Adena Institute

2009-05-29T19:14:00.000-07:00

Adena nurtures projects which are capable of rapidly moving communities as a whole towards sustainability.

Towards this end, Adena provides resources for sustainability learning, communications and transformational change through research, education, communications, networking, community building and infrastructure development projects.

More: About Adena

Current Projects:

Adena Center. Please visit the Adena Center for current education and outreach information. The Adena Center supports a variety of inter-disciplinary community based education, research, sustainable development and media initiatives.

The Center offers community education, organizing and services programming in

The Center also offers in-house and various external certifications in these areas.

Communicas: Strategy, Communications and Partnering for Sustainability is our affiliated consulting and production group.

Open Media is a production and distribution collaborative, supporting narrative projects for "a green and open world."

Contact

2009-05-27T13:33:00.000-07:00

Email:
adena.center@gmail.com

Phone:

+1 646-495-9244 x 43296

Web:

www.adenainstitute.net

Community:

Community Email and Groups

Subscriptions:

subscribe to adena institute

Donate

2009-05-20T14:17:00.000-07:00

Your Support Makes the Difference

Thank you for making a donation to the Adena Institute.
Donations to the Adena Institute, a sponsored project of the Non-Profit Service Center, (a 501(c)3 corporation) are tax-deductible as applicable by law.

About

2009-05-19T14:44:00.000-07:00

Mission & Origins | Organization | People | Donate | Contact

Spiral Time: Where We Come From

"The gods send thread for the web begun"
- Lief Smith

Threads

Adena is a network for weaving together several threads of research, community, and action:

a "networking organization" providing a venue for organizations and individuals to connect and collaborate.
a "community-based research institute," pursuing issues and inquiries which emerge from and inform the work of creating sustainable communities.
a "storyteller's collaborative" to gather and share those ways in which individuals, communities, businesses, researchers and others are learning in the course of building sustainability.

...Click here to read more of Adena Mission and Origins

Welcome to now:

The transition to sustainable societies depends on the comprehensive adoption of sustainable practices by the majority of institutions and individuals in communities worldwide.

Adena is dedicated to accomplishing these transitions in ways which are democratic, equitable, ecological, and economically achievable.

No more Pilot Projects:

Adena nurtures projects which are capable of rapidly moving communities as a whole towards sustainability.

Towards this end, Adena undertakes research, education, communications, networking, community building and infrastructure development projects.

Adena projects support methods through which the majority of people and organizations can map out and achieve successful transitions to sustainability.

You can learn more about the history of Adena by looking at our founding Mission Statements and Archives.

Organization:

The Adena Institute is a sponsored project of the Non-Profit Service Center, a 501(c)3 corporation.

The Adena Center was incubated through a joint Memorandum of Understanding with Webster University Louisville in 2007-2008. The Center is now an independent spin off project, continuing to sponsor events and programs. In 2009 and 2010, the Center is exploring national and international programming and community-based research projects in addition to local programming in Chicago, San Diego, Louisville, USA, and in Ulan Batur, Mongolia.

People

Donate

Contact

People

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Adena Collaboratives

Adena Collaboratives are working groups focussed on particular projects or issues. Key working groups include:

Open: Living and Learning for Sustainability

Community Communications Working Group

Transformational Change Collaborative

Adena Advisory

We draw on a wealth of experience and relationships in our projects and collaborations. Adena Advisors include professionals, theorists, community leaders and practitioners in sustainable development, communications, community organizing, the arts and sciences.

Organizational Leadership

Adena Institute

Executive Director: David Silverman

Non-Profit Service Center

President: Jeffrey Segal, J.D.

Chair: Sy Slavin, Ph.D.

Advisory Members

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People:

Executive Director:

David Silverman

Non-Profit Service Center:

Jeffrey SegaL, J.D.

Advisory Council:

Sy Slavin, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus, Sociology, Univeristy of Louisville

Chair, Non-Profit Service Center

Jefrey Segal, J.D.

Non-Profit Service Center

Angela Kortz - Funke, J.D.

Korts & Funke

David Funke

Kortz & Funke

Michael Caporale, President, 24p Productions, DP on many feature films; Principal technical DP consultant, Panasonic.

Jan Carew, Ph.D.

Emeritus Professor of Pan-African Studies, Northwestern University

Joy Carew, Ph.D

Professor of Pan - African Studies, University of Louisville and Director of the U of L International Center

John Hicks,

Station Manager, WXBH-FM

President, Gulfbridge Communications

Jack Trawick, Executive Director, Center for Neighborhoods

D. Howard White, Director's Guild, retired producer with Harpo Productions, Discovery, CNN and others

Jerry Hardt

Director of Communications

Kentuckians for the Commonwealth

Jennifer Oladipo, Freelance Journalist

Jim St. Clair, Professor of Journalism, Indiana University Southeast

Brian Daly, Director, Webster University, Louisville

Mike Foster, Director of Internet Marketing, Digital Business Solutions

Biba Cohen, Producer, Euro-Africa, (Formerly CNN Dubai) Amsterdam, Netherlands

Ernest Marcum, Producer, Cairns, Australia (Founder and Former Director, Louisville
Media Arts Center, former producer of Mayor's Youth Media project)

Kay Humphrey, Journalist, New Media Specialist, Changleska

Zaida Amaral, Sustainable Community Design / Media Project, Gaia Education, Sao Paolo, Brazil

Current Projects:

2009-03-04T13:24:00.000-08:00

The Center offers community education, organizing and services programming in

The Center also offers in-house and various external certifications in these areas.

Communicas: Strategy, Communications and Partnering for Sustainability is our affiliated consulting and production group.

Open Media is a production and distribution collaborative, supporting narrative projects for "a green and open world."

For information on past projects, see the Adena Archive page.

Open Media

2007-04-01T06:40:00.000-07:00

Open Media is a production and distribution collaborative, supporting narrative projects for "a green and open world."

Our website is being revised. Please check back soon to see the new site!

Adena Logo w Text - Original v2-0

2004-06-04T11:18:00.000-07:00

Mission and Origins Draft 2

2001-06-04T14:05:00.000-07:00

Spiral Time: Where We Come From

The gods send thread for the web begun

- Lief Smith

Adena: Origins

Threads

Adena is a network for weaving together several threads of research, community, and action:

a "networking organization" providing a venue for organizations and individuals to connect and collaborate.

a "community based research institute," pursuing issues and inquiries which emerge from and inform the work of creating sustainable communities.

a "storyteller's collaborative" to gather and share those ways in which individuals, communities, businesses, researchers and others are learning in the course of building
sustainability.

Sustainability is the fabric we weave. Sustainability is in many ways the practical application of the human project, the unfolding of human potential and the creation of more
intentional communities within the natural world. We do not define sustainability narrowly, but rather embrace the transdisciplinary nature of this work, drawing on a variety of research and
development resources in the social, biological and physical sciences.

Beyond sustainability, it is the creation of new possibilities which inspires us. Individually and collectively, we engage in the realization of what Jean Houston has
described as the "possible human". We work with networks of "generative prosperity": individuals, organizations and businesses whose
values, relationships and community economies are based in abundant creative expression, humanistic concern and renewable, living systems.

In recent years, the sustainable communities movement has been mainstreamed in many ways. Many thousands of experiments across a great range of scales have given rise to initiatives in
every sector and community. What's next? Moving the sustainability agenda from the phase of "pilot project" or "initiative" to widespread adoption and daily practice.

Experience and Learning:

Adena is involved in a several transformational sustainable community development projects. Part of our optimism in this work comes from prior experience. The history we draw from includes
participation in a variety of such initiatives. Among the many threads of that history a few are worth noting here:

The Sustainable Communities Environmental Education Network (SCEEN), a pilot project for the National Sustainable Development Extension Network proposed by the White House Inter-Agency Task Force
on Sustainability. This approach uses multi-sectoral transformation, community communications, brokering and networking strategies for sustainable communities organization, investment and
development.

The SCEEN project exemplifies experience with similar initiatives:

A Sense of the Sacred

Community Communications Project

Jobs in Energy

Coalition of Neighborhoods

Inter-Neighborhood Coalition

Sustainable Business Incubator

National Black Business Report

Universal Health Care Access

Citizens Energy Council

Paddlewheel Alliance

Synergy Radio

Plowshares

and others.

The archives for Adena provide a glimpse into some of this history. The bibliography provides access to some of the broader intellectual and
historical roots we draw from.

Why do this work? The entwined threads of our experience and learning continue in the lives we weave and the work we choose...

But who will yield to their separation,

My object in living is to unite

My avocation and my vocation

As my two eyes make one in sight.

Only where love and need are one

And the work is play for mortal stakes,

Is the deed ever really done

For Heaven and the future's sakes.

Robert Frost

"Two Tramps in Mud Time"

Adena is the evocative name of the people and region of the Ohio Valley of North America.

Adena was the culture of the mound builders, who flourished on the banks and tributaries of the Ohio River some 400+ years ago. While no utopia, Adena was in many ways the most
sustainable high culture ever developed in the American heartland.

In the 1970's, writer and teacher Leon Driskell founded the Journal Adena to celebrate the history and culture of the Ohio Valley through fiction, oral histories, and scholarly
essays. Through Adena, an influential band of writers, artists, academics and holders of community memory helped to weave together the story of these places along the river.

Leon and his family were a huge influence on my life, from his participation in my first 'zine and community teach-ins to his role as principal investigator on my National Endowment for the
Humanities media projects, to his wry but always kindly observations on the folly of my heartbreaks.

Our last conversations revolved around possibilities for creating new media projects to support regional sustainability. We talked of co-editing a special issue of Adena that
would be devoted to documenting work towards an Ohio Valley Bio-regional Congress, and to telling community stories in the then-new medium of the web.

In the way of the world, I was pulled away to other places and projects. When I returned to Louisville nearly ten years later I learned that Leon had passed on. But I and others continue to
learn from and share the ideas and sensibility we were exploring a generation ago. Indeed, the need for a voice like Adena is even more urgent today.

After some consideration, we've come back to "Adena" as the natural name for the sustainable communities Institute and communications network we envisage. If all goes well we
will even produce an e-journal with a similar mission, along with other means of storytelling which borrow from Leon's legacy and build on what he taught us.

- David Silverman

Adena: Mission Statement and Origins

2000-06-04T12:56:00.000-07:00

Spiral Time: Where We Come From

The gods send thread for the web begun

- Lief Smith

Threads

Adena is a network for weaving together several threads of research, community, and action:

a "networking organization" providing a venue for organizations and individuals to connect and collaborate.

a "community based research institute," pursuing issues and inquiries which emerge from and inform the work of creating sustainable communities.

a "storyteller's collaborative" to gather and share those ways in which individuals, communities, businesses, researchers and others are learning in the course of building sustainability.

Sustainability is the fabric we weave. Sustainability is in many ways the practical application of the human project, the unfolding of human potential and the creation of more intentional communities within the natural world. We do not define sustainability narrowly, but rather embrace the transdisciplinary nature of this work, drawing on a variety of research and development resources in the social, biological and physical sciences.

Beyond sustainability, it is the creation of new possibilities which inspires us. Individually and collectively, we engage in the realization of whatJean Houston has described as the "possible human". We work with networks of "generative prosperity": individuals, organizations and businesses whose values, relationships and community economies are based in abundant creative expression, humanistic concern and renewable, living systems.

In recent years, the sustainable communities movement has been mainstreamed in many ways. Many thousands of experiments across a great range of scales have given rise to initiatives in every sector and community. What's next? Moving the sustainability agenda from the phase of "pilot project" or "initiative" to widespread adoption and daily practice.

Experience and Learning:

Adena is involved in a several transformational sustainable community development projects. Part of our optimism in this work comes from prior experience. The history we draw from includes participation in a variety of such initiatives. Among the many threads of that history a few are worth noting here:

The Sustainable Communities Environmental Education Network (SCEEN), a pilot project for the National Sustainable Development Extension Network proposed by the White House Inter-Agency Task Force on Sustainability. This approach uses multi-sectoral transformation, community communications, brokering and networking strategies for sustainable communities organization, investment and development.

The SCEEN project exemplifies experience with similar initiatives:

A Sense of the Sacred

Community Communications Project

Jobs in Energy

Coalition of Neighborhoods

Inter-Neighborhood Coalition

Sustainable Business Incubator

National Black Business Report

Universal Health Care Access

Citizens Energy Council

Paddlewheel Alliance

Synergy Radio

Plowshares

and others.

The archives for Adena provide a glimpse into some of this history. The bibliography provides access to some of the broader intellectual and historical roots we draw from.

Why do this work? The entwined threads of our experience and learning continue in the lives we weave and the work we choose...

But who will yield to their separation,

My object in living is to unite

My avocation and my vocation

As my two eyes make one in sight.

Only where love and need are one

And the work is play for mortal stakes,

Is the deed ever really done

For Heaven and the future's sakes.

Robert Frost

"Two Tramps in Mud Time"

Adena: Origins

Adena is the evocative name of the people and region of the Ohio Valley of North America.

Adena was the culture of the mound builders, who flourished on the banks and tributaries of the Ohio River some 400+ years ago. While no utopia, Adena was in many ways the most sustainable high culture ever developed in the American heartland.

In the 1970's, writer and teacher Leon Driskell founded the JournalAdena to celebrate the history and culture of the Ohio Valley through fiction, oral histories, and scholarly essays. Through Adena, an influential band of writers, artists, academics and holders of community memory helped to weave together the story of these places along the river.

Leon and his family were a huge influence on my life, from his participation in my first 'zine and community teach-ins to his role as principal investigator on my National Endowment for the Humanities media projects, to his wry but always kindly observations on the folly of my heartbreaks.

Our last conversations revolved around possibilities for creating new media projects to support regional sustainability. We talked of co-editing a special issue of Adena that would be devoted to documenting work towards an Ohio Valley Bio-regional Congress, and to telling community stories in the then-new medium of the web.

In the way of the world, I was pulled away to other places and projects. When I returned to Louisville nearly ten years later I learned that Leon had passed on. But I and others continue to learn from and share the ideas and sensibility we were exploring a generation ago. Indeed, the need for a voice likeAdena is even more urgent today.

After some consideration, we've come back to "Adena" as the natural name for the sustainable communities Institute and communications network we envisage. If all goes well we will even produce an e-journal with a similar mission, along with other means of storytelling which borrow from Leon's legacy and build on what he taught us.

- David Silverman