projects

How we are at the small scale is how we are at the large scale. The patterns of the universe repeat at scale. There is a structural echo that suggests two things: one, that there are shapes and patterns fundamental to our universe, and two, that what we practice at a small scale can reverberate to the largest scale.


—adrienne maree brown. Emergent Strategy (p. 54)

Community Climate Action Co-Design: Safety and Abundance as Precursors and Outcomes in Scarlett Wood

In community building we hear a lot about the necessity of building trust. And it's true. Trust is necessary to create meaningful relationships and the psychological safety to share openly. But trust is often not sufficient for engagement. In communities that are facing time poverty in addition to low income, violence and other traumas, trust may open the door, but it won't bring people to the table. Just as necessary is reciprocity. By this we mean a true exchange of energy towards shared, and sometimes divergent goals.

And so when we began our climate action work in Scarlett Wood, the first question we asked was what the community desired for itself. We heard back that folks wanted to see "colour", that announced their home as a joyful place. They also wanted to feel safe and to share this feeling amongst their neighbours. While these two desires on the surface may not seem to have much to do with climate action, they manifested in the establishment of colourful flower gardens throughout the neighbourhood, and a swap meet where community members shared resources.  By beginning to establish a sense of shared ownership over common spaces, the gardens not only created future possibilities for pollinator habitats and pocket farms, they also created communal gathering spaces that enhance community cohesion and pride. By surfacing the hidden abundance already present in Scarlett Wood, the swap meet served as an alternative narrative to the scarcity stories we so often hear. And in countering scarcity, the swap meets further enhanced a sense of safety through community abundance.

Both of these interventions serve as examples of the latent wisdom that springs up from communities with long histories of adaption. By planting seeds for continued community engagement and opportunities to grow food, build community and share resources, the co-benefit of establishing safety and practicing abundance is climate resilience.

A Developmental Evaluation of High/Low Diversity and High/Low Resource Communities: Identifying Precursors for Engagement in St. James Town

In 2023 the Canadian Community Economic Development Network (CCEDNet) supported 7 communities across Canada to design and implement local climate action through the Synergia Transition and Resilience Climate Action Program (STARCAP). STARCAP offers community members a Massive Online Open Course (MOOC); Toward Co-operative Commonwealth: Transition in a Perilous Century, and accompanying participatory workshops, frameworks, networking, and other guidance related to advancing social change. In order to understand how well the program was supporting community members in leading and participating in climate action, CCEDNet chose to apply a Developmental Evaluation approach with the aim of re-centering marginalized voices.

We began our developmental evaluation with deep ethonography in St. James Town, one of the 7 communities participating in STARCAP. Our hypothesis was that by focusing on the most diverse community in Toronto, which is the most diverse city on the planet, our findings could be extrapolated to multiple contexts across Canada and the world. What we learned was that the uniqueness of St. James Town (over 140 languages are spoken here; it is the most dense neighbourhood in Canada; and has more people with advanced degrees per capita than anywhere else in the country) offered fertile terrain to explore how diversity, resources, and community priorities intersect. The iterative nature of our evaluation allowed for multiple pivots and divergent explorations before we landed on the reciprocally beneficial question: What precursors are required for community engagement?

This question was motivated by the understanding that community members have unique desires and dreams, and that competing priorities related to these dreams, as well as the realities of survival mean that the level and nature of participation vary greatly across communities that are homogeneous and resource rich, and those that are diverse and low income.

Building on the themes of trauma, privilege and community cohesion uncovered during our research, we co-designed future visioning workshops that dug deeper into community member priorities and desires. We then explored the current state of the climate crisis locally as well as internationally, along with climate action initiatives as a means of identifying barriers and enablers to these desired futures. Our hope is that by understanding how what we dream of is entangled with present day realities, we can begin to identify steps forward that also align with preserving the planet on which our dreams rest.

Art, Equity and Climate Change: Therapeutic Counterpoints to Climate Anxiety in Thorncliffe Park

Understanding the impacts that the climate crisis is having and will continue to have on all of our futures is challenging. But it is particularly challenging to learn that these impacts have been and will continue to be disproportionate for your community.  Climate anxiety often prevents deeper engagement with the subject of climate change, particularly in newcomer communities who have already survived existential challenges and may see the climate as something much more benign. Our goal in Thorncliffe Park was to design a series of climate workshops that simultaneously reduced anxiety and allowed people to deeply explore the impacts of the climate crisis now and in the future. 

For five consecutive Saturdays over the summer five Pakistani artists held workshops that explored the climate crisis through each of their unique practices. Before the park-based workshops, each artist had participated in training on ways that art is being used to address climate change and climate justice.

Over the course of the five workshops we learned that the co-benefits of being in nature, being with community and making art, foster an opening that allows for a gentler acknowledgement of a future challenged by climate crisis. Because if we can connect with the earth, if we can connect with each other, and if we can use art as a form of transcendence, perhaps we can find other ways to adapt and live well.

  • Painting Workshop

  • Textile Workshop

    Textile Workshop

  • Self-Portrait Workshop

  • Selfie as the World Burns

  • Comic Workshop

Waste, Capitalism and Organizing for Climate Justice in Toronto Community Housing Communities

While we know that there are more impactful individual climate interventions than recycling, we also know that waste is a ubiquitous challenge in our increasingly single use, consumerist culture. It's also a frustrating daily reality for households that have little space to store it or time to properly dispose of it. 

Capitalizing on this common challenge, our waste workshops in Toronto Community Housing buildings were specifically designed to be fun, fast and accessible. By setting up a waste sorting game during the after-school/after work rush in building lobbies, we were able to engage residents in quick lessons about composting, recycling, hazardous waste and garbage and create a sense of agency and competency around a topic that often feels overwhelming. 

The sorting activity was set up every evening for consecutive days in order to capture as many residents as possible as well as to reinforce and augment learnings each day.  By repeating the sorting activity day after day, families were able to track their learnings and also compete with neighbours. This sense of community camaraderie persisted long after the workshops ended as evidenced by increased compost and recycling volumes. 

An unintended byproduct of the workshops were deeper conversations about the origins and nature of waste, trends in consumerism, the role of capitalism and colonialism as it relates to waste and more broadly the climate crisis and finally the recognition of the need to act individually but also collectively for systems change.

How to Transform Private Grey Space into Public Green Space: Lessons from Home-Growing a Park

  • 1. Love the unloved.

  • 2. Draw your dreams.

  • 3. Ideate together.

  • 4. Create opportunities to commune.

  • 5. Start small.

  • 6. Make space for change.

  • 7. Include everyone.

  • 8. Keep going.

  • 9. Develop Partnerships

  • 10. Believe in magic.

  • 11. Reality > Dreams