Workshop Descriptions
Workshops Day 1
Derek Cook
About Derek
Enter bio here
Neighbouring for Climate
In 2019, the City of Edmonton declared a climate emergency. Part of its response was to develop climate adaptation and resilience programs to support action at the local or “micro” block level. The concept of “community” has been nurtured, block by block, since 2014 through Abundant Community Edmonton’s “Get Neighbouring” program. A partnership of these two areas at the City is further engaging Block Connectors to pilot a new “Neighbouring for Climate” program that aims to make local climate action easy and accessible. With easy-to-use “action cards”, the program allows neighbours to select actions that work best for their neighbourhood-based local assets, skills, and ideas. Citizens worked with the City to develop the program and are now leading its implementation: an example of what can happen when cities and citizens meet in the middle.This session will provide an overview of the program, the co-design process to develop it, and an opportunity to work with the program toolkit.
Workshop Facilitators
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Sarah Danahy - O2 Planning + Design
Community Leadership 101: A Roadmap To Catalyzing Community Action in Your Neighbourhood
Are you an aspiring community leader who wants to bring community together to make a difference in your neighbourhood, but something stops you? Whether it is fear that prevents you from taking that first step, not knowing where to start or how to keep going, this workshop will equip you with the tools, practical tips and confidence to become the catalyst for change! Drawing on best practices in community organizing and asset-based community development, Ksenia will share a roadmap for launching and sustaining a grassroots community effort: how to get started, build an inclusive movement, create group agreements, identify areas of care and develop a strategy towards achieving a common vision. All participants will receive a Catalyzing Community Action Template and a Community Action Planning Canvas.
Workshop Facilitator
Empowering Neighbours to Animate their Neighbourhoods for Physical Activity and Social Connectedness
The Canadian Parks and Recreation Association (CPRA) and the University of Waterloo have developed a new resource to help neighbours re-think, re-imagine, and re-purpose their neighbourhoods to be more physically active and socially connected. The workshop will provide you with background about tactical placemaking and the importance of social connectedness, introduce you to the resource with some ready-to-use ideas that can be implemented in neighbourhoods, and discuss ways in which we can harness the energy of neighbours, with support from municipalities. The workshop will rely on the wisdom of the participants to share their stories, ideas, and needs that will not only benefit the collective group but also contribute to the resource which will be shared with neighbours across the country.
Workshop Facilitators
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Christa Costas, Canadian Parks and Recreation Association
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Gord Tate, Municipality of Chester, NS
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Troy Glover, University of Waterloo
Creating Safety for Newcomers to Participate in Community
Do you question why the newcomers in your neighbourhoods and community spaces don’t engage with you?
This session will:
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support you in critically reflecting on why that is and identify areas for growth
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offer some tangible tips for creating safety and encouraging the active participation of newcomers in our neighbourhoods and community spaces.
Workshop Facilitator
Social Banking and Social Currencies
This workshop will explore 5 intangible currencies that can change the economics of a community for the common good. We will look at the following currencies: trust, social capital, imagination, story, and political capital.
Workshop Facilitator
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DeAmon Harges, The Learning Tree
Simple Connections Stronger Neighbourhoods
Join us as we envision together what it means to live in a healthy neighbourhood where citizens are producers of their own well-being. Lorelee and Carmen will share stories of their own experience applying ABCD in their neighbourhoods and how this has helped shape their professional practice in community health promotion. This workshop will focus on practical ideas and reflective questions to help you get started on applying ABCD principles and most importantly, using ABCD Methods in neighbourhoods personally and professionally.
Workshop Facilitators
Asset-Based Community Development - Weaving the Community Fabric
What we have learned over the past two years is the importance of community and those who live in our neighbourhoods. This is the time to reflect on how we were working in community prior to the pandemic and rethink the role that residents play in community planning through an asset-based community development (ABCD) lens. In the workshop we will introduce ABCD, the principles and practices and help you to think about weaving a community plan that has residents at the centre.
Workshop Facilitator
A World with No Labels - How Community and Youth with Disability Can Meet in the Middle
“When you label someone, you make them invisible” We as a society like to put labels on our communities- the people and the places in a negative way or for what it lacks. Author, John McKnight states, “the current concern about diversity might better be defined as a concern with the exclusion of “labeled” people. The greatest diversity in any local community is the gifts that the individual members have. If we focus on those individual gifts, then this asset may be more effective in overcoming exclusion than efforts to talk about how different the community is and ways to categories them”.
In this workshop we will be talking with Templeton Sawyer, Teamwork Cooperative, Justin Eweka, Easter Seals Nova Scotia, who are working to change how we see labeled people from a service centered approach to supporting individuals who have been labeled to be included and become leaders in their communities. We will talk about example and strategies of the power of words and how to understand an individual without labeling them in a specific group, gender, race or culture.
Workshop Facilitator
Centring Equity at the Table in Community Building
The single greatest reason why collective impact efforts fall short is a failure to centre equity within the structures and relationships present.
To achieve population and systems-level change community building efforts must make a commitment to center equity at their tables. Fortunately, many collective impact efforts around the world have already made progress in centring equity. In studying equity-focused collective impact efforts across regions and issues, we see five strategies in particular emerging as critical to centring equity which will be explored throughout this workshop.
None of the strategies are new, yet they remain areas that require understanding and commitment to do well. Taken together, they form the basis for a comprehensive and integrated approach to centring equity in collective impact.
Workshop Facilitator
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Rehana Malik-Mbanga
Healing Garden Walkshop
Join us in St. Albert, along the Sturgeon River, as we visit Kakesimokamik, the Healing Garden. Discover how and why this garden was built, what it represents in the community and how it is used throughout the year as a gathering space. Celina and Shari will share the history, people and stories of St. Albert that guided the planning and building of this unique space to encourage learning and healing for everyone in our community
Workshop Facilitator
Workshops Day 2
Democracy Between Elections - Collaborative Governance and The Politics of Unity
An interactive session exploring how to build collaborative relationships through new governance structures that ensure local municipal residents have real input and influence into the decisions that affect their lives. Participants will be introduced to The Politics of Unity Principles as the basis for sharing power in the partnerships between elected officials and community members necessary to addressing the complex challenges we face together. Participants will learn how to focus on engagement processes and tools to transform colonial structures of government that are barriers to addressing the inter-locking crisis of climate change, inequity, public health issues, and our democratic deficit. Participants will take away useful tools and examples to make collaborative governance a new empowering theory of change.
Workshop Facilitator
Mapping Community Systems and Leverage Points for Change
This workshop will invite participants to map the systems at work in their communities and identify points of overlap between community organizations and projects and institutions like local governments, school boards, health authorities. We will also identify places where systems are stuck and where change needs to happen to bring community organizations and institutions closer together and to put community at the centre.
Workshop Facilitator
Unravelling the Traditional Community Development Mindset - Finding a New Way Forward
In this interactive workshop, learners will be guided through a series of activities to reflect on their current approach to community development and how we've strayed away from collaborating with our communities by doing for and to. In this workshop will we find our way back to having community at the centre of our work by focusing on three key themes: Reimaging the way you build relationships, failing forward, and working together is better. This workshop is targeted at municipal staff and organizations working directly with residents who want to challenge the status quo.
Workshop Facilitators
Simple Connections Stronger Neighbourhoods
Join us as we envision together what it means to live in a healthy neighbourhood where citizens are producers of their own well-being. Lorelee and Carmen will share stories of their own experience applying ABCD in their neighbourhoods and how this has helped shape their professional practice in community health promotion. This workshop will focus on practical ideas and reflective questions to help you get started on applying ABCD principles and most importantly, using ABCD Methods in neighbourhoods personally and professionally.
Workshop Facilitators
Asset-Based Community Development - Weaving the Community Fabric
What we have learned over the past two years is the importance of community and those who live in our neighbourhoods. This is the time to reflect on how we were working in community prior to the pandemic and rethink the role that residents play in community planning through an asset-based community development (ABCD) lens. In the workshop we will introduce ABCD, the principles and practices and help you to think about weaving a community plan that has residents at the centre.
Workshop Facilitator
Let's Chat - How to Put People at the Heart of Engaging During Challenging Times
What’s going on with you? Let’s talk about it.
As the saying goes, a joy shared is doubled, sorrow shared is halved, or something like that. We share ourselves by sharing stories of our experiences and achievements. But when there are barriers to conversation, when our experiences are too traumatic to talk about, when we seem to be so divided in our opinions to ever be able to find a path forward, what then?
Then, more than ever, we need to continue the conversation.
In the spring of 2020, ice jams caused rivers to pour into downtown Fort McMurray, a town still on a path to recovery after the 2016 wildfires. We needed to connect with people, but with places and spaces to meet literally underwater, and COVID putting serious restrictions on gatherings, how could we do that?
Learn from Nadia Power, Public Engagement Manager for the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, about how shifting the focus to put people at the heart of engaging during especially challenging times is transforming conversations between the municipal government and people of Fort McMurray Wood Buffalo.
Workshop Facilitator
Placemaking: Shaping Spaces By and For the Neighbours
Jim will share inspiring stories to illustrate how placemaking can foster broad participation, effective bumping places, neighbourhood revitalization, and a common identity and pride. Workshop participants will have opportunities to explore ways they can use placemaking as a tool to strengthen their own communities and neighbourhoods.
Workshop Facilitator
Our Role in Shaping Public Policy to Make Community Essential Together
Community is our superpower. When governments at all levels make community essential, they create opportunities for individuals, organizations, and institutions to create important solutions to challenges we all face. Over the last twenty years, Tamarack has witnessed the power of communities to create and implement strategies to end poverty, deepen social connection, build youth futures, and address climate challenges. This workshop will focus on the roles that we all play as neighbours, elected officials, association members, and parts of institutions to shape public policy to make community essential. At the same time, we will demystify the policy process to make it easier to engage in this work.
Workshop Facilitator
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Justin Williams, Tamarack Institute
Walkshop: Public Art and History – A Walking Tour Connecting with Place and Community
Communities are created and shaped over time. With every generation, new stories emerge, new histories are created, and the past is remembered. Through public art and the public sharing of history, communities can share their vast and varied stories, their values, and their identities, both in the present moment, and with future generations.
Join the Director of the Musée Héritage Museum, Shari Strachen, and the Curator of the Art Gallery of St. Albert, Emily Baker, to learn about how the public art and public history of St. Albert has been crafted by and for the community, marking time and space, inspiring creativity, and a deeper appreciation of this community.
The tour will meet on the northwest corner of Perron Street and Sir Winston Churchill Drive, at the “Time is a River” sculpture.
Estimated walking distance – 1.5 – 2 km.
Workshop Facilitator
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Shari Strachen, Director of the Musée Héritage Museum
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Emily Baker, Curator of the Art Gallery of St. Albert