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David Silverman
  • David Silverman

    CEE-Change Fellow
  • CEE-Change Fellow
  • 2021

David (he/him/co) is a sustainability, communications and community learning professional  whose work in policy, science journalism, education and public health focuses on the prospects for scaling participatory, multi-sectoral, whole systems transitions.

David’s CEE community action project, Neighbor2Neighbor, focuses on the power and limits of dialogue and storytelling between neighbors and their community institutions. Starting with basic questions about community and institutional relationships, the project’s civic engagement with neighbors, leaders and experts in diverse communities will document emergent cultural and institutional sustainability action/learning strategies. What happens when residents convert lawns to gardens, when neighbors commit to share community solar, or parks become food forests? What can community institutions do to support rather than impede the creation of new, sustainability commons? How might neighborhood groups and citizen forums become citizen assemblies, urban ecovillages and permaculture precincts?  

The Neighbor2Neighbor project explores local-global civic and environmental education through action/research and media collaborations. N2N hopes to reframe political geography and eco-social structure to overcome institutional barriers to sustainability transitions through reimagining the layered patterns and complexities of "whole community" movement towards ecological, democratic societies.

Someday, David would like to visit Cape Tribulation, the sea/land intersection where the Daintree Tropics Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef UNESCO World Heritage Sites meet. In the meantime, he’s enjoying stargazing and scanning the horizon above the prairies and forests of the American heartland.