Changemakers
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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. Next 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.
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.
Agenda At a Glance
Day 1 – October 21Cecil Community Centre, Toronto Neighbourhoods
Place:Learning from the field through immersive community tours and connections with local leaders |
Day 2 – October 22Evergreen Brickworks
People:Building skills and supports to continue, sustain, and equip us for the next horizon of changemaking |
Day 3 – October 23Evergreen Brickworks
Policy & Systems Change:Creating the enabling environment for systems change and collective action |
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Gather together to connect as a learning community.
Experience one of six immersive community tours to learn about local initiatives, including:
Optional evening gathering to share stories and build connections |
Reconvene the learning community
Plenary – Navigating shifting ground
Initiative showcase
Music, art, and walks
Deep-dive workshops – Building practical changemaking skills, including:
Plenary – 10 years later: lessons learned from longer-term initiatives about sustaining community-based work
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Reconvene the learning community
Getting to systems change – 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
Block 1 - Advocacy & movement building Tool carousel of effective strategies and actions
Block 2 - Prototyping, scaling, and embedding new solutions
Music, art, and walks
Block 3 - Policy Change Contribute to a community-driven policy change agenda
Close the learning community |
Please note that details will evolve as the agenda is finalized.
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.
Hear from 2025 Event Participants
"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!"
Event Logistics & Registration
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.
We are working to pull together hotel accommodation options that would make accessing both venues as easy as possible. Stay tuned!
Register Now
If you have any questions about registration or registering a customized group of participants, please reach out to stephanie@tamarackcommunity.ca