and the early polls show…

That support at East Wind–the host community for VIS–is strong and enthusiastic.  We spent a little more than a week at the community, holding open meetings to create a dialogue between festival organizers and community members.  We distributed surveys with the aim of understanding how the festival can coexist with community needs and culture.  Some of the tricky parts to figure out were:

• How EW would contribute labor to the project. Would we do the unprecedented and create labor budgets or let the project self police the amount of time we were taking from the community?  East Winders are split–some feel comfortable creating a controlled labor budget and others would prefer we post the labor shifts weekly for the project and let people sign up.
• How to handle VIS staff living at the community before seed camp. Originally we were thinking we’d have one organizer on site beginning in January and that that person would apply for membership at EW.  But it turns out the preferred arrangement is that any VIS staff staying at the community for significant amounts of time would act as a working guest: contributing to the EW labor needs and staying in housing separate from the member rooms.
• Should East Wind contribute metal shop resources, lumber and saw mill resources to the project. There was no consensus in the 16 early polls we received, but it seemed that generally East Winders were feeling generous with these community resources.

And there is much to be learned, discussed, discovered about how our vision and the host community’s desires will balance.  But the general feeling is enthusiastic and both groups look forward to pulling together to pull off this festival in the trees!  We’re just working out the details.