Grounded in community and promoting self-reliance, Relocalizing II offered workshops on topics ranging from knitting socks, making cheese and vermicomposting to bike maintenance, hard cider making and growing food indoors.
Held at the Higher Grounds Trading Company, Thursday afternoon's event drew 60 people who explored, learned and played around a theme of do-it-yourself. Sessions were held in all parts of the coffee roastery and bar, from the loading dock and break room to the oversized production room, kitchen and public space.
Blair Grant started off her intricacies of turning a heel courtesy of session leader
"I'm thinking about the cider class next because I know how to do almost everything, although the cheese making sounds very interesting,” said Grant.
The Institute for Sustainable Living, Art and Natural Design — ISLAND for short — organized the event, which they co-sponsored with the Northern Michigan Environmental Action Council and Bay Bucks. The timing coordinated with the weekend's Bioneers Conference held at Northwestern Michigan College, which explored sympathetic themes and provided an excellent anchor for the smaller event.
"I think it went really well, the feedback we got was really great,” said Amanda Kik, who with her husband, Brad, founded ISLAND, which is based in Bellaire.
"Many people said on the forms that, 'I hope we can do this again' and 'I hope we can do this regularly,'” she added. "I'm happy to hear that because our plan is to start doing this in spring time so we can have all those good things like seed starting and fruit tree grafting.”
Mike and Diane Lempinen of Traverse City signed up for Relocalizing II with a plan: by attending different sessions they would double their experiences. He made noise and mastered self-expression during a recreational music making class and planned to learn to roast coffee beans next while she learned about kombucha tea and growing sprouts, greens and wheat grass indoors.
"It's just wonderful, we've been spending a lot of time in northern California and Oregon and they do a lot of this there,” said Diane. "It's great to bring it into the area.”
Relocalizing II is the second phase of a process that began last year with a community brainstorming and visioning session led by ISLAND. The purpose of that event was to boost and promote grassroots lifestyle choices in the region.
The result appealed across generations and interests as Thursday afternoon's seminars drew single twenty-somethings, middle age individuals and couples, retired people, children and everyone in between. This satisfyingly broad demographic demonstrated to Kik the concept's appeal.
"This year was the follow up, the kind of hands-on stuff that people were looking for,” said Kik. "We also made sure that we had a couple of workshops that were kiddo friendly, too.”
Organizers put out the call for presenters, tapping the creative reservoir in the region, and soon had enough ideas to offer multiple choices in each of two, 100-minute sessions. A reception followed the workshops and featured local wine, bread and cheese.
While the topics and focus of Relocalizing II were local, to Kik the motivation for it and any future happenings was grounded in global events.
"A lot of this stems from this oil crisis that we're going through and people wanting to bring things closer to home and support more local businesses,” said Kik. "We're really lucky around here because we do have these local businesses that are supportive of the whole community.”