Local Action, Global Impact: From Domination To Partnership By Design

Abstract

Global changes often begin when people take action locally. Communities around the globe are involved in creative community-based actions that promote mutual respect, social and economic justice, and gender and environmental balance. Insights from ecological thinking, systems thinking, quantum reality, and integral vision perspectives offer new ways to understand the terms ’local’ and ‘global’, and their context. Also, today more than ever, cultural transformation models of domination and partnership coexist and are intertwined in our societal context. To advance partnership, then, requires exercising of conscious intention and choice. Design, with its goal to create, can effectively catalyze the partnership model in global and local contexts. Reviewing global examples (UNESCO Creative Cities Network, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and Project Drawdown) and local examples (the National Loon Center in Crosslake, Minnesota and the Southwest Hmong Community Center in Tracy, Minnesota) will show a way to advance partnership more rapidly: using a design thinking/systems thinking lens, insights from ecology and other fields, conscious intention, and the choice of partnership over domination at every opportunity.