ways of Thinking, Learning and Working Together
Imagine Fox Cities Well-Being
Phase Three: Convening
Summit.
“Your voice and participation at the Imagine Fox Cities Community Summit is vitally important to reflecting on what we’ve learned and moving into action for creating our shared vision.”
Phase Four: Action
Imagine Fox Cities Living Vision
Our Aim is to advance the Well-Being of Our Place and the Well-Being of Our People. To create the conditions for everyone who calls this place home the opportunity to reach their full potential. We dare to imagine, and endeavor to realize, a shared future that leads to greater flourishing—for this generation and the next.
We Imagine Fox Cities as a Place…
Where kids get off to a strong start and onto a positive life pathway.
Where we have an economy that works for everyone.
Where shared spaces and a rich cultural environment connect us.
Where we all belong.
Imagine Fox Cities Model for Creating Change
