The Growth Journey
Each community's journey is a spiral. Each cohort is one turn through Gather, Make sense, Vitality Portraits, and Act; after at least four cohorts, or at saturation, the community can join the Compass season across the network; and Stewardship carries the work on, with each renewal beginning a new, deeper spiral.
The three seasons, Discovery, Compass, and Stewardship, overlap at their edges: acting on opportunities, for example, begins in Discovery and carries on through every season. In formal documents, such as ethics protocols and funding proposals, the seasons can be called phases.
Discovery season: the core offering
The heart of every Living Lab, and complete on its own. Cohort after cohort, at least four and until the picture is saturated, each turn moves through Gather, Make sense, Vitality Portraits, and Act: listening fresh, weaving the cohort on its own terms, then widening the picture. Whenever the community is ready to present, typically every four cohorts and always at saturation, a milestone version is served to the whole community within Vitality in Motion: a milestone, not an ending.
Compass season: optional, across the network
Where the Vitality Signal comes into being. Validating a survey needs more voices than most communities can give alone, so communities that have completed at least four cohorts, or reached saturation, can bring their milestone versions together into one shared survey: refined with a psychometrics advisor, piloted, distributed, and validated across the network. The Signal is shown as a flower whose petals are whatever the evidence validates, so it looks gentle while the research behind it is rigorous, and it is co-stewarded with every participating community. The first framework is provisional by design; later rounds confirm it.
Stewardship season: ongoing
Tending what has grown, and renewing the spiral. The community keeps seeing, imagining, and acting on what it has learned, with Vitality in Motion keeping its story alive between gatherings, and every one to three years the next turn of the spiral begins, deeper than the last. Along the way grow offerings from the network (see Ecology), the Global Vitality Signal Report (with the community's consent, and never naming individuals), and the Steward strand. In time (emerging), members who have walked the Steward journey may hold the community's own renewals, with MAGICommons walking alongside as a companion.