Facilitated Workshop Day Overview
Collaboratively Creating a Path Forward for Outdoor Recreation Management and Gateway Community Planning
Outdoor recreation and gateway community challenges in the American West tend to cross jurisdictional boundaries, affect diverse interest groups, and be emotionally and politically charged. As a result, they are often rife with conflict and require collaborative solutions.
This training and workshop day will bring together outdoor recreation planners and managers, gateway community leaders, state and local officials, academics/scientists, and anyone else with an interest in outdoor recreation and gateway community concerns to explore how to productively navigate conflict and find collaborative solutions.
Workshop Day Outline
One of the most valuable aspects of Basecamp is our workshop day on October 16th. This day will bring together people from our Outdoor Recreation and Gateway Community Tracks to learn about conflict competence and put these skills into practice in the context of real-world e outdoor recreation management and gateway community planning challenges.
We strongly encourage you to join for the entire day so you can learn skills in the morning and put them to practice in the afternoon!!
Morning
Conflict Competence Training hosted by the Wallace Stegner Center’s Environmental Dispute Resolution Program
This half-day workshop will teach participants the basic concepts and skills of conflict competence (i.e., how to navigate conflict productively). More specifically, participants will learn:
- What conflict is (and is not);
- What collaboration is (and is not);
- Why all land managers and local public officials need to learn how to productively navigate conflict; and
- Concepts and skills for how to productively navigate conflict, including effective listening and framing, focusing on interests and not positions, and how to stay calm and present when dealing with conflict.
Afternoon
During the afternoon of Workshop Day, participants will have the opportunity to apply the conflict competence skills and concepts they learned about in the morning to real-world challenges through participating in one of two parallel workshops on 1) Visitor Use Management or 2) Housing Affordability in Gateway Regions.
Hosted by the Society of Outdoor Recreation Professionals
As more people enjoy the physical and mental benefits of spending time outside - and communities benefit from both residents and visitor spending due to outstanding outdoor recreation opportunities - there is an increasing need to provide quality visitor experiences while ensuring natural and cultural resources are protected. The foundation of visitor use management is developing explicit desired conditions that describe the desired qualities for recreation and resource management. This workshop will explore the role of developing high quality desired conditions in establishing a successful visitor use management process. It will also build on the morning Conflict Competence training by understanding the importance and complexities of inclusive public engagement to develop desired conditions. Finally, participants will have time to share and learn from each other by discussing their own successes and challenges in collaboratively developing desired conditions.
Training objectives:
- Know more about visitor use management and desired conditions
- Understand the importance of including different perspectives in desired conditions development
- Know there are resources available to support VUM work (including SORP!)
- Understand there is not one size fits all approach to desired conditions
Hosted by the Environmental Dispute Resolution Program and the Gateway and Natural Amenity Region Initiative
Affordable workforce housing is a major concern for many if not most gateway regions across the West. In this facilitated workshop, EDR Program and GNAR Initiative staff will help participants apply the conflict competence concepts and skills they learned about in the morning to get new insight on and explore innovative solutions for their local and regional housing challenges. Participants will also work together to co-create promising strategies for making progress on housing challenges in gateway communities across the West. Through engaging in collaborative discussions, participants will have the opportunity to learn from one another, get peer support, and develop engage actionable strategies tailored to the unique challenges of their communities.
Want to learn more about workshop day?
Contact:
Jordan W. Smith, Ph.D.
jordan.smith@usu.edu
Elizabeth Sodja
liz.sodja@usu.edu