Community Change Summit

Changemakers

+

Immersive Community Tours

Days of immersive learning, peer connection, and collective action

About the Event

After three years apart, we’re coming back together - in person, in purpose, and in possibility. This Fall, join a movement of changemakers from across Canada and beyond for a summit that celebrates the courage of community, the power of place, and the promise of what’s next. Together, we’ll learn, connect, and accelerate solutions that transform lives and landscapes.

Tamarack is proud to partner with the Metcalf Foundation on the 2026 Community Change Summit. Metcalf invests in people, ideas, and actions to imagine and build just, healthy, and creative communities. This collaboration strengthens the Summit’s focus on place-based solutions and brings valuable insight, partnership, and leadership to the conversations ahead. Together, we’re creating space for deeper learning, connection, and collective action.

This is your invitation to join a powerful gathering of community builders, systems shifters, and policy changemakers ready to take collaboration to the next level.

What awaits:

Celebrate the unstoppable force of collaborative action and local leadership.

Learn from  the triumphs and trials of local leaders.

Build your changemaking skills and leave feeling equipped for the work ahead.

Shape an essential narrative: place-based collaboration as an engine of systemic change.

Contribute to community-driven policy shifts on livable incomes, community ownership, climate equity, educational opportunities and meaningful ways to centre equity in all areas of our work.

Interact with the next generation of tools that reimagine how we work, govern and invest together.

Who this is for:

Changemakers engaged in community-driven and community-centric programming.

Collaborative and network convenors, facilitators, and contributors.

National and provincial systems leaders, eager to connect with new co-conspirators.

Funders interested in investing their resources to support community leadership and lasting change.

Teams of people working together in place; attending together can spark transformation.

The Gathering Experience

This gathering is intentionally designed across two complementary learning environments.

Day One takes place in Toronto neighbourhoods, where we will step into the living work of local initiatives. Through site visits and conversations with local leaders, we will experience place-based initiatives firsthand – seeing how ideas take shape in real communities, learning from the challenges and creativity of neighbourhood work, and grounding the gathering in the power and possibility of local action.

Days Two and Three move to Evergreen Brick Works, a retreat-like setting nestled in Toronto’s urban ravine system. Here, the pace shifts from exploration to reflection and collaboration. Surrounded by nature, as a community of changemakers, we will deepen relationships, build skills and tools, and explore the conditions needed to advance and sustain collective action and systems change.

Call for Speakers

Do you have ideas, experiences, or expertise that could inspire others? Tamarack is inviting expressions of interest for speakers to be part of this upcoming event.

Become a Speaker

The spirit of the Community Change Summit

We believe that learning is a shared experience. Expect to be active in sharing your stories, experiences, successes, and challenges to contribute to the learning community.

We believe that place matters. We want to enable connection with the land and with the communities we spend time in.

We will work to strengthen connections between diverse people, organizations, and sectors to build trust, alignment, and accountability so we can achieve more together than we can apart. We will foster a sense of belonging so that all gatherers can feel valued, accepted, and able to participate fully regardless of background.

We want to foster creativity, curiosity, and hope. When we are inspired, our work becomes easier. We orient attention – one of our most valuable forms of capital – toward what is possible and toward the examples – however small – that represent the future we want.

We support action and learning cycles. We ask difficult questions about the systems and structures of oppression. We centre lived/living experience and amplify work in service of equitable outcomes.

We focus on the how and share practical stories, tools and processes to build individual capacity, guide change at the scale of entire communities, and shift policies and systems in service of ending poverty in all of its forms.

Each person has a role to play, and we welcome your voice as part of our learning community.

Day 1 - October 21

Connecting as a Learning Community
Six Immersive Community Tours
Optional evening gathering

Day 2 - October 22

Reconvene the learning community
Plenary Navigating Shifting Ground
Initiative showcase
Music, art, and walks
Deep-dive workshops
Plenary

Day 3 - October 23

Reconvene the learning community
Learning session, interactive activity, group sensemaking
The Next Horizon panel – What system leaders are anticipating, and the role of place-based collaboration as the engine of systemic change
Learning Blocks on Advocacy, Prototyping and Policy Change
Music, art, and walks
Close the learning community

Event Logistics

The Summit will kick off at the Cecil Community Centre located at 58 Cecil Street, Toronto. From there, we will head out into neighbourhoods across the city to immerse ourselves in and learn from local initiatives.

For days two and three of the Summit, we are proud to partner with Evergreen Brickworks, located at 550 Bayview Avenue, Toronto. Evergreen Brickworks is nestled within Toronto's urban ravine system and provides free shuttle service to and from Broadview Subway Station.

"I am leaving with several concrete courses of action to share with the various governing bodies of my organization. A big thank you to the trainers for the quality of the facilitation."

“All the content is very useful, and the way it is presented is accessible and relevant for NPOs. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience.."

“The team at Tamarack is incredibly insightful and supportive. They are my go to resource for on-going training and support!"

Community Change Summit

October 21 - 23, 2026

Toronto, Ontario

+