This morning, one of our members inquired about “that new thing” next to “Connected In Community” header at the top of the page. What’s it about? After explaining it to her, she suggested that I do a post to explain it to other members as well. What a great idea! So, here it is.
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As they say, a picture speaks a thousand words. “That new thing” is the newly adopted logo for Connected In Community, which represents graphically what CIC stands for. Let me tell you the “story” behind the logo…
Firstly, everything about it was chosen quite intentionally.
CIC is about our connectedness in community, with each other and with our natural environment. For this reason, the green and blue colours were chosen to represent land and sea.
The green inner circles represent a community of people. As you will have gathered if you’ve hung out here for a bit, our definition of community includes any form of community where people regularly connect through a common purpose. We aren’t only referring to civic community, although it is certainly included when we refer to community.
You’ll notice the blue circle in the centre which is slightly larger than the green circles. This blue circle denotes any member of the community who is stepping into his/her leadership. One of our tenets at CIC is that all of us have the potential to step into lives of meaningful leadership if we choose. Therefore, those who choose to lead are signified by a different colour and the larger size represents their willingness to play a bigger game by answering the leadership call.
Note that in other respects, the leader is no different than the other community members (i.e., any member can choose to step into their leadership).
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The leader is also at the centre of the community itself, guiding it in a collaborative and co-creative way to move it beyond its current form, into a more expansive, inclusive place that connects all of its members together, denoted by the outer blue circle. In addition, the outer circle is intentionally blue as the result of the leader’s impact on their community.
From another perspective, one can look at the inner white circle as our global community (i.e., the earth), containing and connecting seven continents of people (i.e., the seven green/blue circles), and moving (i.e., the arrow) to a deeper level of consciousness and way of living together in the world (i.e., the outer blue circle).
And finally, if you look at the logo as a clock, you’ll notice that the “hand” (i.e., arrow) is pointing to the 11:00 position, or “the 11th hour”. This signifies the urgency for us to wake up to the (unique) leadership role we each need to play in the world to ensure that, as a global community, we grow into a more enlightened way of being in the world and work together in community to find real and sustainable solutions to our interconnected challenges.
So what do you think??? Please let me know below, as well as any related thoughts and ideas you might have 
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey Brian,
I love this symbol and all that it represents! I noticed two other things as I looked closely at it.
First, the white ring is like one of those inflatable rings for swimming pools, the kind you put around kids’ bellies to keep them afloat…except this one is much larger, has 6 adults sitting on it, and is floating in the ocean…the only way to survive out here is to dive into the middle and swim with purpose! For me, a nice metaphor for leadership in community.
And second, the whole thing looks like a wheel rolling along…sometimes we (the green people) get caught up just rolling along with life, and what it takes to regain control (aka purpose) is to become a force in a different direction…to get off the wheel and pursue our own direction…another metaphor for personal leadership!
ahhhhhhh….i definitely like where it takes me!
Hey thanks Lorne – glad you like it! And, thanks too for those additional metaphors. Hadn’t thought about it in those ways and I love these additional metaphors! Adds even more richness to the “story”.