A community initiative · Cornwall, New York
Blazing a path forward together.
Today’s complex challenges call for a shared understanding and practical ways forward. The Cornwall Collaboratory provides a public service through topic-specific collaborative workshops where participants work through issues and develop new solutions together.
Professionally facilitated by Cornwall resident, Jason Burnham, each workshop will work to understand people’s needs, establish shared goals, explore root causes and connections, weigh trade-offs, and develop actionable recommendations.
Collaboratory defined
This is a space for working things out together.
“Collaboratory” joins two words, collaboration and laboratory. A computer scientist named William Wulf coined it in 1989 to describe a center without walls, where people could work on hard problems together no matter how far apart they were.
Ours has walls. It has a stage, and seats, and a screen on the wall of a ninety-year-old theater in Cornwall-on-Hudson – The Storm King Theater.
The idea is the same. A collaboratory is not a meeting and it is not a hearing. It is a workspace. Collaborators come in with different information and different interests, and they leave with a solution and a plan that none of them could have achieved alone.
We call each collaboratory a Collab for short. A Collab is the group of people working on a shared problem, with shared goals, and shared outcomes. It usually takes one workshop. Sometimes it takes a few. Start with one and see where it takes you.
How to start a Collab
From an idea to a plan we can all read.
1
Bring the Issue
Someone nominates a problem worth working on, explains why it matters, defines what a good outcome would look like, and suggests who ought to be there. Every issue comes forward with a community organization behind it, serving as its sponsor for the Collab.
2
Build the Collaboratory
The sponsor and the facilitator work out the available days to workshop and build the guest list together. This includes the people it affects, the people who know the subject, and the people who could actually do something about it.
3
Do the Work
Everyone starts from the same information. Then the Collab gets to work on what people need, where the trouble really comes from, what each choice would cost, and what could be done. Ideas and feedback are curated and synthesized into an action items and next steps.
4
Share What We Found
A written summary and a proposed plan go to the sponsoring organization and get published here. Where the Collab agreed, we say so. Where it did not, we say that too. Then the facilitator steps back and leaves it to the sponsor to take action.
Workshops are planned for two hours, on Wednesday evenings from 6:00 to 8:00. Some issues may be very complex and need more than one evening to work through the issues. We will talk that through with you and structure a Collab that accommodates your need.
Anyone can start this
Start a Collab. Find an organization to stand behind it.
Any one of us can identify a problem that needs solving. What we ask is that a community organization put its name next to it. That could be the Town or Village Board, a municipal committee, the school district, the Chamber, a religious institution, a civic group, a neighborhood association, or a local nonprofit.
The reason is simple. A collaboratory takes a room, an evening, and a group of people’s attention, and there is only so much of that to go around. When an organization says yes, it is telling us that this is something a group of people share, and not one person’s frustration. That one step keeps the work pointed in the right direction.
It is not a high bar, and it is not meant to be.
Do not have a sponsor yet? That's okay. Start the form anyway, tell us who you have in mind and we will help you find the right door to knock on.
How we work
What we promise each other.
- Everyone starts from the same facts. A short plain-language brief kicks off every workshop and will be posted here for anyone to read.
- The work stays visible while it happens. Ideas and discussions are captured as people say them. Anyone there can write their own words down. Nothing gets quietly reinterpreted later.
- What comes out gets published. The summary and the proposed plan go up on this site the same day they go to the sponsor. Where the Collab did not agree, that is written down with the same care as where it did.
- Nobody has to pretend to agree. A Collab that ends with honest positions clearly explained has done its job.
- We say who was there. The list of participants is published, along with anyone we invited who could not make it.
- The facilitator takes no fee for Cornwall. Jason Burnham holds no office, is no longer on any committees, and has no party affiliation.
Whether a workshop is recorded, filmed, live-streamed or shared afterward is the sponsoring organization’s call, and theirs alone. When a workshop involves Town or Village government, or when the outcome would touch the whole community, we encourage sponsors strongly to open it up for public consumption. But we do not make that decision for them.
The collaboratory
A place built from our collaboration.
The Storm King Theater opened in 1935 and has been the center of Village life, on and off, ever since. It went dark for a long stretch. Thanks to the collaborative efforts that awarded Cornwall $4.5 million from the NY Forward grant, it is open again! Now, brought back as a nonprofit and a place for the whole community, and its owner - Elizabeth Yanonne - has offered it to serve as the home of the Cornwall Collaboratory.
There is a reason she offered it, and it is a good story.
What should Cornwall work on together?
Issues can be brought forward now. The first workshops will be scheduled in early 2027.