New Data Confronts Canada’s Belonging Narrative
Community Foundations of Canada to make belonging a major focus of its work for next 3 yearsBased on the findings of a report about belonging in Canada, the national network of Canada’s 191 community...
View ArticleWhen the Simple and Everyday Act of Eating Changes A Community
It’s hard to explain how something so basic can have such an impact on a person, a workplace, a community. But that’s exactly what this meal did.
View ArticleReturning to the Basics
Our (Art of Hosting) Beyond the Basics team is about to host our last gathering of the current cycle, back in North America. Over the past five Beyond the Basics offerings I have learned more than I...
View ArticleMaking the Case for Belonging
“Place Match: The City Doctor’s Guide to Finding. . .“Where You Should Be”?“Where You Want to Live”?“Where You’ll Love”?I considered many options when I was coming up with ending part of my book title....
View ArticleSmall Win Seeds Hope for Community-led Change in Haida Gwaii
Northern B.C. islands on a discovery path of what it looks like to cultivate grassroots leadershipA place on the Masset Village shoreline that resident Joan Ewson took the lead in getting cleaned up...
View ArticleCommunity Building is (Not) a Tool
Community building is rife with fascinating — and sometimes frustrating — paradoxes. Keeping one's mouth shut is often the best way to move a conversation forward. Planning is necessary and useless. We...
View ArticleEight Principles for Our Simple-Living Journey
What do we refer to when we talk about a life of voluntary simplicity? For us, it means shoving away the veils of distractions to experience the greatness of life itself. When we use the word “Life,”...
View ArticleThe Path to Belonging: Date Your Place
We’ve all been on good dates and bad dates. Ones where we feel an immediate and lasting connection. And ones where we know right away (or pretty soon) that we never will. It’s not necessarily because...
View ArticleThe Space In Between
As we create third spaces we also create spaces between spaces. Which seem to hold the most potential for life to thrive. Working within institutions and silos to create change seems, by contrast to...
View ArticleReimagining Our Community Post-election
What’s the next best question for building community and embracing accountability and commitment? In the energetic wake of this year’s federal elections in Canada, a small group of Peterborough...
View ArticleChanges: Understanding the Place Relationship Over Time
All relationships change over time. Our goal with relationships, whether with partners or with places, should not be perfection, but resilience. A resilient marriage is one that can withstand conflict,...
View ArticleExperiencing the Magic of Paint Blots - and Other Art Forms - for Cultivating...
Gathering on arts-based community tools weaves new, deep possibilitiesA creative brainstorm about new possibilities for reducing poverty in Alberta drew its inspiration from brightly coloured paint...
View ArticleTexting Innovation Shows Promise for Engaging Communities
Texting-based ‘listening posts’ in New Orleans, Macon, drawing participation from unlikely neighbourhoodsA new community engagement platform intended to make it easier for community members to share...
View ArticleShared Narratives: Our Places, Ourselves
There are some advantages to having a person like me who is trained in social work on the placemaking scene. I admittedly don’t know as much about zoning, architecture, and the technical side of...
View ArticleCitizenship Unleashed in Peterborough
A citizen-led gathering models and invites better ways for citizens to gatherPETERBOROUGH - What if we could change the way the community gathers to discuss and decide what matters? That was the...
View ArticleMovements that Spread
And what they can do for us“I believe movements do what no other vehicle or container can do — they influence and ultimately change people’s opinions, beliefs, habits and what they think,” Canadian...
View ArticleFrom Being For Neighbors to Being With Neighbors
I asked my wife recently if she would rather me be “for” her or “with” her? She thought about it for a second, and told me hands down, one hundred percent that she would rather have me be “with” her.
View ArticleLet Us Decree the State of Emergence
“With the government’s decree of the state of emergence, the controls at the Belgian border Lille is plagued with those traffic jams!” Of course, our Chilean friend who was giving us a ride back to the...
View ArticleA ‘Revolution’ of Neighbourliness Spreading in Long Beach
Non-profit organization dedicated to inspiring and equipping neighbours to connectWhen Christina Ashley bought her first home in Long Beach, California a year ago, one of her desires was to have close...
View ArticlePeterborough Neighbourhoods Connecting for Community
Dialogues moving quickly to what neighbours can do to create the community they desireNeighbours in Peterborough, Ont. have been moving from isolation to community connection in a matter of hours. In...
View Article
