14 Distillation Guidebook Co-Lab • 9.18–9.19 2025 At cross-sector tables, participants shared stories about the small cities where they live or work, guided by prompts that asked them to reflect on their own life in their small-city or on how current social, economic, and political changes are shaping their communities. The exercise doubled as a distillation process: after listening to one another’s stories, participants individually identified common themes and noted which characteristics felt universal and which were unique. They then brought these reflections back to their tables, selecting two shared and two unique characteristics. Groups moved from personal narrative to individual analysis to collective consensus. Small Cities Stories
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