Spotlight: Co-Chair Noreen Golfman on Collective Effervescence at the Summit
Dr Noreen Golfman, Business & Arts’ Co-Chair, welcomes guests to the 2024 Summit. Photo: Leona Rockwood.
In an earlier post in this space about our upcoming Creativity and Innovation Summit, Business & Arts’ ED Amy Henderson urged people to “stay for the collective effervescence of learning and laughing with 200 other people….”
Let me say a word about collective effervescence. It’s a useful term, actually a concept coined by sociologist Émile Durkheim. I’m not sure how many people read Durkheim these days, but that concept has been popularized to express how communities come together to participate in a shared experience. In the best of times, the collective experiences joy, connection, a strong sense of belonging. Sounds like religious experience, sure, and Durheim was indeed writing about “Elementary Forms of Religious Life.” But he extended the experience to more secular activities that take on the same kind of feeling and energy.
We all know the feeling. It is rare and highly valued. At the best of times, we experience it at music concerts, in movie theatres, great theatrical performances, folk festivals, even at enlightening lectures. Our aim at Business & Arts NL is to create such an experience right here in our community, to offer up an opportunity to listen well, bump into familiar and unfamiliar faces, share reactions to what we have heard, and, importantly, reflect on and question how we make meaningful spaces for art and business to collaborate for mutual benefit. We have always aimed to provide the opportunity to do just that in the short time we have together at these Summits, and, ideally, to carry that energy and potential forward into our life and work.
We already have the evidence of just how fruitful the Summit can be from the last two annual events, and we have high expectations for this our third gathering of representatives from the business and arts sectors. If you are hesitating or think you are too busy to register, please consider the rare power of collective effervescence. This place, this province, well knows how to harness that power in so many ways. It’s largely what informs our sense of having a strong identity. We know how to hang together for a good time, and we aren’t shy about saying so. A strong identity comes from shared effervescence.
We are excited to see old friends and make some new ones. Bring a friend from work or sign up for a whole table of colleagues. Our board of directors will be on hand to welcome you. You won’t be asked to hug trees, perform or give a speech, but you will be invited to participate in active listening. And there will be lots of opportunity to chat to your neighbours, ask questions, and, well, feel a wee bit enlightened about just how creative this place is, if you’re open to it.
Noreen thanks Tom Power at the 2025 Creativity & Innovation Summit. Photo: Ritche Perez
(Un)Common Threads 2026 is coming up on November 5 at the Sheraton Hotel in St. John's (click here to purchase tickets).