Cameron Healy
What will Gulfport look like in seven years?
That is the question addressed April 10 by close to 100 people. They gathered in the Casino for “Gulfport on the Edge: Community Conversations,” sponsored by Gulfport City Council member April Thanos (Ward I).
“This is a town hall meeting,” said event facilitator Ingrid Bredenberg at the start of the evening. “But it’s a town hall like you’ve never been to.”
It marked the third and final installment in a series of meetings. The intent was to bring city residents together for an “inclusive, interesting, and safe conversation,” as Bredenberg put it, about their perception of what they would like Gulfport to become.
Roughly half the crowd acknowledged that they had attended one of the previous meetings in November and January. The stated objectives of those gatherings were to find common ground and identify trends and forces impacting the region.
About two dozen volunteers worked behind the scenes over the past few months to make these town hall meetings happen, Bredenberg said. The audience for this most recent meeting included residents (about a dozen who have lived in Gulfport 25 years or longer), workers, and business owners with ties to the city.
Group Projects
The audience was scattered across the casino floor at about 15 different circular tables, each one having an appointed table leader. This was by design as part of the organizers’ mission to help people make connections and increase their awareness and involvement in key Gulfport issues. Each table’s occupants took a few minutes for personal greetings and an informal chat before diving into a series of assignments.
Bredenberg led the audience in an exercise that allowed them to focus on what Gulfport will look like in 2030. She encouraged everyone to imagine driving into the city at that time and consider what they might see as they tour the area from Gulfport Boulevard to the waterfront and elsewhere.
From those mental observations, each person wrote down thoughts and shared them in story form with their tablemates. From that, each table – and many who crossed to other tables – put together storyboards. These made their ideas come to life visually, with the help of supplies and materials furnished by the meeting’s organizers.
Participants presented their completed storyboards to the audience. The topics ranged from environmental stability and community engagement to attracting more families and increasing diversity in the city. Some presentations include details about specific improvements to residential areas as well as parks and other amenities. This gave the participants an opportunity to publicly share their ideas with everyone else in the room.
Increasing Citizen Involvement
In conclusion, Bredenberg said the entire process will hopefully foster greater involvement and will extend to others. Organizers plan to continue communicating with the community about the issues addressed at the town hall. That includes likely appearances at City Council meetings.
Thanos was impressed with the output from the participants.
“These are all very feasible things we can actually do, if everyone has a will to do it,” said Thanos. “Speak up. Let people know you like these ideas and they are important. I think we can get a lot of these done.”
