Last entry…maybe

The semester has come to and end ands we log, our last blog.  The past 12 weeks have gone so fast, from a humble gathering of very mixed students with such diverse backgrounds and experiences.  We have all developed our transient spaces knowledge and now progress with more knowledge of this new medium of communication.  Creating a doco on a community has been an excellent subject to immerse the students into the use of this medium.  A second semester would not be wasted.  Transient space’s 102 maybe!

I hope our blog and facebook connections will keep us linked into the future, communicating through the medium we have learnt so much more about.

Fluid community

Ha, as I mentioned in my last blog entry our work community is fluid and last week proved that when one of my staff announced her departure, having secured a position with another emergency service.  On the up side she remains within the emergency services community, on the down side I lose a great staff member.  The team will now adapt to the new structure until will have a replacement, in the meantime a uni intern starts with us so we are always adapting, nothing ever stays the same…but that’s life and would we want it any other way!

Time for reflection

So what does this all mean? What have I learnt?  Is there a community within my workplace?  On reflection and further reading I get more sense of my work community, it is fluid, not fixed, not frozen in time, as people enter and exit the community it is adapting. Looking back on the bushfire event, a strong sense of community emerged, as Bachrach & Zautra (1985) identified, a strong sense of community became evident when a group of residents were faced with a proposed hazardous waste facility. This lead to a strong sense of community emerging with problem-focused coping behaviours.  My work community is often placed in a similar position when  an emergency arises, we work together to resolve the crisis.

 

I feel Durheim (1964) is correct in his approach that a community is based around interests and skills more than locality, this theory fits well with a work community where locality is sometimes not one physically location and where skills and a common interest are very evident.

The community is adapting as I write, over the past few weeks as life settles to a more ‘normal’ routine, the community settles back into it’s traditional habits and customs.   Observing other students research and presentations, was so inspiring, how so many communities were discovered, most in places one would not imagine a community to exist.