HOULTON — On Wednesday, Jan. 23, a group of 11 individuals met at the Houlton Higher Education Center to brainstorm topic ideas for a future community conversation facilitated through the Maine Humanities Council program “Let’s Talk Local.”
According to Otis Smith of the Adult Education program, “Let’s Talk Local” is part of a bigger project called “What It Means to be a Mainer: Conversations Within Communities.”
“This is a new program that will use theater, literature, and other texts to help Maine’s communities address our nation’s need for civic discourse by opening conversation around urgent state and local issues,” Smith said. “Houlton is one of 10 communities chosen to host Let’s Talk Local.”
The group’s task was to narrow suggestions on topics of interest down to five that would be forwarded from Houlton to the Maine Humanities Council. The council will work with a scholar to choose one of the topics to focus on for Houlton’s future community discussion.
The five topics are: visitor information development, downtown revitalization, elderly needs, green economy and educational reform. The original list of brainstormed topics were: visitor center development, business and agency involvement and education, avoiding burnout, downtown revitalization, economic development, public school culture-is the focus to sports orientated over civic/government, work ethics, our rich historical heritage, countering ignorance in favor of knowledge, community collaboration, community communication, health access, elderly needs, energy, green economy, mental health issues, valuing our assets and out migration. The top five were chosen by the number of votes received. Some community members, unable to attend, sent ideas to the group for consideration.
“The goal for Let’s Talk Local is to develop a model that will empower our community to carry out discussions in a forum where differing views are expressed and listened to,” Smith said. “With the enthusiasm generated from this first meeting, this goal seems achievable.”
Individuals participating in the event were Lori Weston, Jane Torres, Kathy Miskelly, Iva Sussman, Linda Faucher, Gene Conlogue, Mecedes Melo, Sarah Lovejoy, Jean Henderson, Smith and Bernadette Farrar.
For more information about Let’s Talk Local, contact Linda Faucher at the Cary Library at 532-1302 or Houlton Hodgdon Adult Education at 521-3100 x5.
