WASHOUGAL — Opening up the Washougal Conversation Board is a two-person job, and what Alex Yost and Wayne Pattison discovered is that one person has to unhook the top hinge first.
The two were showing off the board on a recent afternoon at the Port of Camas-Washougal and while Pattison was unhooking the top hinge, Yost held the board up so it wouldn’t fall.
“It’s all about communication,” Yost said.
That’s the current mantra for Washougal Round Table, a new community group unaffiliated with any local agency. Members started meeting in October.
After initial meetings and discussions, the development committee had members vote on which project they should start first. They decided on the conversation board.
“We couldn’t start tackling projects until we knew what people wanted to do,” said Yost.
The board is a three-panel interactive art exhibit where people can write what they like about Washougal and what they think the city needs. The board, which is normally displayed in a triangular shape, can unfold to stretch 20 feet.
Round table members will be in Reflection Plaza from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. every Saturday in July.
“We don’t want to make assumptions on what the city needs,” said Shannon Pratuch, another member. “This can give us direction for what to work on in the future, and what sorts of things to find grants for.”
The round table members will document everything written on the board and compile all the suggestions. They will share the results with local officials and various agencies.
So far the group has presented the board at a port commission meeting and brought it to Washougal High School. Some of the first responses show that people like the natural setting and outdoor activities Washougal has to offer. The group has received multiple responses from people who want the city to have a community center, as well as people who want a public swimming pool, a farmers market and more bike lanes and sidewalks.
Yost said the group can’t build a community center, but it can let city officials know that it’s something residents are passionate about.
Instead, their projects will be smaller. The group refers to itself as a tactical urbanism group. Tactical urbanism is a strategy used by community groups to make positive change in local areas.
“Tactical urbanism is often led by citizen advocates who don’t have to deal with the red tape, budgets and processes government agencies often have to,” Pratuch said. “It’s about short-term projects that hopefully lead to long-term change that can affect all community members.”
They looked around at other tactical urbanism projects for ideas. Some communities painted memorials at intersections to slow traffic, for example.
They modeled the conversation board after the “Before I Die” wall, in which artist Candy Chang spray-painted the phrase on the side of an abandoned house in New Orleans and left chalk so people could fill it out. Since then, thousands of “Before I Die” walls have been created around the world.
The round table members want their project to be similarly interactive.
“We decided to use the innovation aspect of that project and utilize it in a way where the wall is less static and could be reused in different places,” Pratuch said.
Yost said creating the board itself was a community project, since volunteers helped construct the mobile device it sits on and portable columns that travel with it. The columns were painted by local students to highlight the group’s three core values: people, sustainability and innovation.
“I’ve been in construction my whole life, and I know that consensus building is difficult, especially when you’ve got all these people throwing in all their ideas,” Pattison said. “This group worked really well together. The board doesn’t look anything like what we first talked about. We developed this over a three-month period.”
Yost hopes the group can take that collaborative spirit to other agencies in Washougal to bring positive change to the city.
“It’s really exciting but really daunting,” Yost said. “We’re an open source for ideas. We want to turn big ideas into feasible ideas.”
