Jane’s Walk

Exemplar Cities

Citizen Experiments

Vivacity YYC is Back!

You know this class will be over the top when you walk in and see 3 outstanding speakers. Today we had Geoff Dyer come in and he talked about urban planning and city building which was very stimulating to learn about. Then we had the ever-exciting Jason Cameron from the City of Calgary come in and talk to us about Resilient Cities. He always makes his presentations so interactive and thrilling. Lastly, Bree Smith came in and taught us a new story-mapping software that was super exciting. Who knew there were so many platforms to use for different assignments and projects?

- Team Confluence -

Learn About Immigration With Vivacity

It was an exciting day of exploration and meeting community experts who shared their insights and observations about immigration in Canada generally and Calgary specifically. This week at Vivacity, we visited Calgary’s City Hall. Constructed in 1911, our city hall has been one of the main gathering places for our community. Located at the heart of downtown Calgary, city hall is the place where our community comes together to address challenges and create opportunities to facilitate growth for Calgarians. 

During class, we explored how our citizens are involved in the decision making process. We began our class in the Civic Innovation Lab with Stephanie & Isabelle who walked us  through human centered design and experimentation, leveraging creativity, and how it drives innovation. We learned about the different sectors, agencies and partnerships that work collaboratively to mitigate the systemic barriers that our city’s newcomers often encounter when settling in Calgary. We also had the opportunity to meet Shirley A., Anti-Racism Strategic Advisor, Community Services;  Dejana K., Strategist, Community Strategies; Arevik T.,  Liason, Community Strategies and Sam B., Planner, Emergency Management & Community Strategies. What a team of experts that Erin D. pulled together for the class, all of whom work continuously with federal, provincial and local leaders to develop and execute plans to welcome and support newcomers and immigrants.  We were also thrilled to have the City of Calgary’s Mayor join us to say hello, her worship Jyoti Gondek.   

- An N.B. -

Join Vivacity in Learning about Newcomers & Digital Innovation

At the start of this class, we did an activity in which we created a “one-sentence” story for a fictional newcomer to Canada. 

This week in Civic Innovation, our class also got the opportunity to connect with many experts - Anila Lee Yuen from the Centre for Newcomers, Geoff Zakib from Civic Tech YYC, and Abdul Chikohouni from Mount Royal University - to learn more about their community spaces.  The goal of the dialogue session was to explore the barriers that newcomers face when coming to Canada through multiple lenses. One of the biggest takeaways from this class focused on how one of the most significant barriers that newcomers and immigrants face is getting their credentials recognized by institutions and employers. These experts helped us to understand better why this barrier exists and got us thinking about how we can provide solutions for them.

Our class also got the opportunity to listen to John Vardalos from J5 at the Career Expo Networking event at Mount Royal University. John’s talk was very informative as he took us along his career journey and the creation of J5 Design. Through his keynote and panel, he also explored creating a diverse workplace, how companies can address the problems they want to solve, and how we can work together to embrace uniqueness. 

Overall, this dialogue session was very impactful and informative, and we are grateful for the insight that can help us in our future work. 

- Team Euphoria -

Exploring the Power of Systems Thinking and Ideation for Creative Problem-Solving

Systems thinking is a way of sorting and organizing information to understand themes and discover solutions for problems. During this class, we had the pleasure to welcome several speakers, which included:

• Kelsey McColgan, Assistant Professor of the Information Design program at Mount Royal University.

• Tatenda Mambo, a postdoc fellow in Sustainability Studies.

• Patrick Moskwa, Instructor at Mount Royal University teaching Information Design, Marketing, and Social Innovation.

• Meagan McIntosh is a recent graduate of the Information Design program at Mount Royal University (and brilliant systems map thinker).

• Sydney Harder, Information Design alumni, spoke about the topic she studied in Civic Innovation, Tech for Good.

 The class included several activities where each group used a systems map framework to brainstorm ideas related to our class topic of understanding the challenges and barriers newcomers face when moving to Calgary.

We sorted our ideas into similar groups and identified new insights. To further get to the root of the problem, we used another framework to break down the main themes to see how our first results correlated to the second framework results. This method of problem-solving was difficult but taught each of us one main point; iteration and questioning current processes are key to uncovering the root cause of a social problem.

What is one thing you learned by using systems maps as a way of brainstorming?

“Using a systems map framework allowed me to consider areas and other factors which I may not have otherwise explored.”

“It taught me how working collaboratively with others can help expand ideas and consider other factors when looking at a problem through using system map strategies. And how that can assist in guiding us into the direction we choose to focus on for the problem we are working on and what type of research we need to do for it through looking at what we generated on our system map. Overall, it was very insightful to learn about and will be very useful skills and tools to utilize when working on our project.

“It taught me to think in a very detailed manner, where I began to understand that each component, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant it is, is a crucial part of the system that uncovers the root causes of the challenge that is being explored.”

“It taught me how to draw out a deeper sense of understanding from brainstorming by using different organization and theming techniques.”

“It taught me the way to analyze different situations the problem we are looking to solve can have an impact in. And to connect those thoughts and ideas to focus on a big problem that is seen / connected in this whole process. ”

Please join us March 23rd at the Calgary Central Library to view the 2023 Civic Innovation student’s showcase to learn more about the challenges newcomers face when moving to Calgary and to try some of the fun and exciting experiments they’ve created. We all look forward to seeing you there.

-Team Benevolent Empaths -

Exploring the Create Space & Ideas Lounge

This past Thursday, our Civic Innovation class left the comfort of J5 on a field trip to the equally comforting Central Library! This class was jam packed with creative thinking, listening and learning, all of which began in the ‘Create Space.’ Our showcase is in a month, so our teams had the opportunity to contextualize where our experiments will soon be living. With some helpful insight from Myke Atkinson, the Create Space experiment design service lead at the CPL, we learned the many possibilities that the space holds for our work. 

Following this, our teams went upstairs to the Ideas lounge and got to explore what worked, and what did not, about our initial experiment ideas. We were fortunate enough to get insight from the following folks: 

• Nimrit Anand, Calgary Economic Development, Talent recruitment [arrived from India 3 yrs ago]

• Allan Aantiquo, MRU, Interior design chair

• Kelsey McColgan, & Ben Kunz, Information Design  

• Brian Jackson, MRU Maker Space 

• Patrick Moskwa, Katherine Ziff- experiment design

• Myke Atkinson, CPL, Create Space experiment design service lead

• Hamza Tariq, CPL Newcomers service lead 

• Lori Chomkik, community partner working with Ukrainian refugees 

• Donna Dumont, Department Chair, Entrepreneurship, Marketing & Social Innovation

From learning about the immigrant, refugee and evacuee experience, to what makes an experiment impactful for their intended audience, every group left the class with lots of food for thought. It was wonderful having mentors share their expert knowledge to help us establish our ideas and think in a more detailed manner.

-Team Confluence -

Meeting the Experts

After a relaxing (and cold!) reading week, our class this Thursday jumped right back into things. With our exhibition being nearly two weeks away, we needed to finalize our design choices and start working towards building our exhibits. Back at J5, we met with Vivacity alumni and shared our experiment pitches. We were offered critique and feedback that helped us solidify our ideas and come up with some really awesome exhibit pieces. Through these conversations, we were able to come up with really innovative ideas that will engage Calgarians throughout the course of our exhibition display! We thank the following folks for their insightful feedback:

• Colin Hood, 2017 Alumni

• Katrina Tabuli, 2017 Alumni

• Kolten Nelson, 2019 Alumni

• McKenna Chudia, 2020 Alumni

• Katerni Bravo, 2020 Alumni

• Brendan Chumala, Alumni

• Amanda Lu, Alumni

• Patrick Moskwa, MRU Faculty

• Veronica Sheppard, J5

• Sarah Dunnet, MRU, Alumni Program Specialist

• Erin Mason, MRU, Alumni Program and Services Manager

- Team 2Belong

Feedback Sessions

The Vivacity teams had the amazing pleasure of gathering the input of many professionals. For the past few weeks we have been conducting world cafes to better design and understand the barriers that newcomers and immigrants face when coming to Calgary. This week we welcomed the feedback of special guests:

• Monique Blough, Social Impact Lab

• Myke Atkinson, Calgary Library

• Tsering Asha, Redpoint Media

• Tatenda Mambo, University of Calgary

for the Vivacity Citizen Experiments. We learned that pivoting is definitely key! There were some wonderful questions that really made all teams reflect on their design journeys. Glad to announce that all the experiments have been approved! Thank you to our panelists for taking time out of their day to provide our class with feedback.

- Team Euphoria -

Countdown to the Exhibition: Last Day of Preparations + Setup Day

Class on Thursday, March 16th, 2023 was held at the Calgary Central Library to help finalize the exhibition ideas for our upcoming exhibition. The class was designed to give the students a better understanding of their chosen space and how to best utilize it, as well as on finalizing our ideas, planning, measuring the space and getting feedback from professors. Luckily we had Patrick Moskwa and Myke Atkinson as two guests which helped assist us throughout this class.

As we explored our space, we noticed the exhibit set up in our area that had these lovely artworks pinned up, which inspired our team to, at the last minute, incorporate this idea into our exhibit to add to the overwhelming feeling newcomers experience when accessing services and filling out documents. Overall, it was a good wrap up day and we felt it was a good use of time for all teams to finalize ideas for the exhibition ahead of Sunday's 9:00 am setup time.

-Team Benevolent Empaths -