Confluence

After a long and winding road of planning, re-evaluating, pivoting, and refocusing, Confluence installed the final iteration of our project on March 19. With a final goal of discovering what makes newcomers feel welcome, Stories of Welcome guided participants along a path of first telling how they welcome guests.

Each day we found our installation covered with a wide variety of input. Included in the mix were children’s drawings and unrelated greetings. But most people truly engaged with the project by sincerely sharing their stories of welcome. Knowing that people from all over the world visit the library, and wanting to build inclusivity into our design, we translated our instructions into the six most common languages spoken in Calgary. The success of this was seen in the number of participants who contributed in their own languages--an important lesson to consider for future attempts to make Calgary a more welcoming city.

We would like to thank our distinguished professor and fearless leader, Catherine Pearl of Mount Royal University, the generous host of our class space, John Vardalos of J5 Design, and the many guest speakers who shared their knowledge and expertise.

then describing how they reach out to new neighbours, and last, to write about when they felt welcome in a new city. We all felt uncertain regarding that last one, given that it can be a difficult question to answer, which is why we were very pleasantly surprised by the amount of feedback we received!

-Team Confluence -