Exhibit Change

03/29/2019

Wondering what I am up to?

Head over to Department of Imaginary Affairs to get the ongoing updates.

But, I am doing what I love to do best. Convene communities of people together to have conversations.

This time we brought together 30 practitioners at the intersection of settlement, storytelling, community and design.

Hopefully this is just the start of something new.

Photo collection by Tyra Sweet Photography

08/16/2018

Thankful for today's play testing and trend analysis workshop participants. Lots of great feedback and food for thought on how to position for organizations and how to share enough strategic foresight lingo in a short amount of time.

06/28/2018

On a break from vacation to exercise my brain, learn and be reminded of the strength of artifacts and pattern finding. I felt spent by the end of the day grappling with the challenges and tension of the work that I do and that I do alongside the work of others. I'm looking forward to one more day of

06/22/2018

Don't assume you know what's happening, but also don't do nothing. A great video of how we can do a little more.

05/30/2018

So I promised I would do more regular updates of my work and I am feeling like now is a good time to actualize that commitment.

Especially this week when I am bouncing around between a few of the projects that I am lucky enough to work on and I am so grateful for the super knowledge network that I have and continue to pull on.

For today, I will just share about my Design Strategy Lead role at Green Change.

1. Social Supermarket - figuring out the spectrum of food security programs, services and partners working together to address access to healthy food - kicked off this project with a few great meetings including the City of Toronto, Food Strategy, Toronto Enterprise Fund and have more lined up with North York Food Harvest and FoodShare and Nourish in the coming week.

2. A Way Home Toronto - continuing to support the work of a youth homeless coalition - while this project has found a unique way to ground their work in the voices and priorities of experts (young people with lived experiences), they are honestly struggling to nail down strategies and next steps which seems to be natural downfall of a coalition

3. Local Economies - still chipping away at developing a diversity workplace strategy to bring more JF residents to York University.

Please let me know if you have contacts in food security, workforce development and facilitating systems change.

05/19/2018

A long weekend workshop for the Future of Activism. I guess it should be expected that we ended up with a game of power moves, rebellions and full blown anarchy when the rules shifted. An impromptu discussion about strategies about how to deal with uncertainty, agency and order fueled generative scenario writing.

05/18/2018

As Mandy Wintink and I embark on a pilot in Parent Coaching and looking at types of genius, multiple intelligences and strengthening our kids innate qualities and skills.

This study by Nasa is really interesting.

If you have time watch the TED talk.

If we want to have creative, innovative, imaginative children, we have to work on help our kids keep their natural instincts to be divergent and look for alternative solutions.

The scientists gave the test to 1,600 children between the ages of 4 and 5. What they found shocked them.

05/18/2018

This is wonderful and why I appreciate organizations like Enables Me and all that they do!

Disability doesn't have to mean no opportunities.

05/14/2018

What a great project!!!

05/10/2018

What's happening???

I know you're wondering. It's been too long since I shared an update on what's going on in my work.

So for starters, I will say that I am currently working on about 3 distinct project areas and wanted to take a more concerted effort to share. So I am committing to writing an update about each project area at least once a month.

1. I am the Design Strategy Lead at Green Change - I have been since last July and am pulled into varying social service research projects. Including figuring out a workforce development strategy to getting more local hires at York University, a feasibility study for a social supermarket, consulting on a strategic development for a homeless youth coalition and facilitating the development of our internal strategies and developmental evaluation processes.

2. I am the Director of Programming/Co-Founder at Department of Imaginary Affairs - I am excited by our growing little organization. We have been putting ideas out in the world and just recently we heard that we have been award a Federal Grant to take our newcomer library project forward! Also under the DIA I have been designing a beta for with funding from the Ontario School for Social Entrepreneurs by doing playtesting workshops.

3. And finally, I am embarking on a new project with Mandy Wintink from Mama Brain to develop a Parent Coaching program, workshops and toolkits to support parents build their confidence in observing their kids strengths, building on them and being able to advocate for their kids when they are in school. Right now, we are piloting with 3 one-on-one coaching sessions each.

OK! That's it for now, but I promise starting today, I will share more about what is going on. Thanks for sticking with me.

04/13/2018

Today I facilitated a workshop on the Future of Climate Change and Accessibility. It feels good to be getting the game out in front of people, seeing reactions, fueling new thinking and conversations.

02/15/2018

I am intrigued by how uninhibited their actions are but also mechanical. I'm not sure if they are having fun or not, but nonetheless they seem committed to participating.