Deepening Communities has a lot to celebrate this year! At the core of our celebration is community. We have worked hard as a community to get through the last two years and have learned a lot about what community means and the importance of sticking together.
Here at Deepening Community, we are celebrating a few different things as we kick off 2022: we are celebrating our team growing; we are celebrating our members and all the hard work they’ve done at the local level; and we are celebrating the new communities who have joined us recently, bringing us to over 40 members across Canada.
Lastly, we are celebrating that we are finally planning our first in-person gathering in two years.
We have so much planned for you this year and ask you to join us in our celebration! And don’t forget to celebrate your local communities – all that they have done and all that they do!
Sincerely,
Heather and the Deepening Communities Team
Upcoming Event
Celebrating Neighbours: Measuring the Impact of ABCD
June 7–9, 2022 | London, Ontario
Join us in London, ON, as we convene Canada’s premier community development leaders and neighbourhood practitioners to explore the impact of Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) and leading neighbourhood and community revitalizing strategies.
Video: Building Belonging in St. Albert: A Story of Deepening Community
St Albert is one of our founding Deepening Community Members. This is a digital story of how a St Albert is supporting their residents to build neighbourhoods and connect neighbours to neighbours.
ARTICLE | Citizens take the lead in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighbourhood
This article by Ksenia Stepkina and Dan Ritchie offers an overview of the strengths and challenges of a grassroots, citizen-led approach to neighbourhood-building in Kitsilano.
We are so excited to be partnering with the Movement for Community Led Development to work with our members to provide training and an assessment tool for our Deepening Community members to assess their local community led work.
In November 2021, Deepening Community and John McKnight hosted 50 people for a learning event about the seven functions of community. Participants worked in small groups to dive deeper into what the functions look like in community, focusing on outcomes for residents, associations and institutions.
We are now working with a small group to see how we can weave asset-mapping and the functions together to build a whole community development strategy.
Get Connected Across Canada
We are so excited to start the new year with 40 members from across Canada who are working to deepen community and build neighbourhoods.
We would like to extend a warm welcome to our newest members:
WEBINAR | Thinking Like a System and Leading with Humility
March 2, 2022
Join Mayor Lisa Helps of Victoria, BC, as she sits down with best-selling author Margaret Wheatley for a fireside chat about systems thinking and changing the way we as cities/towns think about working collectively.
WORKSHOP | Living Labs: A Place-based Innovation Approach
March 3, 2022
This virtual workshop will provide you with a better understanding of how Living Labs work; an appreciation of their ability to adapt to your innovation objectives and context; and practical advice to support their deployment.
WEBINAR | A Deep Dive into “The Art of Neighboring”
April 13, 2022
Join Dave Runyon in a fireside chat with our very own Deepening Community Member Deanna Butz from Stony Plain as they talk about the importance of focusing your work on building neighbour relationships and what that means for building neighbourhoods.
