Village Building Convergence 2023 Promo

Find out everything you need to know about this years VBC at the following link:

A special thanks to:
1. The City Repair Project and all of their amazing work.
2. To all of you for your passion and creativity.
3. Portland Bureau Of Transportation for their collaboration.
5. Greg Raisman for ground imagery.
5. FASSounds - pixabay for the groovy music.

What is the Village Building Convergence?
The Village Building Convergence is an annual collaboration and cross pollination of neighbors, groups and civic partnerships to transform our city through village life patterns and placemaking projects. This kicks off with eight days of intensive workshops, placemaking, and presentations and continues in an extended Summer of Celebration.

During the day, you will have the opportunity to get involved with creative community designed placemaking projects that will be happening all over the city. There will be building, gardening, art, and many other fun things to do and great people doing them with you!

Throughout Portland neighborhoods, we will facilitate gatherings that include opportunities to gather for evenings chock full of wholesome food, presentations by leaders in the forefront of positive change, and exhilarating performances from local talents.

Why Placemaking?
Placemaking fosters active, engaged relationships with our community, the spaces we inhabit, and the landscapes of our lives. Placemaking allows us to shape those spaces in a way which creates a sense of communal stewardship and lived connection. This is most often accomplished through a creative reclamation of public space: projects can take the form of benches on street corners where neighbors can rest and talk with each other, kiosks on sidewalks where we can post information about local events and resources, and street paintings in the public right-of-way that demonstrate to all who pass through that this is a Place inhabited, known and loved by its residents. In all instances, these projects are undertaken by local communities who come together to discuss what it is they want in their neighborhood – what elements are lacking in the public sphere and how the community can work together with the resources they have to create their own place.

Who is City Repair?
City Repair is a non-profit that facilitates placemaking, community building, and educational projects. Our mission is to support and inspire communities and individuals to creatively transform the places where they live. City Repair facilitates artistic and ecologically-oriented placemaking through projects that reflect the needs and visions of local communities and the natural world. Our many projects have been accomplished by a mostly volunteer staff and thousands of volunteer citizen activists.

City Repair projects include the annual Village Building Convergence, the Urban Permaculture Design Course, and our mobile tea house called the T-Horse, which is a tool to create community gathering spaces throughout Portland.