"There's this really interesting untapped potential within the threshold of your neighbourhood and if you could have a pair of special glasses to see all the invisible stuff that modern life blinds us from seeing, you'd see the gifts of your neighbours, you'd see the possibilities in your associations, you'd see all of the things that never get reported."
This week’s Survival of the Kindest podcast sees the return of Cormac Russell. Cormac has a new book out, The Connected Community: Discovering the Health, Wealth and Power of Neighbourhoods, written with John McKnight, co-originator of Asset Based Community Development. It is written for people who want to better understand how communities can come together and transform their neighbourhood, from within.
Cormac Russel is the Founding Director of Nurture Development and a member of the Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) Institute, at DePaul University, Chicago. His previous book Rekindling Democracy – A Professional’s Guide to Working in Citizen Space focussed on the how professionals can reorientate their work to fit within the context of community.
On this episode, Julian and Cormac talk about the themes of both books, maps of misery and treasure maps as ways of seeing our communities, the building blocks to a good life lived with our neighbours, and the wisdom of indigenous ways of being.
You can listen to their previous conversation on the podcast here.