2018 Anchor Collaborative Convening: Baltimore, MD

On June 11th and 12th, The Anchor Collaborative Convening brought together 135 leaders and champions of anchor collaborations from 35 communities across the US and Canada. A summary report from this convening is available here: 
democracycollaborative.org/content/anchor-collaborative-convening

What we did together

This was not a conference. We came together to advance our work and unpack the unique and shared challenges that each of us face in building more inclusive, equitable, and participatory economic systems in our cities and regions. Over the course of two days we…

• Visited the sites of some of Baltimore’s local anchor institutions and learned about the work that is happening on the ground. We saw evidence of successes, and heard stories of the journey that it took to get there
• Shared the values that drive our work and connect our anchor collaboratives across the country and across the globe
• Prioritized and workshopped common challenges, articulated new challenges, and worked together to generate plausible solutions
• Engaged with the stories of four anchor leaders in dynamic panel discussion which included champions from Cleveland, OH; Newark, NJ; Rochester, NY; and Tacoma, WA
• Learned about one of the leading anchor-driven community wealth building strategies in the United Kingdom, the Preston Model, from city councilor Matthew Brown
• Shared our own experiences and coached peers toward new ways of understanding and articulating their challenges in advancing local, collaborative anchor strategies
• Worked within our cohorts to identify tangible next steps in pursuit of our communities’ goals
• Elevated the uniqueness of all of our work, celebrated our successes, and shared lessons learned

Participants

At the start of this process, our team reached out to cities across the country to determine where there are active place-based multi-anchor collaboratives that are working to make an impact upon their communities. We identified 35 and more continue to emerge on our radar.

At the Anchor Collaborative Convening, you will meet representatives from anchor collaboratives from the following cities: 

• Augusta, Georgia
• Albuquerque, New Mexico
• Baltimore, Maryland
• Boston, Massachusetts 
• ​Buffalo, New York
• Cleveland, Ohio
• Denver, Colorado
• Houston, Texas
• Memphis, Tennessee 
• Newark, New Jersey 
• New Orleans, Louisiana 
• New York City, New York
• Northern Virginia 
• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 
• Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• Poughkeepsie, New York
• Preston, England
• Providence, Rhode Island
• Roanoke, Virginia
• Richmond, Virginia 
• Rochester, New York
• South Florida (Miami-Dade & Broward Counties)
• St. Paul, Minnesota
• Tacoma, Washington
• Toledo, Ohio
• Toronto, Canada 
• Washington, DC

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