Open Architecture Collaborative Canada (OACC), is a community of socially-minded designers, architects, planners, creators, and innovators who strive to create equitable and mutually beneficial relationships between communities’ quality of life and their built environment.
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Over the past several weeks, as the world has been grappling with new realities, the Tamarack Institute has been listening and collecting amazing community stories. I have had the very fortunate opportunity to hear about how this pandemic has brought communities together and to observe the many resources being freely and widely shared. The sum of the amazing stories that I have come across are about the multitude of ways people are boosting each other’s morale and demonstrating solidarity. This pandemic has been a valuable teacher, bringing to light what it means to be community. I have read and been inspired by so many stories that demonstrate community as kind, generous, vibrant and resourceful.
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This morning I felt the power of magic. A long time ago, two young pre-teen girls, twin sisters asked me to sew each of them a gown. It had to be Harry Potter gowns, from the books they had just read. The movie had not been made, so I had to be creative in the design following my imagination from how I saw the Harry Potter gowns; because I too had read the first book.
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During this time of crisis and uncertainty, acts of caring, generosity and neighbourliness that have been emerging all across the country. In fact, there seems to be a movement of kindness. From sporadic and random acts to methods of pairing asks for help with offers to help. This wide-scale organized approach to caring is showing up through mutual aid groups and the idea of caremongering.
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Community gardens were just declared essential in our city. Gardens were opened as a food security measure, noting that many low-income people rely on gardens to save money on food. The next big challenge, and this will be announced in the next few weeks, is how to manage a community garden without community.
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When Calgary’s poverty reduction strategy, Enough for All,was developed, it would have been hard to imagine a city where we are quite seriously considering that phrase as it relates to our current crisis, to ourselves and to our families. Is there enough for all of us? Is there enough for me? The greatest irony of our current predicament is that people in our city who have been living in chronic poverty have a lot to teach us about how to handle our new normal. They have been living it for years.
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