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Danielle Batist is an experienced freelance journalist, founder of Journopreneur and co-founder of the Constructive Journalism Project. She lived and worked all around the globe and covered global and local stories of poverty, exclusion and injustice. Increasingly, she moved beyond ‘problem-reporting’ to include stories about the solutions she found. She witnessed the birth of the new nation of South Sudan and interviewed the Dalai Lama. She reported for Al Jazeera, BBC and the Guardian and regularly advises independent media organisations on innovation and sustainability. She loves bringing stories to the world and finding the appropriate platforms to do so. The transformation of traditional media fascinates rather than scares her. While both the medium and the message are changing, she believes the need for good storytelling remains.
Community Centres Could Improve Society — But They Need To Be Much Prettier
The blog posts on the ‘Book of Life’ website often open my eyes. They make me look at everyday things differently and often offer a vision for what could be. This one, on community centres, does just that. It’s posted in the ‘utopia’ section of the site, but its suggestions feel totally achievable, making it a compelling read.
The problem with uninspiring, often downright ugly and cheaply built community centres, the piece argues, is that “rather than bolstering community, these centres whisper to us that communal enthusiasm would be something to lean on only when other, better hopes had already failed.”
It goes on to make the comparison with churches, the ‘community centres of old’: they had outstanding buildings, creating a place of awe where a gathering of equals could take place, introductions were made and people were invited to engage in deep thought and conversation.
“Our societies are infinitely richer than those that built the great community centres of old. But our imaginations are — insofar as an interest in what is collective is concerned — a great deal more limited.” This piece helps us see how we could change that.
