Creating a CUT group in Calgary

This week in Civic Innovation was a chance to connect with some of Calgary’s best and brightest in the social innovation space. 16 mentors representing some of Calgary’s most impactful organizations joined us through a World Café style conversation and helped us to plan out the potential implementation of a Civic User Testing (CUT) group in Calgary. Our goal was to identify potential clients, testers and funders for the project, and we were left with a list bigger and better than we had anticipated!

Perhaps one of the biggest takeaways was centered around building relationships. Civic User Tests are designed to help improve the quality of life for residents, and that means ensuring users are diverse in many ways. The mentors helped us understand that when attempting to create inclusive civic engagement, it isn’t just about who we approach, but how we approach them. Sometimes it starts with building a relationship first, before we can ask for help, or before we can attempt to do work in that community.

IL