Neighbourhood Organizer

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Neighbourhood organizer is a prototype that explores how to build connection to people and places in local neighbourhoods. It tries to find and engage the hard to reach, bridge social capital, and connect people across differences and divides.

The team comprises of designers, artists and support workers from posAbilities and InWithForward. Steph, Aaniya, Ron and Dylan have been working on this prototype since the beginning of the COVID 19 Pandemic and have tried a variety of invitations, interactions and roles in their respective neighbourhoods. 

In order to build a community of difference, Steph began this prototype in her old neighbourhood of Kensington Cedar Cottage. Here she tried a range of approaches, spanning from going door to door with laminated door hangers to drawing with chalk in a nearby parking lot. She tried slide decks, question books and zoom calls and gained valuable insight into the audience and the nature of interactions. 

She then moved on to live in South Hill, where she started by handing out personal invitations to help her build a rock garden in the community and even handed out at-home rock painting kits. Following which she did a story swap, where she made visual representations in response to stories. Then she made maps to document shared space, and initiated a storytelling project through illustrated tiles in the neighbourhood. She recognized that this work is emergent and evolving and that in order to do it one needs to remain adaptive and develop a practice of reciprocity with one’s neighbours.

This is when Ron, Dylan and Aaniya joined the prototype. In Ron’s neighbourhood of Maple Ridge, he tried a wide variety of invitations, including going door to door with personal invites, initiating a rock garden with folks served by posAbilities and connecting with other organizations in his neighbourhood like the CEED Centre. Ron realized during his time in this role that the Neighbourhood Organizer hat never really comes off, as he continues to make connections even while out to dinner! 

In Dylan’s neighbourhood of Joyce Collingwood, he went door to door and overcoming his fear, and initiated a walking group with his neighbours. They would meet up every few days to go on physically-distant walk together! As a casual support worker at Vista House he started group activities such as painting and baking with the residents and started to think up ways to introduce the people he supported to their neighbours. He learned to be open minded, and to work as a team and to expect the un-expected through this process. 

Aaniya began her Neighbourhood Organizer journey in Renfrew-Collingwood and began by going door to door with three different types of invitations. She began by drawing individual house portraits for her immediate neighbours, and then went on to invite them to have a virtual tea with her and finally attempted to create a neighbourhood cookbook. She met a few of her neighbours through this process, and also connected with local communities such as the Still Moon Arts Society, Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House and Collingwood Neighbourhood House. For her this work is about engendering a sense of belonging and connections across differences.

The team also conducts weekly Neighbourhood Explorer calls with folks joining from various corners of Canada. They began hosting this call to spark curiosity in their own neighbourhoods and each week attendees are offered new prompts to explore inside their homes or around their neighbourhood.

The team is currently also prototyping a new type of neighbourhood tour called Neighbour To-Go! The box conceptually aims to un-pack the perspective of neighbours by offering an audio tour of the neighbourhood through someone else’s eyes. Participants can take a walk in someone else’s shoes through a series of objects, maps, recipes and curated activations that highlights their neighbours sense of self and relationship to place, that formulates a unique way to experience their differences from one another.

Visit the Neighbour To Go website to learn more and order a box to try out!