By Andrew Ng
As the year draws to a close, the Calgary on Purpose team is taking time to reflect on the ups and downs that 2020 brought. Like many others, pandemic restrictions forced us to find a new approach to discovering the story of Calgary. We had counted on gathering groups of citizens for a conversation over dinner because we value the process of connecting strangers so they can listen to each other. But without that process available, we shifted those conversations to a virtual setting. In many ways, that allowed us to achieve more than what we had planned.
For starters, we quickly realized we’re not trying to discover the STORY of Calgary, but the STORIES of the city. Moving online meant we could be more accessible to anyone who wanted to share their thoughts. Throughout the spring, we had one-on-one conversations with folks from our networks to continue building that collective story. The voices of these 30 or so people were weaved together in a brilliant report by our researcher/writer Daranne Harris.
What we heard was as diverse as Calgary itself but five major themes emerged from those conversations:
Being at a crossroads
Our western heritage
Being in things together
Being a space of opportunity
Economics on our mind
We took these five themes and hosted another round of conversations. This time we tried to replicate our old dinner conversations by having small group discussions. In a virtual space guided by our facilitator, Anne Harding, the participants split a session between sharing their thoughts on the report and on Calgary itself, and then swap with the other half of the participants to listen. In a span of three months, we held nine of these discussions and just like that we heard the voices of dozens more Calgarians.
We patted ourselves on the back for where we’ve come, but only briefly. We are laser focused on getting to where we still need to go. We have big ideas for Calgary on Purpose in 2021:
Capture more stories through group discussions
Specific outreach to people from more diverse backgrounds
Engage our allies to create buzz among their networks
Dive deeper into working with artists
Build our online, social media presence
Engage candidates running in the municipal election
Our goals are pretty lofty especially with the next election now less than a year away. We want to ignite the passion for our city. We want everyone to share in the creation of our future. We want to help Calgarians overcome the divisive politics. We want all Calgarians to think about the city in a way they haven’t before. We want them to be part of the conversation. And we want to create a city where anyone can comfortably express their vision.
These goals aren’t really things that can be measured. It’s a culture change and it’s going to be tough. But we want to clarify that the election is not a deadline and more like a perfectly timed pitstop. We plan to continue this journey well beyond October 18, 2021.