A Conversation about Community-Building with Lloyd Y. Asato, founder of the One Million Splotz of Glue Campaign - By N.L. Belardes

Lloyd Y. Asato in comfy chair at some coffeehouse

The civic-minded philosophers of the world. One such thinker, Lloyd Y Asato, has sat in coffee houses with his friends and colleagues to ponder not only his civic duty, but yours, mine, and even children whose ideas may be listened to, but not allowed to help fulfill. Such trust issues have bothered him as he has pondered such ideas for a half-dozen years or more: how can kids help, how can we learn to trust each other, how can we act on commitment, and help build community?

That doesn’t mean Lloyd isn’t a doer. And no, he doesn’t just sit in coffeehouses. Recently, Asato started a project called “The One Million Splotz of Glue Campaign”. His website states, “It begins with a question. What do you do to build community? Your answer, the action that you do to build community, is what we call Splotz of Glue.

“Splotz of Glue are the key everyday actions that we do to be better informed, to connect with others, to build trust, and to get involved. Splotz of Glue, when done together and in abundance, have the cumulative effect of improving the quality of life in our neighborhoods.”

I met Lloyd through another philosopher, a trade magazine editor who somehow discovered Lloyd’s campaign. I never asked how. I quickly found Lloyd’s thoughts to be invigorating, passionate and honest.

The conversation that ensued makes for one of the best interviews I’ve ever had here on the Paperback Writer blog. The deeper question for me is how do I take Noveltown further into the community-building process? What can we do to help invigorate civic vitality here in Bakersfield and beyond through what Noveltown is doing on a national level through its forthcoming magazine? Such philosophic pondering is meant not for inaction, but action. I’m hoping this is just the first in a series of interviews with Lloyd Y. Asato.


Read our conversation:

Noveltown: We at Noveltown are definitely community builders. We started with an idea, moved to creating one book out of many to come, a media blog, and now we’re moving to a print magazine as well. It’s more than a literary community, it’s a community of people who read, who are active, who believe in cultural arts, who are thinkers, and more. Lloyd, you have a unique idea in building community called Splotz of Glue. It seems to be a seed that will grow with many branches and leaves. It has to potential to grow tall from all the leaders (community builders taking part). How do you think we can apply your ideas to what we’re doing here at Noveltown?

Lloyd: I think I need to move to Noveltown. You have just described the perfect neighborhood for me, one full of culturally and politically active readers. I was lucky. I grew up surrounded by books and without a television in the house. I do not think we owned a television until I was in middle school and by then it held little interest for me. I was also lucky in that I had a mother and mentors who lived community service. They worked very hard to improve their neighborhoods and it became an assumed lifestyle for me.

I am very careful to clarify that the "community" I want to build is the neighborhood. The geographical area around where you live and work. And that "building community" is the process by which we increase or enhance social capital. When we "build community"; we increase knowledge or support learning, we connect with people, we get to know them and hopefully build trust, and then we act.

What Noveltown and its denizens can do is reflect on these four cornerstones of community - Learn | Connect |Trust | Act. Learn about the issues and politics that affect literacy, and speech, expression. Learn more about the systems and people who support or challenge what you believe in. Connect with them. Learn about what is working in other places and do it in Noveltown and then do it in your own neighborhood.

One of the joys of Splotzing is watching how people unpack these cornerstones (Learn | Connect |Trust | Act). So, I challenge you. How do you think you can help people learn, connect, trust, and then act? What simple everyday things can you do to build community? Maybe it is starting a book loan club or participating in reading programs? Maybe it is doing a television for books swap like they do with guns? Books for guns also works. What do you think?

Noveltown: You’ve just given us a lot to think about and ponder: How does Noveltown fit into the different senses of community. We must ponder our own physical interaction with community, and then act!

We’re talking about starting workshops here at Noveltown for bloggers and for fiction/non-fiction writers. You recently wrote on your site, “What I originally wanted to do with The One Million Splotz of Glue Campaign was to use it as framework for facilitating community building workshops.” Tell me more about workshops, especially about “Silly Workshops.”

Lloyd: I should explain that the name "silly workshops" came from my Department Chair at the University. He thought that the idea of using resources to do community building workshops for young people was silly when people were dying from hunger. I was not able, at the time, to tell him that they were not silly and that I believed that these silly workshops would develop a team of leaders that may one day go on to end hunger. I am able to say that now.


Lloyd: This is how we can save the world. Silly workshops with young people and old.

The idea for the silly workshops came from a coffeehouse discussion. It started as an exercise to describe a preferred neighborhood. Then someone jumped in with, okay what can we do to build this place? I started to reflect on that. I became convinced by the research on social capital, that showed neighborhoods with high levels of trust and civic vitality were neighborhoods that residents described as having a good quality of life.

I began wondering. If we identified simple everyday activities that increased trust and civic vitality, then deliberately tried to do them in abundance, could we build the kinds of communities we wanted to live in? This became the foundation (Learn | Connect |Trust | Act) for The One Million Splotz of Glue Campaign.

The workshop design is based upon classic facilitation. Brainstorm, clarify, organize or prioritize, commit, then do. Then come back a few months later to reflect, celebrate, adjust, and do again.


Lloyd: We need to stop doing conferences and start talking to one another, face to face, and engage each other in discourse and action

Ask the question, "What can we do to increase trust in our neighborhood?" List the ideas (brainstorm). Ask people to clarify and expand on their idea. Organize the ideas (affinity grouping) or prioritize them. Then ask the group to build a to-do list. Make a commitment to do one or more of these actions then do them. Have a follow up workshop in a few months to track progress, adjust, and commit again.


Lloyd: This is a protest march in Madison. I love a parade.

Noveltown: I think Noveltown has to understand where and what its neighborhood really is. But you gave me an idea. A workshop that teaches as well as has a community spirit. Now there would be something unique. For instance, teaching people how to write fiction, and then that same group, with all its diversity then decides what it can do to create that civic vitality within what it can affect: a literacy organization? A library? Who knows. A ‘silly workshop’ must take place before that can happen.

Where is Spotz of Glue based? Do people have to live near you to take part?

Lloyd: Splotz of Glue is based at www.BeTheGlue.org. Learn from the site. Contribute ideas and ask lots of questions.

I think that the workshops need to happen in your neighborhood. My hope is to encourage people to build their own community by engaging in their neighborhood. We can connect and learn from the website but then we need to act locally.

I live in Arizona. But I have broadband and a car so I can be a cheerleader and ally to anyone anywhere.

Noveltown: Splotz of Glue is moving toward connecting to one million people. How will you do that? Will you be on MySpace.com as well? Here at Noveltown we recently pledged to connect to 10,000 people on MySpace. It’s a much smaller number, yet still daunting to us…

Lloyd: Well, as of this interview I have collected three Splotz so it is not a challenge yet.

I have no idea. I trust that an AJAX jedi will show up and offer a better way. Do you know of any?

I get asked this question a lot and I have no answer. I share the idea and hope others will share it as well. If they reflect on it and think it does not suck maybe it will travel.

A quick answer is that we have to start doing the silly workshops. That is where we can generate lots of Splotz of Glue.

We are not on MySpace yet, but I will set that up. I did toss an ad on Craiglist. I should also do a YouTube video of me putting actual glue splotz all over my body then painfully tearing them off.

Noveltown: You are definitely a philosopher, a sharer of ideas and a sacrificial glue-covered lamb for your community building dream. I think we could use a Jedi too. They tap into the mythical, heroic, and tragic humanness we all share.

Describe a community builder…

Lloyd: The best resource I have found is from the Wilder Foundation. Their book, Community Building: What Makes It Work: A Review of Factors Influencing Successful Community Building (ISBN 0-940069-12-1) has shaped my community building process.

They describe the characteristics of successful professional community builders. These include having knowledge of the community, having a sincere commitment, being trustworthy, and other factors. It is a great read.

My hope is that we will see that we all have roles to play. That our individual everyday actions accumulate to build community, so let us do more.

Noveltown: You mentioned on your site that you’ve had this idea for six years! We had ideas for Noveltown for several years before we jumped in too. We have to ask… how did you come up with the idea and why?

Lloyd: The idea for the workshops happened as I described above in a coffeehouse. The motivation to engage young people happened as part of the work I did with a community benchmarking initiative.

It was a great project with, what I saw as, a tragic flaw. It started with a question to 6,000 children. "Describe the (name of the state) you want to live in?" A team of young people from local high schools, community colleges, and University then organized these 6,000 responses into the Children's Vision.

It was a wonderful vision statement for a preferred place. Then the tragic flaw.

The young people were then asked to present their vision to a blue chip collaboration of business and civic leaders. The adults accepted the vision and pledged to work together to make it happen. There was a nice reception. They thanked the young people and went off to do their work.

I watched as the young people were placed off to the side so that the adults could get to work. I watched as the young people fidgeted and got frustrated because their role in this process had ended. I watched as professionals came in to clarify and quantify the vision into policy areas. I watched as the life and spirit of these young people, who had invested a lot of time in reflecting on how this place could be better, wandered off to do other things.

I watched and realized that we could do better.


Lloyd: More saving the world stuff. This time with a buddy at a coffeehouse near UVA in Charlottesville.

Noveltown: There is a blindness in such tragedy that seems so clear to some, and yet not even visible to others. It’s almost like being color blind. A civic blindness. We see it in Bakersfield, with civic leaders often blind to common sense, clouded by politics, favors, and big money transactions.

What can people reading this do to be a part of your campaign?

Lloyd: I want them to do three things.

1) Read the site www.BeTheGlue.org, reflect on what you read and engage in a conversation with us.

2) Take a minute to reflect on who in your family or friends can provide feedback, be an ally or a mentor to this project and have them get in touch with me.

3) Think about what they can do to build their community. Make a to-do list then do it. Then tell me about it so I can add it to the Splotz list.

Noveltown: Thanks for talking to us today…

Lloyd: Thank you. It was my pleasure.