Alan Shepard
Residency

A municipal stakeholder seeks to disrupt the current way that the outdoor spaces along a main street exist and are used throughout the year to encourage foot traffic to linger and experience the area. They want to explore how pedestrianizing a main street to create a year-round venue can foster community-building and community support through a social economy (social behaviors around how we see our local shops, sense of responsibility towards supporting our community, mechanism to combat winter hibernation/isolation behaviors, etc).

Residents built strategies to use snow as a building material to change the functionality of the street in the winter, identified and validated key strategic arts projects to foster empathy and care for local businesses, and rapid-tested methods of gamification to drive engagement across different demographics of people frequenting the area.

A food bank and social service provider seeks to identify their unique value within a community that has other providers offering similar social services. They wish to better understand who they are servicing and how they can respond in a more targeted way to unmet needs in the community. More specifically, they seek to understand the way justice, equity, diversity and inclusion impacts the need for and access to social services so that they may better respond to the needs of marginalized groups within their community.

Residents developed methods for identifying and segmenting the different personas of current and potential service recipients, clients, and other beneficiaries. By developing a strategy that leans on data collection and use as the community (and therefore service offered) evolves, segmenting allowed for unique approaches that would benefit particular segments such as fostering intergenerational relations to use oral history as a community strengthening mechanism. Residents responded to needs for other personas with strategies for providing urban agriculture training and venues, again with an angle to encourage intergenerational ties.

An arts center seeks to identify their core value in the face of relocation and integration into a new geographical community. More specifically, they want to understand in what ways building and engaging their local community will enable them to understand themselves in this new environment.

Residents crafted a strategy built upon a multi-faceted approach to strengthen community ties by leveraging contexts and the impact of a multiplicity – reaching the same communities in different ways. Leaning on oral histories, grassroots values for knowledge and information sharing, and strategic partnerships across industry and neighborhood boundaries allowed for an unconventional solution that positioned the arts center as a future pillar of the community they begin to foster today.

A film festival seeks to grow beyond a time-bound, in-person experience, and would like to understand the audiences they might be able to reach, what these audiences will be looking for, and which ones are most easily addressable given the current resources and relationships of the festival.

Residents redefined the business model, inspecting previously untapped audiences to project a sustainable transition towards a new service offering of the film festival. By assessing and prioritizing possible partnerships with universities to integrate the festival’s catalogue into academic coursework, determining cost-effective methods to grow younger audiences, and a shift beyond only curating works to include sponsoring independent creation, residents provided a comprehensive menu of feasible first steps in a new direction.

An NGO is seeking to adapt IP sharing models for cellular agriculture in the current environment, foster open dialogue and sharing of knowledge, research, and technology among stakeholders of all levels, from farmers to legislators. They seek to instil the importance and urgency of maintaining a strong food supply in Canada going forward, and make research more accessible to stakeholders to do so.

Residents developed, and validated models to help shift mindsets, vulgarize scientific writing, and instil urgency in the national ecosystem.