Checkout was set for 9 AM, and after three days of talking circles, workshops, and late-night bingo, it was time to pack up.

Check-out

As promised the night before, everyone stripped their sheets before heading out the door, a small courtesy to the one housekeeper who kept the site running for the whole retreat.

A Visit to Canmore

The group made a stop in Canmore on the way back, giving everyone a chance to stretch their legs, grab food, and take in the mountain town before the long drive home.

Folks wandered through local shops, picking up small souvenirs or just soaking in the last bit of mountain scenery before Calgary and Edmonton traffic replaced it.

For a group that had spent three days in talking circles, workshops and reflection, the hour in Canmore was a welcome, low-key close, no agenda, no sessions, just time to wander and be normal humans again before heading home.

The Official End to the Retreat

From Canmore, the group made its way back through Calgary, dropping off participants at Anderson LRT Station, before continuing on to Edmonton. As the bus rolled along, the energy was noticeably different from the ride out three days earlier, quieter, more reflective, full of the kind of tiredness that comes from a retreat well spent.

What started as a group of mostly strangers boarding a school bus outside EPL Milner ended with a cohort that had built something real together: cultural teachings, hard conversations, creative confidence, land-based reflection, and a whole lot of bingo, all folded into three days that clearly left a mark.

A Note of Thanks

As this retreat comes to a close, and this cohort's journey continues, we wanted to pause and say thank you.

Thank you to the young people who said yes to this cohort back in July, before any of us knew what these months would hold.

To those who could not stay the full journey, thank you for the time and energy you did give us, it mattered.

To the folks who joined us more recently for the Prairie Retreat, thank you for stepping into something already in motion and making it feel like you had always been here.

Lastly, thank you to every facilitator, panelist, partner organization, and collaborator who gave their time and expertise along the way.

This programming is a reflection of a whole community choosing to show up for the next generation of storytellers and changemakers. We see you, we appreciate you and we are just getting started.

As one chapter closes, the next one begins.

Join us for our Public Showcase at Edmonton City Hall on October 17.

Barrier Lake had that quiet morning stillness that made the pace feel manageable even with so much packed in.

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The Artivist Network

The morning opened with a virtual session with a rep from the Artivist Network, a global collective of arts activists and facilitators who help organizers and social movements engage art, culture and creativity more strategically to build systemic change.

Their central idea was that actions don't just protest something, they shape the story that gets told afterward. The rep walked through the tension every organizer faces between the right tool, the right target and the right tone, warning that it's easy to get swept up in a creative idea that isn't actually strategic. To illustrate, they told the story of an early 1990s UK action where activists organized without cell phones or internet, using mass rave-style gatherings to mobilize people to a highway construction site. In one particularly poetic action, they replanted trees along a highway being built, leaving new growth in the wake of the construction vehicles. The rep noted that by the time they heard the story secondhand, years later, the details had scattered and shifted across retellings, which they said is actually the mark of an action good enough that people want to keep sharing it.

The rep also shared a Barcelona action where their group met riot police preparing to confront them not with defiance, but with a giant inflatable ball, breaking the expected script of confrontation so thoroughly that police eventually deflated it and walked away, both sides quietly acknowledging they'd been playing a kind of game. From there, they introduced the idea of activism as a frame, something that can be zoomed in or zoomed out to shift what the public sees and pays attention to.

A major thread of their talk was about language and who gets cast as the hero of a story. They broke down three ways of saying the same environmental message: "save the planet" (which casts an undefined "we" as saviors), "save the humans" (which flips who needs saving), and "we are nature defending itself" (which removes the hero/victim binary altogether and positions people as part of the natural world, not outside it). They connected this to the Pacific Climate Warriors, a group of Pacific Islander activists who rejected the narrative of being passive victims of climate change and instead framed themselves as descendants of history's greatest navigators, ultimately building traditional canoes and blockading the largest coal port in the world.

The rep ran through a series of tactical principles: using existing cultural symbols that already carry meaning (like the Spanish bull, or recognizable cartoon characters), making the invisible visible (like sending shoes to represent people who couldn't march, or pasting portraits of evicted families onto the banks evicting them), and hacking existing narratives, including fake warning labels on fossil fuel ads and a "worst company of the year" award ceremony. They emphasized dressing and presenting activism in ways that don't read as stereotypically confrontational, citing groups like Fossil Free Culture, who staged vulnerable, artistic protests in white clothing rather than black, making their message land differently with the public and press. They closed by reminding the group that art and message have to be balanced together, since even the most important cause won't spread if it isn't also compelling to watch, and that creating together is itself a powerful way to build relationships within an organizing group.

Optional Smudging and Talking Circle with Eileen Gullion

With about five minutes to transition, the group moved into the lodge for an optional smudging and talking circle, led once again by Eileen Gullion of Flying Lion Cree Consulting. This session continued directly from the previous night's bingo game, where four participants had won rounds and were asked to come prepared with a short story tied to whatever word or date they'd landed on.

Eileen explained the format: whoever held the talking stick had the floor, and once someone finished, the group could ask questions before passing it on. Jasmine went first, sharing the poem "The Longest Light," with the group, a fitting reference to her winning square, June 21st, National Indigenous Peoples Day and also the summer solstice. Her story followed a grandmother waking her granddaughter Ayana before dawn each year to walk to the river, where families gathered to drum and watch the sunrise, with the day closing 15 hours later as the sun finally set. Jasmine wove in her own connection to the story, noting that as a creative director, she'd previously worked on a tribute project for a wildfire in Little Red River using beadwork, and drew a parallel to how beadwork holds similarly deep meaning within her own Indian heritage.

Marvin, went second with the word UNDRIP, sharing a story connected to Human Rights Day and August 2007's non-binding international resolution, and focused on the human rights legacies of figures like Nelson Mandela and Patrice Lumumba, the DRC's first democratically elected Prime Minister, famous for a 1960 independence speech. He drew a personal connection between Lumumba's fight and his own family's story as Nigerian immigrants, since Nigeria gained independence that same year, reflecting on how every person today is, in some way, the product of someone else's earlier fight.

Lastly, due to time constraint, Armeen closed off the session with “tuberculosis”. As an OG cohort participant, she tied her reflections into her learnings from our Aug 7 Health Equity & Social Determinants of Health Lab.

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Placemaking with Madelyn Koff (Ottawa Feminist Council)

Madelyn Koff of the Ottawa Feminist Council led a rich session on storytelling and placemaking. Madelyn opened by asking the group what placemaking meant to them, acknowledging the term originally comes from urban planning, where it refers to designing public spaces around accessibility, comfort and sociability. She explained how she and others have repurposed the concept to think more broadly about how people make any space feel like home, and how they carry that sense of belonging with them.

She walked through a summer storytelling and placemaking series the Ottawa Feminist Council ran, focused on land, belonging, and intergenerational connection, where participants learned oral history skills and began building what she called a living, alternative archive, rooted in care and relationship rather than what she called "trauma extraction." The goal, she said, was creating space for joy in documentation, not just hardship.

Madelyn closed with a direct challenge to the group: have a conversation with an elder in their life and document that story in whatever medium feels right, whether that's a sculpture, a written piece, an audio recording, or something else entirely. She left her contact information and an invitation to connect further with the Ottawa Feminist Council's ongoing archive work.

The Power of Art & Healing with Simarpreet Kaur Bhangu (Project Therapeía)

Simarpreet Kaur Bhangu, founder of Project Therapeía, a Calgary-based community organization delivering creative and skill-building workshops within healthcare settings, led an interactive session on the relationship between art and healing. Simarpreet shared that Project Therapeía grew directly out of her time volunteering in hospitals and long-term care sites, where she repeatedly heard from patients that they'd had to pause creative passions like painting, crocheting, theatre, and writing because they no longer felt they had the tools, organization or avenues to continue. She described that realization as heartbreaking, since those passions are often tied to identity, culture, spirituality and language, not just hobbies.

She structured the session around four pillars: art as an avenue for expression, art as a foundation for identity, art as a source of confidence, and art as a catalyst for connection. Throughout, she paused for open discussion, asking participants to share their own favorite creative outlets and how those activities made them feel. Responses ranged from writing (described as a way to process both happiness and difficult emotions), to aerial arts, to digital art and design, to one participant's habit of picking up completely random skills on impulse as a way of building confidence and comfort with unpredictability.

Simarpreet backed up the emotional case for art with research, citing a study showing a statistically significant drop in cortisol levels after just 45 minutes of art-making, and another published in BMC Health finding that 82% of surveyed participants felt arts engagement connected them more strongly to their community. She spoke about how, in her own workshops, participants often arrive doubting their abilities entirely, but that the simple act of creating something, regardless of skill level, builds visible progress and confidence that carries into how people see their capacity to heal more broadly. She closed by reinforcing that healing isn't a checklist, it's a complex, nonlinear process, and creative expression gives people an anchor to return to throughout it.

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Storytelling, Creative Confidence and Finding Your Voice with Lebene Mawutor (KELIDZO)

Lebene Mawutor, founder of KELIDZO, a cultural editorial studio and emerging media platform with roots in her journalism background, led an energetic, hands-on session on public speaking, storytelling and creative confidence. She opened by sharing a clip from a past workshop she ran with Black Canadian Women in Action, teaching young girls the fundamentals of confident public speaking and self-expression.

Lebene made the case that polished production values don't replace a genuine story, noting that in today's content landscape, footage can be released within 24 hours of filming, but that doesn't mean the emotional core of a story is being honored. She walked participants through the classic who, what, when, where, why and how framework for building a story, then gave the group roughly seven minutes to write down a story they'd been wanting to tell but hadn't yet found a way to. She prompted the group to think through who is at the center of the story, what's actually happening, why it matters, what feeling they want their audience to walk away with, and finally, what medium, whether photography, short film, spoken word, or something else, would best carry it.

During the Q&A, one participant asked how to find their own voice as a creator. Lebene answered that voice comes from leaning into what you're genuinely passionate about and curious about, since even with the same event or topic, every storyteller brings a different angle shaped by what they personally notice and care about. Another participant asked how to build confidence translating ideas from their head into something others understand. Lebene was candid that she still struggles with this herself, and encouraged the group to focus less on convincing people up front and more on simply starting to execute, since style and clarity develop through the act of creating consistently over time. She closed by reminding the group that nobody needs permission or expensive equipment to start telling stories, and that even a phone is enough to begin.

Lunch Break

The morning sessions wrapped a bit over schedule, with lunch running until roughly 1:30 PM before the group regrouped for the afternoon.

Global Citizenship: The Intersections of Digital Culture, Media Literacy, Internet Governance & Artivism with Jasmine Cha

After lunch, the afternoon opened with Jasmine Cha, a community leader and digital policy advocate whose work spans organizations including d.talks, Apathy is Boring, the United Nations Association in Canada, OpenMedia, the Center for AI and Digital Policy, and Stanford University's ethics and technology public policy program. Jasmine traced her own path into this work, starting with an internship with the UN's International Telecommunication Union on a project connecting schools in developing countries to the internet, an experience that showed her clearly how access to technology is inseparable from access to opportunity and voice.

Jasmine opened with a core idea: global citizenship is digital citizenship. The internet connects us to people, communities and movements around the world, letting us learn about issues as they unfold, hear directly from affected communities, organize across borders, and use digital spaces to advocate for change. But she was clear that access to information isn't the same as understanding it, and that being a responsible digital citizen means thinking critically about what we consume, create and amplify.

She pushed the group beyond the usual "spot the fake news" framing of media literacy, encouraging participants to ask where a piece of information came from, why it was created, what context might be missing, and how emotion might be shaping their reaction to it. She flagged generative AI as a growing complication here too, since images, voices and videos can now be convincingly fabricated or altered, meaning simply seeing something is no longer enough to establish that it actually happened.

From there, Jasmine unpacked digital governance as, at its core, a question of power: who makes the rules, who gets heard, who gets protected, and who gets left out. Creators, tech companies, algorithms, governments and users all shape the digital environment together, and none of those systems are neutral. She also stressed that digital inclusion means more than just having internet access, since meaningful participation depends on affordability, accessibility, language, safety, digital literacy, and whether someone actually has a genuine opportunity to be heard once they're online.

She connected all of this directly to artivism, noting that art has long been used to challenge power, preserve memory, express resistance and imagine different futures, and that digital platforms now let that art travel further and faster than ever, through photography, video, music, illustration, memes, storytelling and design. But she was direct about the responsibility that comes with that reach: creative content can make complex issues understandable and move people to act, but it can just as easily strip away context, misrepresent communities, or spread misinformation. In her words, artivism and media literacy need each other. Creating intentionally means thinking about whose story is being told, whether affected communities are actually being heard, whether the content is accurate and accessible, and what you actually want your audience to walk away with.

She gave a personal example from a recent trip to Geneva, where she visited the Red Cross Museum and was moved by an exhibit built around a child's tricycle recovered after the bombing of Hiroshima, and how she used that story to write about the importance of taking a stance rather than defaulting to neutrality in the face of injustice.

Jasmine was also careful to note that nobody needs to be an expert before getting involved in something they care about. Civic engagement, she said, can look like learning, asking questions, joining an organization, attending a consultation, creating something, organizing your community, challenging misinformation, or simply helping someone else participate. She pushed back on the idea that local and global engagement are opposites, pointing out that local experience can shape how you understand global issues just as much as the reverse, and that some of the most interesting work happens where personal interests overlap, art and climate justice, technology and accessibility, gaming and community building, film and storytelling, fashion and sustainability.

She closed with a set of questions she encouraged the group to sit with before creating or sharing anything: who am I trying to reach, what do I want them to understand or feel, why am I the person telling this story, and what responsibility do I have to the people being represented. Her final challenge to the room was to move beyond asking "can I post this" and instead ask "what am I contributing," since we participate in the digital world every time we create, share, amplify, or decide what information to trust.

A lengthy Q&A followed, touching on media bias, the unique risks young people face navigating misinformation and AI-generated content, and the tension between wanting to protect youth from technology versus equipping them with the critical thinking skills to navigate it safely.

Confidence in Civic Spaces with Mathew Katz (Young Politicians of Canada)

Mathew Katz, National Communications Director with the Young Politicians of Canada (YPC), a national, non-partisan, youth-led nonprofit with over 2,000 members across seven provincial chapters, led a detailed session on public speaking and confidence in civic spaces. Mathew, who also serves as a Student Trustee with the Limestone District School Board and previously served as Policy Co-Chair on the City of Edmonton Youth Council, opened by asking each participant to share one issue they cared about and why, going around the circle for introductions.

He structured the session around four parts: why your voice matters, building a powerful message, confidence and delivery, and handling questions. To make the first point concrete, Mathew shared his own story of helping defeat a harmful municipal bylaw in Edmonton that would have effectively criminalized unhoused people using transit as shelter in extreme cold, describing how he organized a response, wrote an op-ed, and ultimately saw the bylaw defeated unanimously at city council.

He broke down message-building into three components: a clear problem, a hopeful vision for the future, and a personal or societal story that ties the two together and makes the issue resonate emotionally rather than just statistically. Using two hypothetical audience profiles, a financially secure, low-tax-supporting voter and an anti-establishment university student, Mathew walked participants through how the same policy position can be framed differently depending on who you're speaking to, then had the group practice this themselves with a parking fee increase scenario.

On delivery, Mathew's core advice was repetition: practicing a presentation over and over, avoiding written notes so eye contact stays intact, remembering key points rather than memorizing exact wording, and staying authentic rather than copying someone else's presentation style. For handling unexpected questions, he offered a four-part framework: pause before answering, answer the question directly, explain your reasoning, and bridge back to your core message, adding that using concrete examples, conceding valid points when appropriate, and being honest about what you don't know all strengthen a presenter's credibility rather than undermine it.

Nature Walk

After a full day of presentations, the group stepped outside for a nature walk around Barrier Lake, followed by group photos and break time, a welcome breather after six sessions of dense material.

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Photo Embroidery Session with Jasmine Kukreja Chadha (Get Offbeat)

A special shout-out for this one: Jasmine Kukreja Chadha, Creative Director and embroidery artist behind Get Offbeat, an inclusive Edmonton-based community for makers, creatives and anyone wanting to learn a new skill, joined the retreat in-person in its entirety ahead of this session, since photo embroidery requires hands-on, in-person guidance that couldn't translate well over video. With over 8 years of experience leading brand identity and content strategy, Jasmine built Get Offbeat out of wanting more real, in-person connection within Edmonton's creative scene, somewhere makers and people with completely different skill sets could find each other and build something together instead of just scrolling past it online.

Participants worked from printed photographs, either ones they'd brought themselves or the backup headshots made available for the session, learning embroidery techniques to bring a photo to life in thread. It offered a quieter, tactile close to a day that had otherwise been heavy on discussion and presentation, a chance to sit quietly, work with their hands, and let everything from the day settle.

Closing Circle

After dinner, the day wrapped with a closing circle, giving everyone space to reflect on how the day had felt. Responses ranged widely: some participants spoke about the sessions being genuinely eye-opening, others admitted they hadn't known what to expect coming in but were struck by how much they connected with people. One participant, only half-joking, said they didn't want to leave and that the retreat had started to feel like home.

Housekeeping followed to close out the evening. Anurika reminded the group that leftovers were available in the fridge, walked through checkout logistics for the following morning (breakfast at 8 AM, departure planned for 9 AM), and confirmed the group would make a stop in Canmore on the way out, with roughly an hour built in for people to grab food or walk around, since it added no extra time to the overall trip home. She also reminded everyone to use bear spray if heading outside at night, to strip their bedsheets before checkout the next morning as a courtesy to the site's lone housekeeper, and to make use of the Valentine Wall and feedback jar before the retreat wrapped.

The evening closed out with participants finishing up their friendship bracelets from the opening session and taking a round of group photos, tired but clearly more bonded than they'd been twenty-four hours earlier.

Day two covered enormous ground, activism theory, digital governance, healing through art, public speaking, land-based reflection, and hands-on craft, and by the time the lights went down, it was clear the cohort had shifted from a group of individuals into something closer to a community.

Resources

1. OpenMedia Digital Safety Survey Findings: Canadians Want Platforms to Change, Not Our Privacy Rights by Jasmine Cha: https://openmedia.org/article/item/openmedia-digital-safety-survey-findings-canadians-want-platforms-to-change-not-our-privacy-rights

Our 2026 Artivism Cohort kicked off the Prairie Retreat bright and early, meeting at 9:30 AM at the Stanley A. Milner Library in downtown Edmonton. Our transportation was a rented school bus, and with the timing landing right on the first day of school, traffic and scheduling overlap meant our bus arrived a little later than planned. It ended up being a blessing in disguise. The wait gave everyone a chance to settle in, chat, and start getting to know each other before we even left the city.

From there, it was a scenic drive out to Barrier Lake in Kananaskis, with a stop in Calgary to pick up folks joining from that side of the province.

The Facility

We settled into the hostel-style site with shared rooms, a self-catered kitchen and dining space, and a lounge for group time. Surrounded by mountains and forest, it gave us the kind of quiet, out-of-the-city setting that made space for reflection without the pressure of a packed agenda.

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Meet the Folks Who Joined Our Prairie Retreat

Kunle Oluwaniyi (he/him)
Kunle likes meeting new people, hearing their stories, and connecting them to their finances. He joined ECHOFORM as a way to learn more, sharpen his skills, meet new people, and take a break from the city.

Gurleen Kaur (she/her)
From crisis work to student mental health advocacy throughout her psychology studies, Gurleen has grown to love engaging in and promoting sustainable health practices. She hopes to create avenues for expression and artistry for love, care and community across generations, drawing on roots carried from Kashmiri kawa, turmeric remedies, and meditations immersed in the divine nature. She's looking forward to connecting and supporting lifelong wellbeing and connection within.

Feven Worede (she/her)
Feven is from Edmonton and is interested in civic engagement, communications, art, storytelling and law. She joined the retreat to meet people from different backgrounds, learn from their experiences, and take part in conversations she might not otherwise have.

Tooba Mahmood (she/her)
Tooba is a 20-year-old environmental engineering student at the University of Alberta who explores her interests through different art forms, engaging in community initiatives primarily through volunteering, photography, and writing. She believes that fostering community requires empathy, and empathy requires listening and learning from the stories of others.

Armeen Khalid (she/her)
Armeen is a 17-year-old university student in Edmonton, passionate about being curious, learning, and advocating for the dreams of all people.

Deep Braich (she/her)
Deep is a youth advocate passionate about community, creativity, and creating spaces where young people feel heard and supported. Through her work with nonprofits and community-based initiatives, she's connected with different communities and contributed to projects that bring people together. She's especially interested in how art and storytelling can create meaningful conversations, build connections, and encourage young people to share their perspectives.

Hartley Lou (any/all)
Hartley is 25, turning 26, and loves to draw, paint and write. They hope to combine their artistic skills to make a comic someday.

Nola Awte (she/her)
Nola is interested in civic engagement and advocating for women's rights. She joined ECHOFORM to build her confidence, strengthen her voice, and learn how to advocate more effectively in her community.

Ye (Kate) Qi (she/her)
Kate is currently living in Edmonton and recently completed her PhD in Economics. She's volunteering with ECHOFORM and was very excited to participate in the Prairie Retreat, hoping to connect with others, learn from different perspectives, and contribute thoughtful ideas to the group's collective work.

Marvin Uwalaka (he/him)
Marvin is a computer science student and researcher based in Edmonton, with a passion for technology, community building, and creating opportunities for young people. His work spans research in assistive technology and robotics, as well as youth leadership and community engagement. He's especially interested in exploring how technology, creativity and storytelling can help build more inclusive communities.

Lulu Paradise (she/her)
Lulu is a Canadian poet, editor and author, and the editor and author of Hood Up and A Song of Essays and Deadlines on Medium, as well as the author of the novel Dark Wolfe. She's currently completing her debut poetry collection, I Want to Be Free. A first-generation Nigerian immigrant to Canada and fluent French speaker, her work explores identity, belonging, faith, mental health, mythology and resilience.

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Meet the Facilitator: Anurika (Rika) Onyenso

Leading the retreat was Anurika (Rika) Onyenso, Founder of ECHOFORM. Anurika is a community builder, youth advocate and emerging social impact leader committed to advancing equity, civic participation and systems change. She has held leadership roles across nonprofit, public and grassroots spaces, working at the intersection of youth engagement, digital rights, financial literacy, climate justice and community wellbeing.

She is the founder of ECHOFORM, a civic learning and storytelling ecosystem that bridges lived experience, data and public dialogue to strengthen social justice outcomes. Anurika has contributed to youth-led policy and advocacy initiatives at local and national levels, supporting research, consultation and knowledge mobilization through spaces such as the John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights.

Her community collaborations span organizations including the I3 Alliance, Righting Relations, InterVivos, People's Advocacy Voice of Amiskwacîwâskahikan, Canada Confesses, and United Nations Canada, among many other youth-driven and equity-seeking initiatives. Anurika is a recipient of the 2025 Daughters Day Award and the 2026 UBORA Leadership Award. Grounded in lived experience and a deep belief in collective care, her leadership centres storytelling, inclusive decision-making, and building pathways for young people to meaningfully shape the futures they deserve.

Welcome & Opening Session

Anurika opened the retreat with a welcome and framing for the days ahead, followed by a land acknowledgment. She offered two: one that ECHOFORM carries into all of its programming, and a second tailored specifically to Barrier Lake, honouring our time within the traditional territory of the Îyârhe Nakoda (Stoney Nakoda) Nations, Treaty 7 territory, and the Tsuut'ina Nation, Blackfoot Confederacy and Métis Nation of Alberta.

From there, the session moved into housekeeping. The group learned where to find games for downtime throughout the retreat, reviewed the facility's house rules together, and were shown where to grab any supplies they'd need over the three days. A post-retreat survey was flagged as something to expect at the very end. Anurika also gave a preview of the upcoming Public Showcase at Edmonton City Hall on October 17, walking through accepted submission formats and how those unable to attend in person could still submit remotely.

Two ongoing installations were introduced for the retreat: a feedback jar, open for use before, during or after any session, and a Valentine Wall, where participants were encouraged to write something kind to a fellow cohort member throughout their time together.

Envelopes would be collected on the final day as everyone checked out.

The group then used Slido to gather everyone's input and co-create a community learning agreement together, setting the tone for how everyone would show up for each other over the next three days.

To close the welcome session, participants gathered in a circle to draw self-portraits, followed by a friendship bracelet activity. Rather than the typical name tags, each person made one to keep for themselves - a fun, small, creative way to set the mood of the retreat.

Indigenous Cultural Awareness & Sensitivity Training with Jamie Harmon

The evening continued with a training led by Jamie Harmon, a Hungarian-Métis facilitator and pastor whose blended European and Indigenous ancestry gives her a dual-lensed perspective on culture, identity and relationship. A citizen of the Métis Nation, Jamie draws on generations of family history and lived experience through her ancestry in the McKay "Little Bearskin" family line, whose contributions span the fur trade, treaty interpretation, community leadership and the preservation of Métis culture and language. As a facilitator, public speaker and community leader, Jamie has spent years delivering sessions on Indigenous histories, worldviews, identity, belonging, cultural safety and reconciliation across Canada.

Jamie grounded the session in the idea that reconciliation is less about legislation and more about relationship, something built through honesty, trust, accountability and respect over time. She spoke about the role of truth as the foundation reconciliation depends on, noting the intentional ordering of the words in Truth and Reconciliation. Understanding what happened has to come before genuine repair can begin. Storytelling, she explained, became central to that process. When residential school survivors began sharing their experiences, many Canadians were hearing this history directly for the first time, and story became one of the clearest paths toward truth.

Jamie also spoke candidly about her own story, including hardship she faced growing up, and how the resilience she witnessed in her family gave her the strength to become an advocate. She was careful to note that not every story needs to be shared, and that healing looks different for everyone.

From there, the session opened into reflection, with participants responding to three guiding questions: what story shaped you, who has been a leader in your life without ever holding an official title, and what responsibility will you carry forward. Cohort members shared reflections ranging from the influence of parents and grandparents, to lessons learned through education and mentorship, to the responsibility of passing knowledge forward once you've received it. Jamie closed by reminding the group that the stories we carry shape who we become, and that each of us will one day be someone else's ancestor.

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Fun with Facts through Bingo and Storytelling with Eileen Gullion

The evening wrapped up with something lighter, but just as rich in content. Eileen Gullion of Flying Lion Cree Consulting led an interactive bingo game built entirely around Indigenous history, culture and terminology. Eileen is Woodland Cree, originally from Swan River First Nation in Treaty 8 territory, and a survivor of the 60s Scoop. With over 400 facilitated workshops and sessions to her name, she brings deep experience in strategic planning, organizational development, conflict management and facilitating the KAIROS Blanket Exercise, both in-person and virtually.

Each called word or date came with context: the meaning of the medicine wheel's four colours, the difference between regalia and costume, the story behind the orange shirt and September 30th, the history of the 60s Scoop, treaty numbers and what they cover across the prairies, and the origins of terms like Michif, road allowance people, and two-spirit.

Eileen wove teaching into every call, covering everything from the 1876 Indian Act to the 1990 Oka crisis, the Sixties Scoop, and the more recent 94 Calls to Action. Four participants won rounds throughout the night, and as part of the game, they were asked to come back the next day ready to share a short story connected to whatever word or date they had won on, a fitting bridge into the talking circle planned for day two.

Day one closed with the cohort settling in for the night, oriented in both the land and the histories they'd be sitting with over the next two days.

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Resources

Coming Soon!

That’s what Lily Yağmur Gosling of Edmonton Learners Collective told the room the night of August 28th, and it’s the line that has stayed with us since.

The 2026 Artivism Cohort closed the way it began, with people in a room, sharing their truths with one another. This was our final Lab of the season, and instead of ending with a single speaker or a formal send off, we built the night around a simple idea: mentorship only works when it moves in every direction. So we gathered mentors, panelists, and community members at Edmonton Public Library’s Stanley A. Milner branch for an evening that moved from a panel conversation into small group roundtables, a quiet writing exercise, and a closing circle where everyone got a turn to speak.

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How the Room Walked In

As guests arrived, they found bingo cards waiting on the tables, an invitation to find someone who shared a similar comfort food, someone who had changed careers at least once, someone attending their first ever mentorship event, or someone who could name a song that instantly changes their mood.

It gave people a reason to introduce themselves to a stranger before anything formal began, and by the time we opened officially, most of the room was already talking.

Once people settled in, we asked the room a simple question over Slido: how are you coming in tonight?

The answers were as honest as we hoped they would be.

It felt like a good reminder that people show up to spaces like this carrying a little bit of everything, and that is exactly as it should be.

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We grounded the evening the way we ground every ECHOFORM gathering, with a land acknowledgment and a community agreement read aloud before anyone spoke publicly. We asked the room to make space for different forms of participation, to listen to understand rather than to respond, to challenge ideas and systems rather than people’s worth, to take care of themselves and step away if needed, and to respect confidentiality and consent. It set the tone for everything that followed as the evening proceeded into a recap of the entire program:

For those who don’t know her yet, Rika is the founder of ECHOFORM. She started the organization because she kept meeting young people who had incredible stories and no space to actually tell them, or be taken seriously when they did. So she built one. ECHOFORM is a youth-led civic storytelling and artivism organization built on the belief that every young person carries a story worth telling, and that those stories are powerful tools for civic change. It creates spaces, its Labs, where young people from historically marginalized and equity-seeking communities can gather, reflect, create, and imagine new futures together.

This year alone, the Artivism Cohort has run through seven thematic Labs, covering everything from Climate Futures and Media Literacy to Health Equity and Global Citizenship:

Each one blends story circles, workshops, and hands-on creative practice, from land-based learning along the North Saskatchewan River to neurographic drawing and community roundtables. Participants have moved from quiet observers to confident storytellers and organizers over the course of a single season. Looking ahead, ECHOFORM is heading into its Prairie Retreat this September, a chance for the cohort to slow down, connect, and deepen the relationships built over the summer. From there, the cohort builds toward its Public Showcase at Edmonton City Hall this October, where artivists will share spoken word, dance and live storytelling with the wider community, marking the culmination of a year of growth. The vision going forward is simple: to keep building third spaces where young people don’t just talk about change, they practice it. Spaces like this matter because they hold room for imperfection, for growth, and for the kind of honest storytelling that moves communities forward.

This event, The Advice Constellation, was the final piece of the summer.

None of it would have happened without the people and organizations behind it:

HOWL Experience and Righting Relations are ECHOFORM’s main funders this year, and this program simply would not exist without their belief in the work. We’re also grateful to Apathy is Boring for partially sponsoring our Civic Engagement and Democracy Lab, Ribbon Rouge for partially sponsoring our Arts, Storytelling and Public Imagination Lab, and Alberta Mentors for partially sponsoring the Advice Constellation. United Nations Association in Canada’s Eco Clubs Programme, Frontlines, 525 Arts, and many others also supported the cohort along the way, helping make this work possible.

Our Mentorship Panel brought together six leaders whose work spans mentorship infrastructure, community storytelling, and youth advocacy. This simple question was the perfect way to open up the entire night before moving on to the panel segment.

Each panelist started off by introducing themselves:

Meet the Panelists

Zohreh Saher is a Senior Intergovernmental Officer with the Government of Alberta’s International Relations division, working on partnerships across the Indo Pacific and Middle East. Outside of that role, she serves as President and Co-Founder of interVivos, an Edmonton based, volunteer led, non partisan nonprofit that has matched emerging and established leaders since 2006 to build a more connected community.

Saniya Ghalehdar is a facilitator, community engagement professional, and one of the four volunteers behind She Said, a storytelling collective that amplifies women’s voices through interviews, advocacy, and community engagement. Her day job is at NorQuest College, where she works on equity based training with a current focus on anti hate education.

Adiki Puplampu is the Communications Coordinator for the ELITE Program for Black Youth, a STEM based experiential learning program for youth aged 15 to 22 that has trained and supported paid opportunities for more than 500 Black youth over the past six years. She holds a master’s degree in communication and media studies and brings a people first approach to every space she is in.

Sean Arceta, also known as B Boy Pharush, is the Director of Community Relations at iHuman Youth Society and a professional street dancer of over 25 years. iHuman supports inner city youth aged 12 to 24 through creative programming alongside wraparound support like medical care access, housing referrals, and social work outreach.

Sarah Chan is the Engagement and Operations Lead at Alberta Mentoring Partnership and the founder of Make Your Mark, United Way’s student leadership program. She has spent over a decade fundraising and organizing across Edmonton’s charitable sector.

Lily Yağmur Gosling is the founder of Edmonton Learners Collective and a career counsellor at Solomon College, where she helps newcomers prepare for interviews and build their resumes. She started the Collective because she believes community plays a real role in mental health, and that in a new city or a new country, people need other people.

What They Said

Our first question was about mentorship as a two way relationship, and what younger people had taught each panelist. Lily talked about how the young people she works with keep encouraging her to take risks, even when it feels scary, even when there is something real to lose. Saniya credited her She Said teammates, with teaching her to lead with hope instead of heaviness, especially when the topics they cover can feel like a bottomless pit. Adiki spoke about the ELITE interns she works alongside, and how their certainty about their dreams, paired with real openness to explore, has shaped how she thinks about her own path. Sean shared how the young people he supports through crisis intervention have taught him, again and again, to listen more and ask fewer questions, since so much of what they are trying to say comes through in nonverbal ways. Zohreh told a story about interVivos issuing a public apology after a difficult board decision, and how one of the organization’s youngest board members reminded her that everyone makes mistakes and you fix them, a piece of advice that reshaped how she holds herself accountable. Lastly, almost echoing Zohreh’s sentiment, Sarah closed off this portion by reminding our entire group that sometimes “it’s not that deep.”

Continuing the conversation, we asked how their work intersects with storytelling and creativity as tools for leadership and advocacy. Saniya described building She Said around long form interviews, because storytelling does not feel like being lectured to, and how the project grew from a modest hope of reaching ten people to nearly a thousand followers who write in to say they saw themselves reflected in someone else’s story. Sean shared a story about advocating for a young person under house arrest to be allowed supervised gymnastics time as part of their conditions, because that young person was a visual and aerial artist, and giving them that outlet mattered more than the paperwork suggested it would. Lily talked about why storytelling sits at the center of her work with newcomers, how she always starts by asking what brought someone here, and how hearing each other’s stories helps people realize they are not the only ones starting over.

An audience member then asked how panelists balance full time jobs with the community and nonprofit work they clearly love.

The answers were refreshingly honest:

Intentional scheduling. Asynchronous teams that respect people’s different rhythms and availability. Knowing your own cycles of busy and quiet. And more than one panelist pointed to something simpler than a system, which was choosing to spend time on things that genuinely energize you rather than trying to be everything to everyone. Sarah spoke about self care as a real part of that balance, not necessarily yoga or meditation, but quiet time, even five minutes, even journaling you sometimes skip. Zohreh’s advice was to pick one or two things and go deep, since that is where the real return comes from, rather than spreading yourself across everything at once.

To close the panel, we asked each panelist a lighter question: if your leadership journey were a piece of art, what would it look or sound like right now?

The answers were as diverse as we’d hoped: They ranged from fireworks everywhere to a half-painted canvas. There was also the image of an old red rotary phone, used as a kind of phone tree to organize people, and the way that image can become your own. Others spoke to the importance of consistency and showing up as yourself in everything you make.

Meet the Rest of Our Mentors

Alongside our panelists, a wider circle of mentors joined the networking portion of the evening, representing organizations working across printmaking, cultural memory, leadership development, education advocacy, climate justice, and youth entrepreneurship.

Caitlin Bodewitz is the Executive Director of SNAP, the Society of Northern Alberta Print Artists, a leading centre for printmaking in Canada. She is also an interdisciplinary artist and mother whose curatorial approach is rooted in elevating underrepresented voices.

Dave Konrad joined as a photographer and creative, bringing an artist’s eye to the room.

Dolly Cepeda Montufar volunteers with Climate Justice Edmonton, a collective committed to social, environmental, and climate justice. She works at Chandos Construction and is developing a documentary series on Edmonton’s energy history funded by Telus STORYHIVE, and previously sat on the City of Edmonton’s Energy Transition and Climate Resilience Committee.

The Ujima Fellowship, represented by members of its cohort, is a leadership development program created by Africa Centre in collaboration with NAIT and the Edmonton Chamber of Voluntary Organizations, working to address structural racism and inequity through diverse representation in advisory and decision making spaces.

Jean Bruce Koua is the Co Founder and COO of Elev Homes, an Edmonton born student housing company that has supported more than 3,000 students. He was recently named one of Alberta’s Top 30 Under 30 and mentors early stage entrepreneurs through Edmonton Unlimited and NAIT.

Lee Oi Luc represented Aiya Collective, an artist led project creating space to remember the emotional and geographic loss of Edmonton’s Chinatown while imagining more caring ways of being together in the city.

Kennedy Daniels Peterson is the founder of APPPLE, Albertan Parents Protecting Public Learning and Education, a grassroots project using photography and storytelling to advocate for Alberta’s public education system.

We grounded the room by asking, what’s one question you’re hoping to get an honest answer to tonight?

We grouped our roundtable tables intentionally:

1. Society of Northern Alberta Print Artists, Dave and iHuman sat together around creative practice as a form of leadership.

2. APPPLE, Edmonton Learners Collective, and Climate Justice Edmonton sat together around advocacy and lived experience.

3. Ujima Fellowship, ELITE and Elev sat together around leadership and opportunity.

4. Aiya Collective and She Said sat together around storytelling as a tool for memory and voice.

5. Lastly, Alberta Mentoring Partnership and interVivos sat together, two organizations built entirely around the practice of mentorship itself.

At each table, participants worked through prompts like what advice is currently orbiting you but hasn’t landed yet, who is in your constellation when a decision feels big, what risk changed your trajectory, and what you wish someone had told you at the age of the person across from you. Groups rotated every so often, so by the end of the roundtable, most participants had sat with several different mentors, and most mentors had heard from a wide cross section of the room.

Dear Past, Present, and Future Me

During our break between the panel and the roundtable, we set out sticky notes and invited people to write a message to their past self, their present self, or their future self.

What started as a quiet break time exercise ended up carrying through the rest of the evening, with people returning to the notes throughout the roundtable rotations, adding new ones or sitting with what they had already written.

Closing Reflection

We ended the night the way we began it, by listening. Going around the room, three words kept surfacing: speak up, seize the moment, storytelling makes us feel less alone.

When we asked one final time what one thing people were taking away from the night, the answers said it best:

The power of our stories. The power of conversation with passionate people. Connections make us stronger. Perspective. Community. One response has stayed with us since: to not hide myself out of fear <3

Community exists in many different ways. On August 28, it looked like a panel, a roundtable, a sticky note, a word cloud, and a room full of people willing to be honest about where they were coming from and what they hoped to leave with.

A special thank you to Alberta Mentors, whose mission, to enhance the capacity of Alberta’s mentorship community and network of partners to do high impact mentorship, quite literally shaped the spirit of this evening.

And to everyone who showed up and stayed present, thank you.

Resources

Career Counsellor Publication

I Didn’t Expect to Feel This Way After a Friday Night Event

On August 28, we gathered at the Stanley A. Milner Library in downtown Edmonton for an evening hosted by ECHOFORM…

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25 days ago · Lily Yagmur Gosling

Coming Up: Stories that Echo - the Artivism Showcase at Edmonton City Hall, Oct 17.

Others just let you feel it.

August 21st was somewhere in between, a night that started with eight incredible speakers at the front of the room and ended with a room full of people quietly drawing their own feelings onto canvases.

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We gathered at EPL Stanley A. Milner for the seventh lab of this summer’s Artivism Cohort: Arts, Storytelling & Public Imagination. It was, in a lot of ways, the lab we’d been building toward all season. Eight panelists sat up front and spoke openly to the room in front of them about what pulls them toward this work. A roundtable of artivists showed up and to close the night, we picked up our Sharpies and let our feelings become lines on our canvases.

Of course, no ECHOFORM event would be complete without a little pre-show chaos, and true to form, the laptop and projector needed a few extra minutes to agree on how to talk to each other. If you were in the room, you witnessed it. But, we got there. We always do.

Once we sorted ourselves out, we opened with a simple grounding question on Slido: “What does imagination mean to you?”

The answers came in waves: Creativity. Freedom. Resilience. Possibility.

One response stayed with a lot of us in the room: freedom, to dream of other possibilities. If you’ve ever needed a one-line definition of what this whole cohort is trying to do, that might be it <3

ECHOFORM acknowledges the Indigenous peoples whose lands and territories we live, gather, and work upon. We honour the enduring relationships First Peoples hold with these lands and commit to civic storytelling grounded in truth, accountability, and respect.

Before we go further, a small but important disclaimer, one we try to hold at every lab: nothing in this reflection, and nothing said on that panel, was meant to be the final word. These conversations are built to hold many perspectives at once, some of which sit in tension with each other, and that’s not a flaw in the format. That’s the format working exactly as it should. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to what art is for, what imagination means, or where the line between art and advocacy sits. We’re not here to resolve that. We’re here to sit inside it together.

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Meet the Panelists

Eight people, eight completely different relationships to art, storytelling, and civic life, all sharing the same stage. Here’s who joined us:

Kennedy Daniels Peterson is an Edmonton-based freelance photographer and artist with more than 10 years of experience, an amateur writer, and the founder of APPPLE, Albertan Parents Protecting Public Learning and Education. A passionate advocate for Alberta’s public education system, she uses storytelling, art, and photography to elevate community voices. Kennedy is a proud mother of two and the wife of a teacher, bringing both personal and professional insight to her work.

Hannah Gelderman (she/her) is a settler of Dutch descent living in Amiskwaciwâskahikan, also known as Edmonton. Hannah graduated with her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Alberta in 2012, and in 2020 completed a Master of Education in Adult Education and Community Engagement from the University of Victoria. She’s worked in the arts sector for over a decade as a programmer, educator, and visual artist, and volunteers with Climate Justice Edmonton, where she brings together art and activism. As a strong believer in the transformative power of art, Hannah is energized by how arts-based and creative practices can bring about positive change at both individual and collective levels. In her own practice, she works primarily in 2D mixed media, collage, drawing, printmaking, and painting, exploring human connection to the environment and artistic responses to the climate crisis.

Renée Williams is the Chief Executive Officer of the Edmonton Arts Council. Passionate about Edmonton and all that it has to offer, Renée has built her career on reminding locals of the magic of her home city and telling the world about this unique and authentic destination. An artist in her own right, her musical journey began at a young age, and her appreciation for and participation in a myriad of art forms continues to this day. Her professional work, education, and volunteer experience have given her over 20 years of strategic communications proficiency, spanning corporate strategy, media relations, brand management, and project management. Renée has served on numerous boards and committees, including InterVivos’ BIPOC Cohort Mentor program, Destinations International’s Advisory Committee on Diversity and Inclusion, the Alberta Culinary Tourism Alliance, and Co-Chair of the Edmonton JUNOS 2023 Host Committee, and represented Fort Edmonton Park as a recipient of the 2022 THEA Award for Best Heritage and Cultural Experience for the Indigenous Peoples’ Experience. The Edmonton Arts Council (EAC) supports, promotes, and inspires the arts across the city. Through ever-growing investment in artists, organizations, festivals, and the greater arts community, the EAC raises the profile of Edmonton arts and culture and brings the arts into everyday life. With funding from the City of Edmonton and other partners, the EAC welcomes contributions from artists across every community, background, and tradition, serving as a springboard for both emerging and established artists alike.

Suvi Sharma is the designer and founder of Silver’s Wind, a brand rooted in artistry and designed for women everywhere. Starting as a jewelry brand, Silver’s Wind scaled to multiple six figures within its first year of operation before Suvi pivoted the brand fully into fashion, launching its debut clothing collection to a waitlist of over 10,000 people, built entirely through organic content. A published photographer signed with Mode Models International, Suvi is currently developing Silver’s Wind’s debut embroidered Fall/Winter collection, translating original Indian mythological illustration into embroidery on contemporary silhouettes. Silver’s Wind began as a jewelry brand before pivoting into fashion. Beyond the collections, the brand hosts free event series for women, having built a following of deeply engaged women with waitlists exceeding 500 per event. Their gatherings create space for connection and creativity, reflecting the brand’s belief that fashion is not just what you wear, but how you move through the world with other women beside you.

Shiza Wasi believes civic engagement begins with belonging. A rising leader in Edmonton’s civic landscape, Shiza has focused her early career on helping underrepresented communities see themselves reflected in public life. Through her work with YEG Muslim Vote, she helped grow a grassroots initiative encouraging Muslim residents to engage with civic issues and elections. Today, in her role with Public Interest Alberta, she works to make complex policy issues accessible to communities across the province. Alongside this, she works with the Civic Youth Fellowship, in partnership with IslamicFamily, the City of Edmonton, and a coalition of partners, to connect equity-deserving youth with municipal leaders, creating lasting pathways into civic life for the next generation.

Nikki Hulowski (Nikki Rae Hallow) is an actress, comedian, voiceover actor, writer, director, producer, and revered acting coach based in Canada. A force to be reckoned with, Nikki’s dynamic and versatile performances have led her to international acclaim with multiple award wins onstage, onscreen, and behind the microphone. Honing her clown and improv-informed acting style, she strives to encourage connected, heartfelt performances that let audiences share in the experience. She performs live onstage as a co-founder of the internationally acclaimed sketch comedy troupe Marv N’ Berry, the femme-sketch group Sketchy Broads, calls House of Hush Burlesque her home-away-from-home, and improvises with Dienasty and Rapid Fire Theatre. She’s the main instructor and one of the founders of the YEG-based Actors Toolbox film program, head of acting for Nuova Vocal Arts, an instructor for ACTRA, and teaches her celebrated technique, On-Camera Connection, around the world. Her directorial debut, The Table Between Us, premiered at the 38th Edmonton International Film Festival and has since won multiple awards across North America. Nikki is co-owner of the film production company Giggling Shadows Productions.

Mayowa Ajibodu is a youth advocate, creative visionary, and community builder dedicated to raising a generation of purpose-driven young leaders. Through platforms in arts, leadership, and faith, he empowers young people to discover their voice, share their stories, and become catalysts for positive change in their communities. He’s the founder of The Live Initiative and the Young Canadian Change-Makers Association. The Live Initiative is a registered charity committed to strengthening communities through mentorship, education, and empowerment. They are passionate about discovering, nurturing, and providing platforms for young people with artistic talents to develop their skills, express their creativity, and reach their full potential, believing in the power of collaboration, compassion, and collective action to inspire positive change and build a brighter, more inclusive future for all.

Danni Okemaw is Anishinaabe and Swampy Cree from Berens River First Nation and God’s River First Nation in Manitoba. Born and raised in Winnipeg, she now lives in Edmonton, amiskwaciwâskahikan. Danni is the Community Engagement and Alumni Relations Coordinator at the Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta, where she organizes and supports Indigenous events across campus. She’s currently completing her Master of Arts in Native Studies, focusing on Indigenous dance, movement, cultural resurgence, language revitalization, and intergenerational healing. Danni is also one of the co-founders of Nimihitotan, which translates to “let’s dance” in the Cree language.

Eight very different lives, eight very different lenses, and somehow, once the screen finally cooperated, one continuous conversation.

What Pulled Them Toward This Work

We started the panel with the most human question we could ask: what first pulled you toward creativity, storytelling, or the arts as a way of engaging with your community?

The answers moved across the whole panel, and across the whole spectrum of what “arts engagement” can even mean. Renée answered from the funder’s chair, describing how the Arts Council exists precisely to give artists the resources and mobilization support they need before the art can even happen, the invisible infrastructure a lot of us never think about when we’re admiring the finished piece. Shiza answered from the civic education side, walking us through Public Interest Alberta’s work offering people an unbiased, trustworthy source of information, especially heading into something as consequential as Alberta’s referendum.

Others answered from somewhere more personal. One panelist reflected on how art is universal, a language that somehow manages to bridge generational gaps in a way almost nothing else can, whether that’s a grandmother and grandchild finding common ground over a song, or two strangers from completely different backgrounds recognizing the same feeling in a piece of visual art. Another offered a reframe that quietly reshaped how a lot of us were thinking about the whole night: art isn’t really about the artist. It’s about the audience, and what the audience walks away understanding. (This feels like an essential principle for civic engagement more broadly too. Co-create solutions with the people who are actually affected, rather than assuming you already know what they need without ever asking them.)

Danni spoke about combining her love of dance with culture, and how that combination became her whole way into this work, dance not as performance but as a living, breathing act of cultural continuity. Someone else asked the room a bigger, harder question: how do we actually center real stories, not just the aesthetics of storytelling, inside our art? One answer offered in response was simple and has been sitting with me since: art is about making humans feel human again. It’s about shifting how people imagine what’s even possible.

There was also one of the quieter moments of the night, when a panelist walked us through the Anishinaabe jingle dress, rooted in stories of healing. It connected Indigenous peoples’ experiences at Fort Edmonton to the thread running through the whole evening: culture carried forward, generation to generation, through movement and story, long before any of us in that room were ever born, and long after we’re gone.

What “Public Imagination” Means, In Their Own Fields

When we got to the anchor question of the night, what does public imagination mean to you, and why does it matter right now, the panel opened up in a dozen directions at once, and honestly, that’s exactly what we were hoping for.

One thread came up again and again: the people who are often left out of a conversation, including people who can’t even vote, are frequently the people most affected by its outcome. Before anything else can happen, you have to convince someone that an issue actually matters to them. That’s step one, and it’s the step so many of us skip in our rush to get to solutions. Public imagination, one panelist offered, is simply the ability to see past your own blinders. To broaden what you believe is even possible, past the walls we don’t even realize we’ve built around our own thinking.

Another thread traced the relationship between story and data, and landed firmly on one side: story and art will always land harder, and stay longer, than data alone. You can hand someone a spreadsheet full of statistics and watch their eyes glaze over, but hand them a story, and something shifts. One panelist described the relationship between dance, clothes, and audience, how each one carries meaning the others can’t hold by themselves, how a garment can tell a story a dancer’s body reinforces, which the audience then completes simply by watching. Someone else described a small, ordinary moment, watching a man play guitar on the street, and seeing something in it that felt like real, undeniable life. Art is life, they said. It was one of those lines that made the whole room go quiet for a second.

Where Art Opens Us Up, and Where It Risks Flattening

We asked the panel a harder question: where do you draw the line between creative work that opens people up to an issue, and work that risks oversimplifying something complex?

Some panelists spoke about the difference between drawing on a pattern and claiming ownership over it, a distinction that mattered more for the panelists working at the intersection of art and advocacy through design, who spoke directly and candidly about people lifting designs from cultures that aren’t their own, without acknowledgment or credit, treating a sacred or ancestral pattern as though it were simply decoration. Others brought the conversation back to climate and social justice, describing where oversimplification becomes genuinely harmful, flattening a crisis into a slogan, versus where it can become a useful entry point for someone just beginning to engage with an issue.

A few panelists also questioned whether there needs to be a clear line at all, suggesting that the relationship between creative work, complexity and advocacy can vary depending on the context and the issue being addressed.

Advice for Anyone Who Doesn’t See Themselves as “Creative” or “Civic”

We closed the panel with a question aimed squarely at our participants, many of whom came into this cohort not thinking of themselves as artists at all: for young people who don’t see themselves as creative or civic, but want to find their voice, where should they start?

The room genuinely lit up. One panelist turned the question back on everyone in the audience: what problems keep you up at night? Go toward that. Look around. Go where the fear is. Who cares if you’re bad at it starting out? If you like it, go for it, even if you’re scared. If other people are already trying to put limitations on you, why would you add to that yourself? We’re all figuring it out, every single one of us. Be scared, and do it anyway.

Another panelist called art a universal, digestible language, something meant to give everyone an experience with no hierarchy attached to who gets to make it or enjoy it. No gatekeeping, no permission required. Others pointed participants toward the community programs already sitting right here, available to them, right now, in this city, often underused simply because people don’t know they exist.

One panelist traced their own path back to the pandemic, describing how the isolation of that stretch of time pushed them toward art as a way back into community, a way of understanding a city’s personality through the culture it produces, a reminder that even our loneliest chapters can point us somewhere. Another spoke about tatreez, Palestinian embroidery, as a way of remembering who you are, one piece of a much larger tapestry, literally and figuratively, each stitch a small act of memory.

The advice kept circling back to the same center, no matter who was speaking: do everything, see what sticks. Bravery is everything. Everything is connected. The city is speaking right now, so explore beyond your own circle. What interests you? What problem moves you? The solution is already around you, and more often than not, the solution is you. Get out of your own way. If you’re not having fun, what are you even doing? And practically, tangibly: reach out to your city councillors. Volunteer. Show up, again and again, even when it’s unglamorous.

Creativity, one panelist reflected near the end, is so many things at once. It’s who you are, who you’re becoming, what you feel and think. It’s already inside you, linked to who you already are. You just have to follow it.

By the time the panel wrapped, it was hard not to feel it, how generous every single one of our panelists had been with us. They didn’t just answer questions, they handed over pieces of themselves, their doubts, their convictions and their hard-won lessons.

To Hannah, Renée, Suvi, Shiza, Nikki, Mayowa, Danni and Kennedy: thank you for your honesty, your vulnerability, and the depth of insight you brought into that room.

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Before we moved into the roundtable, we asked participants what issue they wished more art existed about, and the responses were a small window into what’s actually on people’s minds right now. We are incredibly grateful to everyone who participated!

Artivists Roundtable

After the panel wrapped, we evening moved into an open, show-and-tell style roundtable. No keynote, no formal presentation, just artivists talking through their process and their pieces, in their own words, with a room that was genuinely listening.

Our founder, Rika, opened the evening by sharing a piece she developed at a Truth-Telling Circle with the John Humphrey Centre on technology-facilitated gender-based violence. It felt right for her to go first, to model the kind of vulnerability she was asking everyone else to bring into the room, and, honestly, to prove to herself that she could do it too.

From there, the floor opened up, and it stayed open.

We were joined by Latifat and Mariam, who each shared their own work and process with such generosity, and we’re incredibly grateful for their participation and vulnerability.

There’s something genuinely moving about watching someone hand over a piece of themselves in a room full of near-strangers, and watching that room hold it with care. That’s what this roundtable was, unpolished, generous, and full of the kind of listening that’s hard to find outside of a room built specifically for it.

Facilitator Spotlight: Shaihiem Small

Closing out the evening was our neurographic drawing workshop, facilitated by Shaihiem Small, an artist currently based in Edmonton, Alberta, who primarily works in the mediums of acrylic paint, graphite on paper, and tattooing. Shaihiem is a graduate of MacEwan’s Fine Art program as of 2019, and has participated in various pop-up art shows across Edmonton, as well as the 5 Artist 1 Love show at the Art Gallery of Alberta. He’s currently interested in the interconnectedness of the varying cultures and diasporas that have shaped his artistic and personal growth, and is creating work exploring this underlying theme, an interest that came through beautifully in the gentle, grounded way he led the room.

Shaihiem walked us through neurographic drawing step by step, no art background required. Just a willingness to put pen to canvas, sit with whatever came up, and see what it turned into. It was the perfect way to close a night that had been so full of talking, listening, and holding space for each other, a chance to turn all of it inward for a few final minutes before we packed up and went home.

A Love Letter to Everyone Who Made Lab 07 Possible 🖤

To our panelists, thank you for sharing your stories and wisdom.

To our artivists and creatives, thank you for trusting the room with your pieces, ideas and presence.

To our facilitator, thank you for making art feel accessible to everyone in that room.

To our partners and sponsors, thank you for believing in youth-led civic storytelling. A special thank you to the Ribbon Rouge Foundation, whose work advancing health equity and social justice through the arts for African, Caribbean, and Black communities in Alberta resonates deeply with this cohort’s mission.

And to everyone who showed up and stayed present, thank you for being part of something that felt like belonging.

Coming Up: The Advice Constellation - A Mentorship Circle in Edmonton, Aug 28.

A Small Announcement: We’re Officially an Eco Club!

Quick exciting news before we get into everything else. ECHOFORM has officially registered as an Eco Club under the Green Schools Volunteers Across Canada program, a partnership between UNAC and CSC. This opens the door for more youth-led environmental action alongside everything we’re already building in civic storytelling.

Link to Apply

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Lab 07: Arts, Storytelling & Public Imagination

Link to RSVP

This Friday, August 21, we’re gathering at EPL Milner from 6:00 to 8:30 PM for a lab that gets right into the creative heart of artivism.

Here’s what to expect:

A neurographic drawing workshop, facilitated by Shaihiem Small. This practice uses simple lines and shapes to process emotion and imagination on paper. No art background needed, just a willingness to let your hand move and see what comes out.

A story-circle panel, where our panelists will share how they use art and narrative to imagine different futures for their communities. Expect honesty, some laughter, and probably a few new questions to sit with afterward.

An artivists roundtable, bringing panelists and participants into direct conversation about what public imagination actually looks like in practice, not just in theory. RSVP for the Roundtable.

We’ll have prompts woven throughout the evening, so if you’re joining us, come ready to contribute a word, a thought, or a takeaway when the moment comes <3

Prairie Retreat: Deadline Approaching

The Prairie Retreat runs September 1 to 3, and this is where the cohort really comes together outside the usual Friday rhythm. The deadline to apply is August 23. Spaces are limited and we want to make sure everyone who wants to be there can be.

Link to Apply

Mentorship Circle: The Advice Constellation

On August 28, we’re hosting the Mentorship Circle at EPL Milner. This one is smaller and more intimate by design, a chance for participants to sit with mentors, ask the questions they’ve been holding onto, and leave with a little more clarity about their next steps. Food will be provided, and honestly, some of our best conversations all season have happened over a shared meal.

Link to RSVP

Save the Date: Public Showcase, October 17

Mark your calendars. On October 17, we’ll be at Edmonton City Hall from 11 AM to 3 PM for the Artivism Cohort Public Showcase. Join us to see the work our participants have created all season long, from the Ocean Futures Lab zine to everything beyond.

This showcase is the culmination of months of work, and we cannot wait to celebrate our young artivists in front of the community that has supported them.

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A Morning at Solomon College

This week, we also had the honor of visiting Solomon College to speak with a CLB 3 and 4 class, many of them newcomers to Canada still building their English. We shared what ECHOFORM is, what we believe, and how young people between 16 and 30 can get involved.

But the real gift was the conversation that followed.

We asked the students what word they’d use to describe their community, and whether they’d ever shared their story with someone new.

Then we asked if they had ever shared their story with someone new. The room opened up in ways we didn’t expect. One student told us that when she first arrived in Canada from Poland, the only English word she knew was “hi.” She got by on nodding and smiling, and somehow that turned into real friendships. It wasn’t easy at first, she said, but it happened.

These are students still finding their footing with the language, but they have stories about home, about the journey here, about hope for what comes next, and those stories matter just as much as any polished narrative.

It was a reminder that you do not need perfect English to have something worth saying. You just need the courage to say it. That is the whole spirit of artivism, and we were grateful to bring it into that classroom.

It was, honestly, one of those nights that reminds you why we do this work in the first place.

Here’s what came out of it <3

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Meet the Panelists

Dr. Lynette Shultz is an educator, researcher, and writer whose scholarship connects global citizenship, social and ecological justice, education, and democratic life. Her work explores how education can create space to critically examine systems of power and inequality, including the politics of knowledge and the influence of fossil-fuel interests on climate discourse.

Mariam Karmazanashvili is Project Director of the Sustainable Development Goals Council at the United Nations Association in Canada, where she founded and leads the SDG 5 Fellowship advancing gender equality through policy engagement and youth leadership. She is also the Initiative Coordination Lead with Women in International Security Canada and elected President of the Northwest Edmonton Electoral District Association of the Liberal Party of Canada. Her work bridges public policy, diplomacy, and multilateral dialogue on human rights and sustainable development.

Mambouomuni Kuverua is Curator of the Global Shapers Edmonton Hub, an initiative of the World Economic Forum. A Namibian-born youth leader and financial literacy advocate, he champions cross-sector partnerships that connect communities with industry, government, and nonprofits to build sustainable economic opportunity.

Jannie Edwards is a writer, teacher, and lifelong activist based in Edmonton, currently chairing the Edmonton chapter of Amnesty International. Her decades of community engagement span feminism, anti-war organizing, watershed protection, and Palestine solidarity work, alongside deep roots in Edmonton’s arts and literary communities.

Wajed Nadine El-Halabi is a project manager, facilitator, and researcher with the Alberta Council for Global Cooperation, supporting educational programming and youth initiatives including Alberta’s Top 30 Under 30. Her work centers cultural heritage, gender equality, and community resilience across Canada and the MENA region.

We were also honoured to have Mujahid Ahmed, Regional Manager for Northern Alberta at Islamic Relief Canada, confirmed as a panelist for this lab. Unfortunately he was unable to join us on the night. We hope to welcome him to a future lab.

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Where We Started

Before the panel began, we asked the room a simple question to open things up and settle in together: Where in the world do you feel most connected right now?

The answers ranged from the deeply personal, to the geographic and even to the political. Reading through them together set such a tender tone for the night, one that moved fluidly between the intimate and the systemic.

Because that’s what global citizenship actually is, when you get down to it.

It’s never just abstract.

It’s where you feel like you belong, and who you feel responsible to.

Connection as the Starting Point

One of our panelists opened with a line that stuck with a lot of us in the room: if the people in a single space became genuinely connected in their commitments and understanding, there’s almost nothing that couldn’t be done. It sounds like a big claim. But the examples that followed backed it up, one after another.

We heard about fog nets in Morocco, an ancient method of harvesting clean drinking water from fog, revitalized using technology developed by Canadian researchers and piloted across Chile and parts of Asia. A technology and a tradition, meeting across borders, to solve something as fundamental as access to water. That’s global solidarity in practice, not theory.

We heard about UNA-Canada’s youth cohort model, where 17 young people take on one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals each and build a project in their own community, whether that’s climate work in the North or newcomer support toolkits in Ontario. Small, local, specific projects that add up to something much larger.

We heard about Amnesty International’s Write for Rights campaign, and the reminder that sometimes the simple act of a country knowing the world is watching is enough to change an outcome. And alongside that, an honest acknowledgment that we’re living through one of the most difficult periods for human rights in recent memory.

Both things can be true at once, and there was something deeply moving about hearing that held so gently in the room.

That tension, hope and honesty sitting side by side, is worth sitting with.

Reading the World Before We Read the Word

A phrase from the panel that’s going to stay with a lot of us for a long time: we read the world before we can read the word. Before we can act on injustice, we have to be able to name what we’re actually looking at. Is this a system of racism? Is this patriarchy? Is this the colonial matrix showing up again in new packaging? Naming it is the first step toward finding the leverage points where change is actually possible.

We talked about the colonial matrix as something that ranked people’s humanness, connected to patriarchy, imperialism, and racism, and how those systems still shape the economic, social, and environmental problems we’re living through today. The point wasn’t to make anyone feel hopeless about that. It was the opposite: understanding it’s a system, not a battle between individuals, is what makes it possible to resist it collectively instead of getting stuck fighting each other.

Youth as Proof of Concept

Some of the most energizing parts of the conversation weren’t about big institutions at all. They were about what young people are already doing, right here, right now. A group of Edmonton high school students, politically activated after a teachers’ strike, raised money through concerts and art fairs with no starting budget, and built a mutual aid cabinet stocked with hygiene products for peers who were couch surfing. No fanfare. No large infrastructure. Just people noticing a need and meeting it, with whatever they had.

That’s the kind of example that makes “youth-led change” feel less like a slogan and more like a description of something already happening in this city, among people our cohort could easily know.

The Reaction Check

After the panel wrapped, we asked the room a quick gut-check question: What’s one system you interact with every day that you’d want to redesign?

The answers said a lot. Education showed up again and again, specifically the gap between memorizing definitions and actually living them out (one response called this out directly, connecting it back to the very concept of “global citizenship” we’d just spent an hour discussing, which felt like a full-circle moment). Healthcare, public transit, IRCC, and politics all came up too. These aren’t abstract systems for the people in that room. They’re daily friction points, carried quietly by real people.

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Closing Thoughts

We closed the night asking one more thing: One takeaway you’re leaving with tonight.

If there’s a thread running through the whole evening, it might be this: power always changes, but accountability stays. Institutions can be flawed and still worth reforming rather than discarding. Change can start with something as small as writing a letter or as large as an international summit, and both matter just as much. The scale of the problems in front of us is real. So is the resilience of the people working on them, especially the young people who keep showing up anyway, again and again.

Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, to Dr. Lynette Shultz, Mariam Karmazanashvili, Mambouomuni Kuverua, Jannie Edwards, and Wajed Nadine El-Halabi for the honesty and generosity they brought to this conversation. And thank you to everyone in the room who stayed present with it, art materials in hand, for two and a half hours of hard and hopeful conversation together.

Next Up: Arts, Storytelling & Public Imagination, Aug 21.

On August 7, ECHOFORM’s Artivism Cohort gathered at EPL Stanley A. Milner for Lab 05, Health Equity & Social Determinants of Health, our most layered conversation yet. This lab was also opened up for public drop-ins, so alongside our cohort, community members joined throughout the evening to sit in on the panel, explore the research posters on display, and add their voices to the conversation. Over the course of the evening, three presenters and six panelists helped us trace how housing, income, race, gender, immigration, environment, access and belonging quietly determine who gets to be well and who doesn’t.

This is our attempt to hold onto what was shared.

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Meet the Presenters

Tazakka Adie is a fourth-year neuroscience student from Indonesia with a research background in autism, neurodevelopment, and stroke. He founded the University of Alberta’s Friends of MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières, known in English as Doctors Without Borders) chapter, partly inspired by the occupation of Palestine and the stories of students on campus. Though he hasn’t been deployed on the ground himself, he’s spent time talking with doctors, nurses, and logistics workers who have, and has built the chapter around one goal: inspiring the next generation to engage honestly with humanitarian work.

Kayowe Mune is a global holistic wellness advocate and Board Member with the End FGM Canada Network, a national advocacy coalition working to eliminate female genital mutilation and cutting (FGM/C) through policy reform, public education, and cross-sector collaboration. Her mother, a Canadian social worker and Somali community elder, shaped her drive to advocate for survivors’ access to resources and support in Canada.

Farah Elgaweesh is a fourth-year Nursing Honours student at the University of Alberta and Environmental Sustainability Advocate with the Canadian Nursing Students’ Association, where she’s worked to integrate planetary health into nursing education nationally. She’s the founder of the Climate Change + Health Hub Student Council and also researches the prevention of online child sexual abuse, focusing on barriers that international and immigrant youth face when reporting sexual assault. Farah’s research poster on inequities in sexual assault reporting was on display throughout the evening alongside Asha’s poster on Black maternal health.

Meet the Panelists

Gbemi Adepeko (”FT”), Executive Director of Ribbon Rouge Foundation, is an internationally trained physician who has spent five years in Edmonton supporting vulnerable populations, including three years focused on HIV, STBBIs, and sexual and reproductive health within African, Caribbean, and Black (ACB) communities.

Destiny Johnston, Founder of Forward Frontline, is an emergency nurse and firefighter working to break the stigma around mental health for first responders and healthcare workers.

Asha Jama, nursing student and policy advocate, is a Project Officer with UNAC’s Eco Clubs Programme and Co-Founder of both CAN Initiative and UBORA Women’s Initiative. She has brought Black maternal health research directly to Canada’s Minister of Health and represented Canada at the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

Brendan McFatridge, Founder and Executive Director of Cards for Care Alberta, is a pre-medical student interested in the biopsychosocial side of healthcare, and works in hospice care.

Christine Davies, Director of Housing and Programs at NiGiNan Housing Ventures, is a proud Métis woman from Treaty 6 territory who draws on her own lived experience with houselessness to lead trauma-informed, culturally grounded housing work in Edmonton.

Nisreen Ibrahim, BA, BSW, RSW, works in a hospital setting while completing her Master of Social Work practicum with Sisters Dialogue, a grassroots organization offering culturally safe, healing-centered support for Muslim women and youth.

What Does Health Mean to You?

Before the panel began, we opened the room with a Slido word cloud: what does health mean to you? Twenty responses came in, and the word cloud that formed told its own story:

Safety and wellbeing rose to the top, alongside words like equitable, accessible, justice, sustainability, and stability. But some of the most striking entries pointed to something less commonly named in conversations about health: a “regulated nervous system,” “nurturing,” “peace,” “security.” Health, for this room, wasn’t defined narrowly as the absence of illness. It was defined as safety, as steadiness, as being met with care rather than judgment, themes that would echo through every story shared for the rest of the night.

Bearing Witness: Tazakka on Humanitarian Work

Tazakka opened the evening by grounding us in MSF’s founding commitment: to bear witness. To tell the stories of what’s happening on the ground, in refugee camps and service centres, without euphemism and without backing down.

He described MSF’s role as something closer to a reflex than a system, the way a body instinctively pulls back from a cliff edge. It’s meant to be temporary, a stopgap for when a healthcare system has already failed, not a replacement for one. By the time MSF is deployed, he said, you’re already looking at a shipwreck. The real question, the one that matters upstream, is which determinants failed, and why certain populations bear the brunt of that failure more than others.

He didn’t shy away from naming the uncomfortable parts either. The romanticization of humanitarian work, the pull toward photo ops instead of honest documentation, the risk of falling into a white saviour narrative even with good intentions. Drawing on Omar El Akkad’s writing, he noted that the West often imagines itself as the resistance when, in practice, it’s closer to the empire. The work of groups like his campus MSF chapter, he said, is to stay honest about that tension rather than pretend it doesn’t exist.

He closed with something hopeful: young people have real power to shift these systems. He pointed to the 1998 student uprising that helped end a 32-year dictatorship, one his own father took part in, as proof that student movements can move mountains.

Breaking the Silence: Kayowe on FGM/C

Kayowe shared her own experience as a survivor of female genital mutilation and cutting (FGM/C), which occurred during a childhood visit to Somalia. She spoke about the isolation that followed in the years after, including health impacts that are still poorly understood due to a lack of research into women's health, and the difficulty of navigating family expectations that didn't leave room for what she'd been through.

Her work with the End FGM Canada Network centers on making sure survivors are heard. The network connects over 100 survivors across Canada and uses unconventional tools, including a mascot called “Ms. Klitty,” to open conversations that are otherwise avoided out of shame or fear.

She also spoke about “vacation cutting,” where young girls are told they’re visiting family abroad with no idea what awaits them until they arrive.

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Story Circle: What Panelists Are Seeing on the Ground

Question 1: How do you see factors like housing, income, race, gender, immigration, environment or belonging showing up in the health outcomes of the communities you work with?

Panelists spoke from wildly different vantage points, but common threads emerged quickly.

Brendan spoke to belonging in hospice care, describing how family visitation, and by extension, a patient’s final months, often depends on socioeconomic status. Families with more flexibility can visit more, bring grandchildren, stay present. Families working multiple jobs often can’t.

Asha connected environmental and health inequity directly, pointing to Indigenous communities still fighting for access to clean drinking water, and the disproportionate impact of wildfires and flooding on families without the financial means to relocate. She referenced research linking segregation in Black American communities to elevated stress and autoimmune disease rates, and voiced a concern many in the room share: Alberta positioning itself as an AI data centre hub even after a summer of water shortages and conservation measures.

Christine spoke from lived experience of being unhoused as an Indigenous woman, now working within the very systems she once had to navigate. She named housing as a human right and spoke to the stigma still attached to substance use. She shared a story of a man so complex in his needs that staff, afraid to let him go without support, ended up over-medicating him until they found a sustainable path forward. Her closing point stayed with the room: we can build shelters, we can gather resources, but if we’re not building with intention about who they’re for, we’re just building houses, not homes.

Gbemi spoke to the layers underneath every person a system tends to flatten into a single label. Someone isn’t just “a person with an alcohol problem.” There’s income, sexuality, gender identity, and for transgender individuals in particular, the added weight of wondering whether how they present will affect the care they receive.

Nisreen echoed this, noting that the more layers a person carries, the more barriers they tend to face, and that how we show up for people, whether we truly see them or assume we already know who they are, changes everything.

Destiny described the reality facing the four reserves surrounding her community: residents often can’t access care at all, and when they do, they’re sent home without adequate resources, into eight-hour emergency room waits that have become the norm rather than the exception.

Question 2: A story that stays with you

Christine told the story of an individual with a wound severe enough to risk amputation, who wouldn’t let anyone call 911 out of fear rooted in past trauma with the healthcare system. Her team built trust slowly, sitting with them, doing wound care, talking, even as they pushed back in difficult ways at first. Eventually, at a ceremony, they reached for the drumsticks and began to play, and the room went silent. They later came to her organization's grand opening and sang. She called it proof of what's possible when we invest real time in people the system has already written off.

Destiny described a young person navigating a devastating set of losses all at once, a death in the family, parents in crisis, and a depth of grief that made it nearly impossible to leave bed some days. She spoke to how difficult it is to build trust with someone in that state in such a short window, and how much slower and more careful that kind of care has to be.

Brendan recalled working in a clinic at eighteen, treating a peer close to his own age who was navigating the foster care system and showing visible signs of self-harm. He had to send her back into the same circumstances that had brought her in, a moment that felt like watching a cycle repeat itself in real time.

Christine added a reflection on generational trauma, how normalized substance use can become within a family without anyone naming it. Rather than shielding her own children from her family's history, she's chosen to talk to them about it openly, so they understand where certain patterns come from and have another place to put their anger, like the gym, instead of repeating what they don't understand.

Nisreen shared the story of a young Muslim patient from Pakistan on a stroke unit, whose doctors weren’t culturally informed enough to understand that she relied on her mother for major decisions. Being asked what she personally wanted felt foreign, even like a betrayal. Once Nisreen took the time to understand that dynamic, the patient was able to be honest about what she needed and reach a decision she was actually comfortable with.

Asha described a patient facing a serious, advanced illness and a language barrier, whose face lit up the moment Asha addressed in her home language. It was a small moment with real clinical weight: care measurably improves when a patient shares language, culture, or race with their provider. She also spoke about co-founding UBORA after attending a corporate event as one of only two Black women in the room, present but without real influence. Since then, UBORA has helped get six women to a major conference without any of them paying out of pocket, and Asha’s advice to the room was direct: if attending costs you money you don’t have, weigh that cost honestly against the value of being there.

Gbemi closed the circle with an inspiring message of hope - the fact that this conversation was happening at all, and that it was young people facilitating it, was itself a source of hope for her. She asked the room to give itself a round of applause, and it did.

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Closing Remarks: Farah on Building a Healthier System Before Illness Begins

Our evening closed with Farah, who brought the room back to where these conversations often need to start: long before someone becomes a patient.

Farah spoke personally about her own path into nursing, tracing it back to her childhood and the experiences that first pulled her toward both climate advocacy and women’s health. That dual thread, environment and gender, has shaped nearly all of her work since: from her role advocating for planetary health education within nursing curricula nationally, to founding the Climate Change + Health Hub Student Council at the University of Alberta, to her current research into the barriers international and immigrant youth face when trying to report sexual assault.

Her closing vision tied the whole evening together. A truly sustainable healthcare system, she argued, can’t just treat illness after it happens. It has to take social determinants of health seriously before people ever become sick, addressing climate change, housing, gender inequity, and access as health interventions in their own right, not afterthoughts. It’s a vision built on the same throughline every panelist had touched on in their own way: that the conditions we’re born into shape our health long before any hospital does.

One Takeaway You’re Leaving With Tonight

We closed the evening with an open-text Slido prompt: one takeaway you’re leaving with tonight.

The responses reflected everything the room had just witnessed. Several people wrote simply about hope. Others left with something more instructive: a reminder to lead with an intersectional lens, a renewed sense of how to show up in advocacy spaces, and Christine’s line echoed back almost word for word, “we need to build homes, not buildings.” One response captured something quieter but just as important: “when there’s silence, the cycle continues.” And a few came back to where the evening began: finding new ways to use storytelling and art to talk about the issues that are hardest to name.

Closing Thoughts

If there’s one thread running through everything shared on Friday, and through the room’s own words by the end of the night, it’s this: health was never just clinical. It’s whether someone believes you when you tell them what happened to your body. It’s whether a system sees you as a whole person or as a single label. And even in the hardest parts of this conversation, hope kept surfacing, not as a platitude, but as something the room chose, again and again, to hold onto.

Thank you to every presenter and panelist who trusted our cohort, and our public drop-in guests, with their stories. This is what civic learning looks like when it refuses to look away.

Resources

Interested in learning more about FGM/C? Check out EndFGM’s online modules!

Next Up: Global Citizenship & Systems, Aug 14.

Some People Move through it Without Ever Noticing the Walls.

Others Spend their Whole Lives Feeling for the Door.

That was the question sitting at the center of our Civic Engagement & Democracy Lab, held at Edmonton Public Library’s Stanley A. Milner branch as part of the 2026 Artivism Cohort: who actually gets a seat in civic life, who controls that, and what does it take to feel like you belong and can meaningfully participate once you’re there.

This session was also proudly hosted in partnership with Table Topics in Your Neighbourhood by Apathy is Boring, a national initiative that trains young people to host their own civic conversations with friends and family.

We opened with a land acknowledgement grounding the evening in Treaty 6 territory and amiskwacîwâskahikan, naming that whose presence in civic life has been assumed and whose has been excluded by design is itself a question shaped by land, history and power. From there, we moved into a story circle panel with seven voices spanning youth governance, gender equity advocacy, stakeholder relations, community organizing, human rights education, civic storytelling and legal access.

Opening Reflection: Our Earliest Rooms

Before the panel began, we asked participants a simple but disarming question: what’s your earliest memory of being in, or kept out of, a room where a decision was being made?

The answers, submitted anonymously, painted a strikingly consistent picture. For many, the very first room they were ever excluded from wasn’t political at all. It was home. Several participants pointed to their parents deciding where the family would move, what schools they’d attend, or what clubs and activities they’d be enrolled in, all without any say of their own. Others described family vacations planned entirely by the adults in the room, or grown-ups only family meetings where children understood decisions were happening just beyond the door.

School surfaced again and again as the first real site of civic negotiation. Participants recalled decisions about which junior high they’d attend, conversations at parent-teacher meetings that shaped their academic path, and early experiences organizing school events, sometimes as one of the only times they felt genuinely inside the room rather than outside it.

A few reflections cut even deeper into what “being in the room” can feel like even when you’re technically present:

One participant described feeling alone in advisory committees they’d been invited onto specifically because of their diverse perspective, a reminder that a seat at the table doesn’t always come with a sense of belonging once you’re sitting in it. Another offered something quietly powerful: their earliest memory wasn’t of being kept out of a room, but of not even knowing such rooms existed in the first place. That distinction, between being excluded and being entirely unaware that a door exists to be excluded from, became one of the evening’s most resonant threads.

Core Thread: What Shapes Who Gets a Seat

The heart of the panel turned to the structural question underneath all of this: what actually determines who gets a seat in civic life, and who controls that.

Panelist reflections converged on a layered answer. One panelist, a civic storyteller and community engagement researcher, grounded the conversation in practical accessibility, using a quick interactive poll to show that while most people in the room actively used municipal services like ETS transit, bike lanes, and local businesses, very few were aware that the city even runs public consultation surveys. Beyond simple awareness gaps, she pointed to concrete logistical barriers, like the fact that civic events and focus groups rarely provide childcare, forcing parents and caregivers to choose between family responsibility and civic participation. Who gets a seat, she argued, often comes down to who has the information, time, and resources to show up in the first place.

Another panelist, representing a national youth civic engagement organization, offered a broader definition of civic engagement itself, arguing that it isn’t limited to formal political power. Volunteering, staying informed, and having meaningful community conversations all count as participation. But she drew an important line between participating and actually having impact, noting that a smaller, more exclusive group still controls whose voices get heard and acted upon.

Civic participation may be open to everyone, however, real influence remains gated.

A third panelist, whose work centers gender equity in municipal governance, widened the lens further, framing access through both systemic and individual dimensions. They named how identity factors like race, disability, education level, and newcomer status shape not just who gets invited to the table, but whether someone feels safe enough to speak freely once they arrive. They also spoke to how societal bias determines who is seen as a legitimate authority, noting that marginalized individuals, even when highly qualified, often have their expertise quietly devalued. Privilege, they added, tends to put people in the right place at the right time, generating leadership opportunities almost passively for those who already hold social advantage.

Another panelist, a longtime stakeholder relations and advocacy leader, focused on the more explicit, formal gatekeeping mechanisms at play, pointing to qualifications like university education as a determinant of who is invited into decision-making spaces in the first place. He emphasized that advocating for your own issues matters, but so does taking on responsibility for bridging the gap for community members who aren’t yet in the room.

A final voice in this round, representing a youth-led legal access organization, pushed back gently on the idea that civic power requires formal access at all, framing engagement instead as a grassroots, community-driven practice. She pointed to a national letter-writing campaign that successfully pressured the federal government to reverse proposed budget cuts to Women and Gender Equality Canada as proof that regular citizens, without high-level access, can still drive real policy change through collective action.

Why We Participate

We also asked panelists and participants why they choose to participate civically at all, or why they don’t.

One panelist answered through the lens of creativity, describing civic participation as an act of imagination. Many of our democratic institutions are centuries old, she noted, and while they may still function, they don’t have to stay static. She spoke about using creative thinking to challenge inherited systems, offering the example of shifting city council meetings to evening hours so working residents could actually attend. For her, participation is about dreaming up more accessible systems rather than settling for the ones we were handed.

After her, one of our attendees jumped in and spoke candidly about being newer to civic issues, describing curiosity as their entry point. Being surrounded by people passionate about civic life sparked their own desire to learn, engage and eventually bring that knowledge back to their own community.

Among the broader group of panelists and attendees, several powerful threads emerged. Representation and role modeling came up repeatedly, especially the importance of marginalized, queer and trans youth being visibly present in public spaces so future generations have a precedent for their own involvement. Others spoke about engagement as a responsibility to amplify voices beyond their own, creating pathways for community members who face systemic barriers to participation. Several participants with international backgrounds described how experience with corrupt or unresponsive political systems abroad shaped a deep appreciation for the avenues of public feedback available here, motivating them to use every opportunity to be heard. And running underneath nearly every reflection was a shared refusal to give in to apathy or burnout, even when progress feels incremental.

As one participant put it, doing the work scared is still doing the work, because empowering even one other person makes it worthwhile.

Another spoke about showing up not only to represent themselves, but to represent voices and opinions that have historically gone unheard. One newcomer described civic participation as a second chance they weren’t willing to let pass by. And one simple reflection captured the emotional undercurrent of the whole evening: keep moving forward, even when you fall back sometimes, because giving up is never really an option.

One Action to Open the Room

The panel’s final thread turned forward, asking each voice for one concrete action that could help open the room to more people.

One panelist spoke to personal bravery, urging people to push past imposter syndrome and act despite fear or self-doubt. Formal qualifications aren’t a prerequisite for driving change, they argued. Small, tangible steps, sending an email, speaking up, sharing an idea publicly, can be the catalyst for something much bigger.

Doing it scared is still doing it.

Another panelist described a two-part strategy rooted in using existing privilege and positional authority to open doors for others. In her own decision-making spaces, she actively names which community groups are missing from a given consultation and provides organizers with the contacts needed to bring those voices in. Just as importantly, she spoke about intentionally stepping aside from leadership roles herself, passing ownership to staff and emerging leaders to clear space for people who haven’t yet had the chance to lead.

Additionally, another panelist spoke to building civic literacy and demystifying political process, particularly for high school and university students across Alberta. Having found politics intimidating and jargon-heavy before studying political science themselves, they’re focused on stripping away those barriers through youth hubs, peer mentoring, and clear information about how policy consultations and parliamentary committees actually function, so young people understand their opinions genuinely matter.

Our civic storytelling panelist spoke to authenticity and the practice of actively bridging others into civic spaces, describing simple, practical actions like inviting friends to community discussions, sharing survey information, and consistently showing up. Small, personal outreach, she noted, is one of the most accessible ways anyone can expand civic participation in their own circle.

Our legal access panelist emphasized education and empowerment as the starting point for opening doors, arguing that being informed is the first step toward forming a meaningful opinion and participating effectively. She also named the internal barriers many marginalized individuals carry, often holding themselves back simply because they don’t see themselves represented in decision-making spaces. A seat at the table, she reminded us, is rarely handed over freely. It takes education, awareness, and the confidence to actively seek it out.

Other reflections from the room echoed and extended these ideas, from leading with curiosity and clearly communicating why someone has been invited into a space (so as not to tokenize them or expect them to speak for an entire community), to pointing toward underutilized avenues like federal parliamentary standing committees, which regularly open public testimony on legislation, yet remain largely unknown outside select circles. One particularly practical piece of advice offered to anyone trying to break into civic spaces: send a clear, direct outreach email stating who you are, what you’re trying to do, and why you’re reaching out.

What the Room Was Feeling

Throughout the evening, we checked in with two live reflections to capture the emotional pulse of the room.

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When asked for one word describing what it feels like to be in the room for decisions that affect you, responses spanned a wide emotional range. Tucked among these was also the word lonely, a quiet but important reminder that presence and belonging are not always the same thing.

Midway through the panel, we asked participants what they were sitting with in that moment:

Several folks described feeling more empowered to speak up, even without sharing aloud in the moment. Others named the complexity of what they were holding more directly, describing a rage born out of a need for hope, alongside passion, commitment, faith and a sense of being genuinely inspired by the people around them.

What We’re Carrying Forward

If there was a single thread tying the evening together, it’s this..

…a seat in the room is never simply given by a system and belonging isn’t guaranteed the moment you arrive.

Both have to be built, conversation by conversation, chair by chair.

Our cohort closed the night reflecting on what they’d carry forward and what action they might take next, creating space to turn tonight’s honesty into something lasting.

Resources

• Democracy Conversations Map: https://democracyconversations.com/

• Democracy Dictionary: https://assets.nationbuilder.com/apathyisboring/pages/1286/attachments/original/1725557522/AisB_-_dico_de%CC%81mocratique_vEN.pdf?1725557522

• Democracy Deck: https://prezi.com/view/qBEHOKj7vVi2jRCRUvbl/?referral_token=cZNsf0lnB3FN

• Engaged Edmonton: https://engaged.edmonton.ca

• How Our Government Works: https://assets.nationbuilder.com/apathyisboring/pages/1286/attachments/original/1725644890/AisB_-_How_our_government_works_vEN_%281%29.pdf?1725644890

Meet Our Panelists

Echo Keizer — Co-Chair, PAVA
Echo is a mixed-Inuk transmasculine person currently residing in amiskwacîwâskahikan, now known as Edmonton, and a graduate student in Public Health at the University of Alberta studying the wellbeing impacts of Bill 9 on Alberta’s Trans, Nonbinary, and gender-expansive community. Echo Co-Chairs the People’s Advocacy Voice of amiskwaciwâskahikan (PAVA), an organization advocating for gender equity for women and gender-diverse people in municipal governance, and is also active in the local Queer and Trans community.

Cherie Tellier-Klassen — Co-Chair, PAVA
Cherie is a leader known for her results-oriented approach to stakeholder relations and advocacy, with 24 years of experience spanning small business and nonprofit organizations. Over her career, she has secured major government funding, driven public policy change, built coalitions, and led innovative efforts for economic recovery during challenging times. She is also recognized for her commitment to advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion, as well as women’s empowerment and leadership across sectors, and has earned the Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee Medal for her impact in Alberta.

Sarah Alemu — Edmonton RISE Program Coordinator, Apathy is Boring
Sarah serves as the Edmonton RISE Program Coordinator with Apathy is Boring, an organization that has spent the last 20 years connecting, educating, and activating thousands of young people to participate in Canadian democracy. Apathy is Boring’s mission is to ensure every young person in Canada is civically and democratically engaged, whether through formal participation like voting, community organizing around issues they care about, or advocacy at the institutional level. Sarah is passionate about helping young people feel confident creating the change they want to see right here in Edmonton, facilitating community connections, learning, and conversations to understand how youth engage with democracy today. This lab was proudly hosted in partnership with Apathy is Boring’s Table Topics in Your Neighbourhood initiative, which trains young people across the country to host their own civic conversations with friends and family.

Tiffany Efird — Project Lead, Youth & Community Education, John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights (JHC)
Tiffany leads youth-centered and community educational programming at JHC, a non-profit education charity founded in 1999 that works to advance dignity, freedom, justice, and security through collaborative relationships and transformative education rooted in human rights and peacebuilding. JHC has worked nationally to address systemic inequalities, empower marginalized communities, and foster inclusive, rights-based solutions to complex social challenges. Tiffany’s programming focuses on areas including 2STQLGBIA+ inclusion, digital safety, and addressing gender-based violence.

Stella Igweamaka — Creator, For the Love of My City – YEG | Edmonton
Stella is a researcher, storyteller, and community engagement professional based in Edmonton, working at the intersection of public engagement, research, and strategy to help organizations better understand the communities they serve. She created For the Love of My City – YEG, a platform that encourages Edmontonians to discover their city, connect with their communities, and actively participate in shaping Edmonton’s future, with a particular focus on helping newcomers and women feel a stronger sense of belonging and confidence in civic life.

Joyce Cai — President, Youth Leaders in Law (YLL) Edmonton
Joyce is a high school student based in Edmonton and President of Youth Leaders in Law, a youth-led and youth-oriented non-profit active in Edmonton and across Canada. YLL’s mission is to encourage students from diverse backgrounds to pursue their interests in the humanities, particularly law, working to make legal knowledge and pathways into the profession more accessible before post-secondary education and to reduce the stigma around accessing justice. Joyce believes young people are the driving force of society and is passionate about supporting her peers in becoming more community-oriented and civically engaged.

Mirelle Djajasaputra — Young Politicians of Canada, Alberta Chapter
Mirelle serves as Co-Chair of YPC Alberta, the provincial arm of the Young Politicians of Canada, a national, non-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated to empowering the next generation of Canadian leaders. YPC delivers leadership programs, policy councils, task forces, and government placements, connecting emerging leaders with national and international governance networks to foster informed, engaged, and impactful citizenship.

Thank you to our panelists for the depth they brought to this conversation, and to everyone who showed up ready to name what’s true about the rooms we move through <3

Next up: Health Equity & Social Determinants of Health, Aug 7.

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That tension sat at the center of Lab 03 of the 2026 Artivism Cohort, held virtually and projected live for our in-person cohort participants at Edmonton Public Library’s Stanley A. Milner branch. Seven panelists, spanning journalism, academic research, survivor advocacy, political commentary, and grassroots content creation, joined us for a story circle conversation about media literacy and digital culture.

What emerged over the course of the evening was less a tidy set of talking points and more a shared reckoning with how deeply algorithms and platforms shape our information lives, and how unevenly the harm of those systems gets distributed.

Then, we opened the way we always do, with a simple question that turned out to have no simple answer: what does media literacy actually mean to you?

Media Literacy Isn’t One Thing

Erika Barootes described media literacy as fundamentally relational, something closer to a two way conversation than a one way stream of content to be passively absorbed. In her view, effective communication starts with understanding that no single message will resonate with everyone, and that narrowing in on a specific audience is what actually creates room for authenticity and transparency. She pointed to formats like casual get ready with me style videos as evidence that media, at its best, functions as an interactive tool for reaching people who might otherwise never engage with a message at all.

Nicolette Little, PhD, pushed the definition further. In her teaching at the University of Alberta, media literacy typically starts with identifying misinformation and disinformation within what she described as a post truth information environment. But she was clear that the definition can’t stop there. It also has to reckon with the histories and downstream consequences of emerging technologies themselves, including the significant environmental costs associated with AI systems, and the way algorithmic systems can produce outsized, sometimes severe harm for people based on race, gender, and other aspects of identity. For her, true media literacy means having a fuller understanding of how media systems work well enough to know when and how to place limits on them.

Isabella Wen offered a personal history that reframed the whole discussion, describing formative early experiences with a tightly controlled media environment that limited which stories were accessible to the public. That experience shaped her belief that the stories we’re exposed to directly determine who we come to empathize with, which problems feel urgent to us, and which futures we can even imagine as possible. After settling in Canada, she described falling in love with social media because of its capacity to build community and connect people to activists, artists, and leaders around the world. At the same time, she was direct about the underside of these same systems, noting that algorithms capable of building movements are equally capable of deepening polarization and spreading hatred faster than almost anything else. For her, media literacy is ultimately about figuring out how to protect media’s power to connect people across cultural lines while pushing for systems that are not designed to profit from division.

Gabrielle Barber traced her understanding of media literacy back to a very concrete moment: the confusion she saw building around an upcoming Alberta referendum, which prompted her to begin producing her own political explainer content a few months prior. She was candid about growing up almost entirely online and about the value of having been encouraged to consume political media critically from an early age, a foundation they felt obligated to pass on by making complicated political information more accessible to her peers. For Gabrielle, media literacy today goes well beyond parsing the accuracy of a single post or video essay. Because so much of political life now unfolds on social platforms, she framed media literacy as fundamentally about understanding how online content shapes real world opinions and actions, particularly for the large number of young people and older adults alike who rely almost entirely on social media for their political information.

Natasha Dixon brought the conversation into her work at the Digital Sexual Violence Support Centre, where media literacy is treated as a practical toolkit for adults to interpret the messages embedded in the content they consume, particularly around romance and sexual health. She noted that many people absorb their understanding of these topics through social media, television, radio, and music, often without recognizing the subtler forms of harmful messaging layered into that content. Some of it is easy to spot, like overtly misogynistic rhetoric associated with red pill ideology. Other forms are far more difficult to identify, such as individuals using the language of therapy or emotional support to manipulate or coerce. In her organization’s framing, media literacy is about equipping people to notice these subtler tactics and to distinguish genuine, reliable guidance from content creators offering advice without any real safety net behind it.

Karen Unland zoomed out to look at the incentives driving both the people creating content and the platforms hosting it. She encouraged the group to always ask whether a given piece of media is genuinely trying to build understanding, trying to persuade, trying to capture attention in order to sell something, or trying to provoke anger in service of a political goal. She was quick to point out that this tension between informing and manipulating audiences isn’t new. It has existed across newspapers, radio, and television long before the current platform era, even if the scale and speed have changed dramatically. She also spoke about the value of cross generational learning, noting how conversations across age groups within her own life help keep her current on shifting vocabulary and cultural context.

Noor Azrieh closed the round by framing media literacy as an active skill that has to be practiced continuously rather than something absorbed passively over time. She argued that this practice matters more than ever in Canada given how much mainstream news has receded from social platforms, leaving a media landscape increasingly populated by independent creators and small teams working with limited resources. For her, being media literate means understanding the current information environment well enough to recognize just how difficult it has become to access straightforward, reliable facts, down to noticing when a news article leaves a source unnamed or fails to disclose an underlying conflict of interest.

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Naming the Harm

The emotional and analytical center of the evening arrived when the conversation turned to algorithmic and platform violence, and to who bears the brunt of it.

Natasha did not soften the scale of the problem, and rightfully so. She described how the sexual exploitation of women and girls has effectively been commercialized into a career path within corners of the internet known as the manosphere, where creators run so called wealth academies that instruct young men and boys in how to manipulate, lure, and financially profit from women online. She cited data from the Canadian Centre for Child Protection indicating that roughly eighty four percent of targets of online extreme sexual violence are girls, alongside Statistics Canada findings that one in three women and girls report experiencing unwanted online sexual behaviour. She connected the pandemic era, along with the rapid rise of generative AI tools, to a further normalization and escalation of these harms, and argued that social media platforms actively enable this violence by fostering insular echo chambers, while provincial and federal legal frameworks still lack sufficient enforcement power to meaningfully deter perpetrators. The result, she said, is that women, girls, and gender diverse people continue to bear a disproportionate share of this harm.

Nicolette introduced a distinction that reshaped how the room understood the issue. She separated technology facilitated violence, in which a person actively uses digital tools to harass or harm someone, from algorithmic or platform violence, in which harm is produced automatically by a system’s design, without any single human perpetrator directly responsible in the moment. Her clearest example involved automated memory features built into many platforms, which resurface old photos without warning. For survivors of gender based violence, this kind of feature can unexpectedly bring back images connected to a past abuser. She traced this pattern back to who typically builds these platforms in the first place, a workforce that remains largely homogenous, predominantly white, privileged, and cisgender, and therefore often lacking the lived experience necessary to anticipate how a given design choice might end up harming marginalized users, women, and survivors specifically.

Erika reflected on this dynamic through the lens of parenting teenagers in the current media environment, describing the difficult position many parents find themselves in. Keeping kids off social platforms entirely may protect them from certain harms, but it can also isolate them socially and expose them to exclusion or bullying for simply not being present online. She described how engagement driven algorithms tend to reward the loudest and most well funded voices, creating what she called validation circles and echo chambers that normalize groupthink, the spread of deepfakes, and more subtle, passive forms of gender based harm. Because of this, she argued strongly that media literacy needs to become a consistent part of every classroom, teaching young people to stay curious, avoid relying on a single source, and actively cross check information before accepting it.

Gabrielle offered an example from her own content creation work, describing how posting an educational video about Alberta politics led to an inappropriate and objectifying message within hours of the post going live. They pointed out that a male peer posting the exact same political content would be extremely unlikely to face that kind of response, using her own experience to illustrate how online platforms routinely force women to navigate unwanted sexualization and harassment simply for participating in public discourse.

Noor turned attention toward institutional accountability, noting that government bodies are already fully aware of the scale of platform related violence, pointing specifically to acknowledgments from Canada’s Privacy Commissioner regarding the sheer volume of sexualized deepfake images being generated every hour. She was critical of how slowly government has moved to respond, arguing that years of delayed action have allowed the problem to compound into a far larger crisis than it needed to become, and called for greater public pressure on elected officials to address root causes rather than allowing harm to continue unchecked.

Isabella connected the abstract framing of algorithmic harm to a very personal turning point, describing how the term initially felt distant to her until she began receiving hateful comments on a feminist podcast project she had worked on. That experience shifted her understanding of online hostility away from a simple story about individual bad actors and toward a recognition that platform algorithms are often deliberately designed to reward and amplify divisive, hateful content because that content performs well. She spoke strongly in favour of building media literacy directly into K through 12 curricula, reflecting on how young people are exposed to intense online pressures without any structured guidance or open conversation at school to help them process it.

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Inside the Manosphere

We asked panelists to move past the abstraction of the term manosphere and describe, as concretely as possible, what that space actually looks like from the inside for the young men and boys who end up inside it.

Nicolette, drawing on her professional background advising on cases of gender motivated violence, described the manosphere as a rapidly growing ecosystem, particularly concentrated among men between eighteen and thirty five in countries including Canada, the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. She connected its growth to traditional gender socialization patterns that teach boys to be stoic and aggressive while teaching girls to be polite and deferential, a dynamic she argued creates an unhealthy cycle that feeds directly into gender based violence. She outlined four distinct currents within this broader ecosystem. Men’s Rights Activists tend to misuse statistics to argue that men are now the subjugated group in society. Pick up artists teach men to pursue women aggressively while disregarding any resistance or stated boundaries. Men Going Their Own Way advocate for fully withdrawing from relationships with women altogether. Involuntary celibates focus their frustration on an inability to find sexual partners, often romanticizing past eras in which women had far less social and personal autonomy. She singled out YouTube’s recommendation algorithm as one of the most powerful engines driving radicalization within this space, capable of pulling a user toward increasingly extreme content after only a small handful of searches. While she acknowledged that this broader online ecosystem is nuanced and includes some genuinely supportive spaces for men, she was clear that the volume of violent and radicalizing rhetoric circulating within it makes the overall picture deeply concerning.

Isabella pointed to a recent television series as the clearest cultural depiction she’d encountered of how a young person moves into this kind of ideological space. She emphasized that extremism rarely announces itself as extremism from the outset. It typically begins with ordinary loneliness and a lack of positive mentorship, conditions that manosphere content is specifically positioned to fill. She described one proposed counterweight she’d heard, centered on book clubs featuring fiction with emotionally open, empathetic male protagonists, offering young men alternative models of masculinity that push back against harmful hyper masculine posturing common in this space. She closed by stressing that effectively countering these harmful narratives requires positive role models, uplifting media representation, and solutions developed directly alongside men and boys rather than imposed on them from outside.

Karen approached the topic through the lens of parenting, reflecting on the factors she believes help shape a young person’s rejection of manosphere ideology. Growing up in a household that models non traditional gender roles can offer an early, lived example that challenges conventional expectations. Supportive friendships built around shared values, along with close and respectful relationships with women and girls in one’s own family, can further reinforce healthy attitudes. She also highlighted the value of an intentional approach to technology itself, describing the importance of a person actively choosing what content to seek out rather than passively accepting whatever a recommendation algorithm surfaces. Seeking out specific channels directly or connecting with friends through smaller, more curated online spaces, she noted, can help someone largely avoid algorithmic rabbit holes and retain a stronger sense of agency over their own online experience.

Noor argued that the manosphere should not be understood as some hidden, isolated corner of the internet, but rather as a pervasive force woven into everyday digital life. She connected young men’s vulnerability to this content to broader conditions of hopelessness, job instability, and economic anxiety facing a generation that, by many measures, is likely to be worse off financially than their parents. She was careful to note that these conditions do not excuse misogynistic behaviour, while still emphasizing that this sense of aimlessness makes young men considerably more susceptible to extremist recruitment. She also raised a difficult question about media accountability, pointing to the frequency with which mainstream outlets produce documentaries and features profiling extremist creators, and asking whether that kind of coverage genuinely serves the public or simply re-litigates harmful ideologies and grants them further attention and legitimacy.

Natasha closed this portion of the conversation by describing what a survivor centered, trauma informed approach to digital harm actually looks like in practice, and where mainstream platforms and policy continue to fall short. In practice, this approach centers on listening closely, validating a survivor’s experience, and meeting people exactly where they are without judgment. Unlike rigid clinical or police led processes that push survivors through fixed procedural checklists, this model supports people regardless of whatever coping strategies they’re using to get through a given day, and offers multiple flexible paths toward healing and justice, whether that means engaging with the criminal legal system, exploring transformative justice approaches, or simply having access to a safe space to process what happened. On the policy side, she pointed to Canadian legislative processes tied to Bills C 63 and C 27, arguing that public consultation on these bills has frequently been inaccessible to everyday people, particularly those working multiple jobs just to manage the cost of living. She also noted a broader pattern among tech companies and venture capital investors, who tend to gravitate toward profitable, surface level products such as tracking or mood monitoring apps that treat symptoms rather than addressing the underlying structures that enable violence and exploitation in the first place. In her view, platforms consistently prioritize profitability over meaningfully connecting survivors with immediate, practical support.

Gabrielle added a final layer to this thread, describing how involvement in the manosphere often begins through something as seemingly harmless as ironic humour, which can gradually erode empathy, normalize misogynistic attitudes, and nudge young men toward more extreme political positions over time. Shifting to her own work producing political explainer videos, she described the ongoing challenge of balancing thorough research against video length and viewer retention. She emphasized that staying strictly non partisan, neutral, and fact focused has been essential to building trust with her audience, since that approach allows her content to reach conservative leaning viewers who might otherwise dismiss anything perceived as politically biased.

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What We’re Carrying Forward

After the panel, we surveyed participants again, asking “what is one word or phrase you are sitting with right now?”

If there was a single thread tying all seven voices together across the evening, it’s this. Platforms are not neutral. They are built by people, shaped by specific incentives, and those incentives determine who ends up protected and who ends up targeted. Throughout the conversation, media literacy was never framed as a personal failing that individuals simply need to overcome on their own. It was framed instead as a form of civic knowledge, something that has to be deliberately taught, consistently practiced, and actively demanded of the systems producing and distributing our information in the first place.

Media doesn’t just report the world. It decides who gets seen in it. Literacy is how we take that power back.

Our cohort closed the evening the way we always do, by creating something directly from what we heard.

Thank you to our panelists, Isabella Wen, Karen Unland, Erika Barootes, Nicolette Little, Natasha Dixon, Gabrielle Barber, and Noor Azrieh, for the honesty and expertise they brought to this conversation.

Meet Our Panelists

Isabella Wen — a young storyteller who believes in hope as a radical act of resistance. Isabella founded a public speaking workshop series that’s reached over 300 youth, co-founded a feminist media organization, and leads a global public health communications team at UBC. She currently serves as Canada’s representative to the TikTok Global Youth Council.

Karen Unland — Co-Founder of Taproot Publishing and Editor-in-Chief of Taproot Edmonton, which delivers reliable, original local journalism, newsletters and podcasts for the Edmonton region. Before Taproot, Karen worked at the Edmonton Journal and started the Alberta Podcast Network.

Erika Barootes — a Canadian public affairs professional, commentator and podcaster who has worked with premiers, served as founding president of a provincial political party, and now advises companies on brand, reputation and advocacy. She’s co-host of The Discourse Podcast and just launched The Erika Barootes Show: How the West Is Run w/Trending Politics CA.

Nicolette Little, PhD — Assistant Professor in the University of Alberta’s Media and Technology Studies program and Women’s and Gender Studies department, and Director of the Feminist Collaboratory and Data Visualization Centre. Her new book, From Red Dresses to Memory Stones, examines multimedia activism and gender-based violence in Canada. She researches algorithmic violence, the manosphere, and digital whisper networks, and has advised the federal government and law enforcement on media, gender and violence.

Natasha Dixon — Founder and Executive Director of the Digital Sexual Violence Support Centre, a BIPOC and survivor-led non-profit supporting adults who’ve experienced technology-facilitated sexual violence through peer support, workshops and policy advocacy. Natasha draws on Black feminist participatory action research and Caribbean and Indigenous oral history traditions in her work.

Gabrielle Barber — heading into their first year of graduate studies in cultural anthropology at the University of Calgary. Gabrielle researches and posts informative videos about Alberta politics on social media, working to make sure Albertans are informed about what’s happening in their province.

Noor Azrieh — a journalist, producer, and award-winning host of Canadaland Politics. She’s produced long-form documentaries and reported on major international investigations, and also co-hosts Canadaland’s media criticism show. Noor is a graduate of Carleton University’s journalism program.

Next up: Civic Engagement & Democracy, July 31.

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Visit Righting Relations' Website

The Collaborative Community Builders Retreat felt less like an event and more like stepping into a living, breathing community. From the moment I arrived in Ottawa and saw Ally holding a “Righting Relations” sign at the airport, I knew this weekend was going to be something special. Waiting there with Deep, Em, Gop and Iris, chatting, laughing and imagining what the weekend would hold, I could already sense that this was going to be a space where connection mattered as much as content. Arriving at the cabin, meeting the rest of the fellows, and sharing our first dinner together that night cemented that feeling. The meals, the conversations, the little moments of awkward introductions turning into laughter… all of it reminded me that relationship-building is the foundation of any movement, and that you can feel it in a room almost instantly.

The lightning talks were inspiring to say the least. We explored everything from storytelling, media advocacy and impact evaluation to housing justice, disability justice, climate grief, community gardens, zines and survivor-led healing. What stood out most was how deeply personal and accessible the learning felt. People shared not just strategies and frameworks, but uncertainty and care. Each presentation carried the speaker’s lived experience at its core, and it was incredible to see how knowledge drawn from real life resonates in ways credentials alone never could. Themes kept emerging: listening before acting, creating spaces that welcome contribution instead of just consumption and thinking collaboratively with communities instead of for them.

My own lightning talk was on digital storytelling for community engagement. I drew from my experience moving between cultures, originally from Nigeria, now rooted in Canada, and from my work in advocacy and nonprofit communications. I spoke about how digital storytelling isn’t just content creation or visibility, but a powerful tool for relationship-building. There are real barriers to engagement, including apathy, and stories that feel familiar and safe can lower these barriers. I shared examples of community-based knowledge revealing blind spots, like accessibility during emergencies, fire alarms and stairs, and thinking about wheelchair users. These are lessons we can only learn when we center voices often overlooked. I discussed imperfection, care and consent in storytelling, and the ways digital spaces can extend connection across distance while acknowledging the real risks they carry. Lastly, I encouraged everyone to think critically about these spaces and to advocate for better policies and safer platforms, so that digital community-building can happen responsibly and sustainably.

Beyond the formal sessions, some of the most meaningful moments unfolded organically: making zines together, lingering over incredible lunches and hot chocolate, and winding down with movies. One night the fireplace went a little wild and the house filled with smoke, but instead of panicking, we laughed and helped each other out. Late-night conversations stretched into quiet hours, creating a sense of intimacy and belonging. Even the logistics, like catching an early Uber to the airport, became part of the shared story of the retreat.

On the final day, as we wrapped up the remaining lightning talks and gathered around for s’mores, it was hard not to feel a little bittersweet. The weekend had been intense, warm, and full of learning, and the connections formed felt like they could carry long after we left. I left with renewed energy for collaboration, advocacy and care, and a reminder that while visibility may be temporary, real community, nurtured with intention, is what sustains movements. Righting Relations created a space where diverse approaches to social change could coexist, inform one another, and feel grounded in trust and curiosity. That weekend will stay with me, not just for the skills and knowledge shared, but for the laughter, the fireside chaos, the late-night conversations, and the undeniable sense that together we can create spaces where everyone
can show up fully.

Written by An̄urika (Rika) Onyenso (she/her), Founder, ECHOFORM

Written from Treaty 6 territory, with thanks for time spent in the Ottawa–Gatineau region, on the unceded and unsurrendered territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.

Both were held with deep gratitude to two partner organizations doing incredible land-based work: VIDEA’s Beyond the River team and Touch Grass Club. This wouldn’t be possible without them.

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Grounding ourselves first

Before any testing or teaching began, Beyond the River led us through a tobacco offering, an Indigenous practice of introducing ourselves to the land and asking permission to be there. It set the tone for everything that followed. We weren’t arriving at the river as visitors passing through; we were arriving as guests asking to be in right relationship with the water, the plants and the people who have cared for this place for generations.

This is the piece of civic storytelling and artivism work that’s easy to rush past, but at ECHOFORM we do our best not to. Showing up with humility, and letting land-based protocols shape how we learn, is as much a part of the lab as anything we did with our hands afterward.

Meet Beyond the River

Beyond the River is a group of five First Nations, Métis and Inuit emerging leaders living and working in Amiskwacîwâskahikan, restoring relationships with the lands and waters they call home.

Their goals as a team:

1. Work with local schools to educate students on First Nations and Metis history and relationships with the river valley

2. Develop a wholistic – whole person, whole ecosystem – urban Indigenous fish habitat restoration plan

3. Share what we learn and encourage youth-led, urban restoration projects in other territories

Their team is rooted in the river valley but loves meeting other people and organizations doing land-based or youth-led climate work. You can connect with them through Hillary at hronald@videa.ca.

We had the privilege of learning from three members of the Beyond the River team during Lab 02:

Hillary Ronald (she/her/hers), Head of Climate Team, is passionate about climate justice and how it intersects with basically everything (and promises to have a podcast to back up all her fun facts one day). She is a settler on both sides of her family and currently lives and works on Ləkʷəŋən territory. She has the best job working with Indigenous youth, and not-so-secretly hopes to be part of a seaweed farming collective in the future.

Josephine Coyes-Loiselle is a community coordinator in amiskwâskahikan, where she has been involved in leading several local projects for the past two years. She feels very lucky to have grown up close to the river valley where she’s spent so much time over the years, and was excited to connect our cohort with the community and share the history of this beloved place.

Janelle Spry Papastesis introduced herself to us in Cree: tânisi, nitsîyihkâson Janelle Spry Papastesis, nemês Sakahikan ohci nîya — hello, my name is Janelle Spry Papastesis (pah-pah-sh-chees), which means woodpecker. She is from Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation in Treaty 8 territory but resides in Edmonton (Beaver Hills). She’s always felt connected to the city knowing her family lived here before it became a city, and brought her Cree culture into the lab with a hope of encouraging youth not to be afraid to reconnect and build a strong relationship with the land again.

Getting our hands in the water

With Hillary, Josephine and Janelle guiding us, our cohort got into water testing along the river, learning firsthand what indicators tell us about the health of the ecosystem we’re all downstream of.

Full water test results: Buena Vista Dog Park Boat Launch — Water Rangers

Meet Touch Grass Club

Touch Grass Club’s slogan says it plainly, “connecting urban dwellers to nature and one another”. Their goal is to reduce barriers for people to access nature and land-based learning within Amiskwaciy-wâskahikan, meeting people where they’re at in their own nature learning journey so they can become better advocates for the health of Alberta’s unique ecosystems and the diverse Indigenous cultures across the province.

Maia Renata Mudrić joined us to help identify native plant species along the trail. Maia was born in Calgary and raised in between Edmonton, Red Willow in the County of Stettler, and the concrete landscape of Calgary. Travelling a lot as a child made her look for constants and the sky was always a constant friend. Watching it growing up, she noticed how the seasons moved along with the Pleiades, only high in the sky mid-winter, and later learned her own name was drawn from that same star cluster, named by ancient Greek astronomers and mythologists as one of the seven sisters. Her curiosity in the sky grew until she could see the night sky properly and today, that same sky she saw as a child now takes multiple hours of travel outside city limits to find. Increased development within the County of Stettler may have already taken away the night sky of her childhood.

Maia shares that she hopes to one day show her own children the dustlanes of the Milky Way, and is honest about the tension in that hope: we live in a society that believes in infinite growth within a closed system, a thought pattern that has already destroyed ecosystems irreparably, even here in Alberta. Natural cycles are being suppressed or disrupted, along with the cultures that built relationships to the landscape over thousands of years. The night sky’s clarity can return once the lights stop being so bright, but nature and culture aren’t so easy to repair once lost. Maia completed her Bachelor of Science with a major in Physics, a minor in Mathematics, and a certificate of leadership in 2023, and has worked in science communications since 2018. She’s passionate about humanity and our relationship to the one thing that gives us life: our planet.

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The Virtual Flower Walk Edition

For cohort members joining us virtually, we ran a parallel activity so no one missed the chance to slow down and notice the land where they are. Here’s how it went:

You’ll need: cardboard, markers, a pencil (for poking holes)

1. Create Your Vase: Draw and decorate a vase on your cardboard, then poke small holes along the top.

2. Take a Flower Walk: Explore your neighbourhood, yard, park or trail. Slow down, notice what’s growing, and collect a few flowers or plants (only where it’s okay to pick them!).

3. Make Your Arrangement: Slide your stems into the holes to create your own floral artwork.

4. Reflect & Share: Notice something new. Learn the name of one plant if you can, then photograph or film your walk and finished piece. Anything you share becomes part of our collective installation.

Questions about the virtual edition can always be sent to info@echoxform.org.

Why this matters to ECHOFORM

Civic storytelling isn’t only about the stories we tell afterward; it’s about the practices we build while we’re learning. Lab 02 held space for reciprocity, curiosity and care, whether that showed up as a tobacco offering on the riverbank, a water sample pulled by cohort hands, a native plant named by Maia, or a paper vase filled with backyard flowers hundreds of kilometres away.

It reminded our cohort that climate futures aren’t abstract: they’re written in water quality data, in the plants growing along a riverbank, in the stars a person can or can’t see from their childhood home, and in whether we remembered to ask the land’s permission before we got started.

Huge thanks to Hillary, Josephine, and Janelle from VIDEA’s Beyond the River team, and to Maia from Touch Grass Club, for grounding us in both protocol and practice. This wouldn’t be possible without you.

Next up: Media Literacy & Digital Culture, July 24.

Resources

• Link to Our Group’s Water Testing Observations: https://data.waterrangers.com/locations/buena-vista-dog-park-boat-launch

• Learn more about VIDEA’s Beyond the River team, and how to get involved in water testing: videa.ca/ourwork/beyond-the-river or contact Hillary directly at hronald@videa.ca

• Check out Touch Grass Club’s upcoming opportunities: linktr.ee/touchgrassclub.yeg

The timing wasn’t accidental.

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The lab landed in the week of World Population Day, which asks the world to think about the people behind population numbers. We sharpened that question for our own purposes: World Population Day asks who is counted. Belonging & Justice asks who is cared for, heard, housed, fed and able to participate.

We opened the way ECHOFORM opens everything: by grounding in land, and then by asking a deceptively simple question.

What does home mean to you?

The room’s answers, gathered anonymously, set the tone for the whole evening. Home is safety. Home is chosen family. Home is community, “a village of loving people.” Home is a decompression space. Home is Mother Earth. Across every response, the same threads: safety, belonging, comfort, a place where I can be my true self. Nobody said an address.

The story circle

Our panel wasn't a panel in the usual sense. It was a story circle: four community voices whose work lives exactly where belonging and justice collide:

Nancy Tangon, co-founder of Canada Confesses, brought a perspective grounded in psychology, digital safety, youth leadership, and community engagement. Through Canada Confesses, a youth-led nonprofit that has reached more than 70,000 people, she works to amplify marginalized voices through anonymous storytelling and challenge the myth that Canada is free from racism and systemic inequities.

Kieran Ramnarine (he/him/any) of Mutual Aid Munchies connected his work as an educator and researcher with more than a decade of grassroots organizing. A computer scientist and experiential learning coordinator at the University of Alberta, he explores the intersection of technology and social justice while helping lead a mutual aid collective that supports unhoused neighbours through food, relationship-building, and collective care.

Camille, a volunteer with Food Not Bombs Edmonton since 2022, spoke from hands-on experience organizing community meals, coordinating food and clothing donations, and advocating alongside unhoused Edmontonians and other marginalized communities. Food Not Bombs Edmonton is a non-hierarchical volunteer network rooted in veganism, pacifism, and anti-capitalism that advances food security through free meal programs and mutual aid.

Yusi Mohammed of Righting Relations brought the perspective of a Somali multidisciplinary creative who believes stories have the power to heal, connect, and transform. Through poetry, spoken word, and community facilitation, she explores identity, humanity, and the wisdom of lived experience. Righting Relations supports adult educators and community organizers with the space, relationships, and resources needed to organize for social change.

When we asked who is missing from conversations about community wellbeing, the panel’s answers converged from very different directions. We heard about why marginalized people hesitate to speak at all: fear of the aftermath of speaking up, and why online communities can feel safer than physical ones, a reminder that the assumption of Canada as a universally safe place doesn’t match everyone’s experience. We heard how economic systems shape which resources are accessible to whom, alongside an uncomfortable inventory each of us was asked to sit with: how might our own workplaces, friendships, educations and communities quietly perpetuate the same barriers?

And we heard the panel dismantle, plainly and patiently, some of the most persistent public myths about homelessness: that it is a choice, that it implies criminality, that addiction defines it. One question posed to the room reordered assumptions entirely: which came first, the homelessness or the addiction? Behind every statistic, the panel reminded us, is simply a person, one who deserves water, eye contact, and to be treated as human.

On belonging

What makes true belonging possible? A safe place where people can be themselves, in the way they want to be, not defined by what colonial expectations say that should look like. Belonging as a practice scaled to whatever you have: resources if you have them, and if you don’t, eye contact, a smile, a conversation. And belonging as something environmental, the panel reflected on how spaces like volunteering can bring someone closer to the person they want to become, especially for newcomers navigating exclusion.

On harm, and on rest

On how harm shows up in systems, we heard that providing access to opportunity, treating people as capable rather than forcing them into roles based on circumstance, is itself a form of justice. We also heard honest disillusionment: that justice as an institution serves some and fails others, and that skepticism of it is earned.

And the panel named something this field almost never says out loud: burnout affects everyone in community work, and we don’t talk enough about rest. Learn to rest, the room was told. Build compassion intentionally. There will always be work tomorrow.

On storytelling

This being ECHOFORM, we asked what storytelling can actually shift. One answer belongs on our wall: lived experience is storytelling, and should be treated as a form of data. We heard how a single chance conversation can turn a stranger into an ally and a contributor. And we heard the ethics that must travel with every story: the way you tell a story matters. Use the vocabulary of the person whose story it is. Always ask consent before carrying someone’s story further.

That last principle shapes this very post, which is why you’re reading themes and ideas here rather than the personal stories generously shared in the room. Some things belong to the circle that held them.

What the room was sitting with

Mid-panel, we asked everyone, in the room and online, what word or phrase they were sitting with. Thirty-two responses came back: Surviving not living. Nothing about us should be without us. Rest. Burnout. Advocacy. Accessibility. Absorb stories. Compassion. Community.

A word cloud as honest as any evaluation we could design.

From what we heard to what we carry

Then, as always, we made things. Participants chose their creative paths and began the first responses that will grow into the Civic Zine, the October showcase, and beyond.

The panel’s parting advice for young people was strikingly consistent: young people are already more open-minded, better informed, and more invested in building a better world than they’re given credit for. You have power, start small and local. Don’t get stuck picking at the holes in the system; you’ll always find them. Focus on what you can do. Find a group, volunteer for a single day, see what it’s like. Absorb as many stories as you can. And learn to rest as deliberately as you schedule everything else.

Six labs to go. But the frame is set, and it came from the room itself: belonging is not just being invited in. Justice is helping shape the conditions that make belonging possible.

With enormous thanks to our four panelists, Nancy Tangon (Canada Confesses), Kieran Ramnarine (Mutual Aid Munchies), Camille (Food Not Bombs Edmonton), and Yusi Mohammed (Righting Relations), and to our volunteers who made the evening run.

Next up: Climate Futures, July 17.

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On July 3rd, fifteen people logged onto a call from across Canada and beyond, some from Edmonton, some joining from other provinces, a few from further afield, and officially became the 2026 Artivism Cohort. I was one of them too, which still feels a little strange to write, founding this thing and also being one of the fifteen learning alongside everyone else.

We opened the session the way ECHOFORM opens most things, by asking folks icebreaker questions:

This time, the question was “how are you arriving tonight?”

And at the end of the session, we checked in again, this time flipping the question to “how are you leaving tonight?”.

Similarly excited was the top pick from our participants!

Now, the cohort moves into its working rhythm:

Weekly Friday labs running from July 10 through August 21 at EPL Stanley A. Milner, each one building a different muscle, storytelling, art, research, public dialogue, the tools ECHOFORM has always been built around. After the labs wrap, the group comes together for a Mentorship Circle, and then a retreat in September before the work goes public later this year.

• Onboarding — July 3rd. The cohort’s first session ran virtually, bringing together all fifteen participants for introductions, an overview of the program, and that opening pair of questions about arriving and leaving.

• Coming up: Weekly Labs, July 10 to August 21. Seven Friday sessions at EPL Stanley A. Milner, each one a different entry point into civic storytelling, from lived experience to public voice.

• The Advice Constellation: A Mentorship Circle in Edmonton — August 28. Following the labs, the cohort gathers for a dedicated mentorship session. Registration is open now on Eventbrite. RSVP early. Spots are limited to 20 for the public.

• Retreat — September. Details to come as the date and venue are finalized.

• Public Showcase — October. We’re not locking in a date publicly just yet, but the cohort’s work will be shared with the community this fall.

• Call for Volunteers. We’re looking for a few extra hands to support lab logistics, photography, and day-of coordination. If you or someone you know wants to be part of this from the ground, reach out.

The other panelists were Helen Majemite of the Women for Social and Rural Development Initiative, Shirlyn Minoja Kunaratnam of Brandon University and Community Futures Westman, and Grace Kisetu of Ihema Homes and Nature. Four different sectors, four different countries of focus, all of us staring at slightly different versions of the same Zoom grid, and somehow every answer kept landing in the same place.

Before getting into the questions, I opened by talking about ECHOFORM and the idea it is built on, that young people’s lived experience is not just personal story, it is civic knowledge.

I talked a bit about my own path too, growing up in Nigeria, arriving in Canada as an international student right before the pandemic, living in Camrose during university, and eventually building a life in Edmonton.

Moving through that many places teaches you fast how much place actually matters, how much access matters, how much young people are constantly weighing where they can build a life versus where they are just getting by.

From there, the panel moved into its first real question: whether storytelling can shift how people see rural communities, from places people leave to places people build. My answer kept coming back to one idea: storytelling changes who gets to define a place. Rural communities get talked about mostly through what they lack, and that framing erases what is actually there, the knowledge, the mutual aid, the entrepreneurship, the land-based practices. When people tell their own stories instead of having them summarized by someone else, you get a much more accurate map of what is working and what is not.

Building on that, the second question asked what a thriving rural community looks like for young people today.

My answer was that thriving means having a real choice.

Not everyone needs to stay, not everyone needs to leave, but everyone deserves both options to be genuinely on the table.

That takes real investment: education and skills pathways, housing, broadband, mental health support, economic opportunity that is not limited to one or two industries, and actual belonging for newcomer, equity-seeking, disabled, and low-income youth specifically.

I said something on the panel I still stand behind fully: opportunity should not depend on your postal code.

That question naturally set up the third, which pushed toward policy: how rural youth get meaningfully engaged in shaping decisions on climate and economic opportunity.

My answer was simple.

Stop treating youth engagement as consultation after the fact and start treating it as shared decision-making from the start, meaning youth are in the room co-creating, designing and budgeting, not just brought in to react to a finished plan.

Pay people for their time. Use engagement methods that meet people where they are, storytelling, art, workshops, not only formal town halls. And take local knowledge seriously as a form of expertise, because rural youth understand their own climate risks, transportation gaps, and isolation in ways no outside report fully captures.

By the end, one line from the panel prep kept echoing for me and I think it is the truest summary of the whole hour: rural communities are not behind, they are under-resourced, under-listened to and underestimated.

Treat young people’s lived experience as civic knowledge instead of anecdote, and you start to see what rural communities actually are, places of innovation, belonging, climate leadership, and real opportunity. I logged off still thinking about it, which is, I think, the best a webinar can do <3

Written by An̄urika (Rika) Onyenso (she/her), Founder, ECHOFORM

Why does an inland city need an ocean event at all?

The city, it turns out, had an answer ready.

The event reached capacity before the evening began: 68 registrations for a 65-person venue, with five additional people placed on a waitlist due to space limitations. Around 50 community members joined us in person, ready to learn, reflect, create and rethink their relationship with water.

Before we got anywhere near that question, though, we opened, as ECHOFORM tries to do with everything, by naming the land.

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Global Shapers Edmonton acknowledged that the hub operates in Treaty 6 territory, home to the Nêhiyaw, Dené, Anishinaabe, Nakota Isga, and Niitsitapi peoples, the Métis, and one of the largest Inuit communities south of the 60th parallel.

ECHOFORM’s own acknowledgment sits alongside that, a reminder that even our digital spaces rest on land with a history we are accountable to, not just the room we happened to be standing in that night.

With that grounding in place, the panel took on the actual question of the evening.

Titled “Water, Climate & Connection,” the conversation explored how Edmonton’s waters connect us to much larger systems.

Jenet Dooley, a wetland ecologist with more than 15 years of experience and seven of those years at the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute, talked about the quiet complexity of Alberta’s wetlands and how much of ocean health actually starts inland, in the biotic and abiotic relationships most people never think to look for, the kind of ecosystem drama that unfolds in total silence a few feet under a marsh.

Amy Charles, Métis Indigenous Knowledge and Relations Specialist at Ocean Wise, brought a relational lens grounded in reciprocity and story, work she also carries through her nonprofit leadership with the Calgary Queer Arts Society and the Canadian Network for Ocean Education.

Nicholas Menon, Supervisor of Cost Estimating at Enbridge and a P.Eng. with over a decade in infrastructure and energy transition work, connected the dots between large-scale industrial decisions and ecological risk, drawing on his volunteer work installing solar grids in Peru and his current role helping guide the Homestead Investment Co-operative’s purchase of the Alberta Block downtown.

Three very different careers, all circling the same truth:

Water connects us.

Oceans absorb the majority of excess heat from climate change, and Edmonton’s river valley and watersheds connect this landlocked city to larger water systems whether we notice it or not.

The conversation moved beyond expertise. Panelists reflected on the bodies of water that shaped them personally, what water injustice looks like in communities, how ocean-driven climate patterns affect inland regions, and what gives them hope for the future.

The final invitation to the room was simple:

Carry those thoughts to your canvas.

Before the creative session began, participants co-created a community learning agreement:

• Passing or listening only was always fine.

• Speak from your own experience, not assumptions about someone else’s.

• Leave room for different relationships to water.

• Step forward when you have something to contribute, step back so someone else can.

• Respond to other people’s creative work with curiosity, not critique.

• Keep personal stories in the room unless you have permission to carry them further, and

• Ask before photographing anyone’s art.

With that agreement in place, we moved into the part people actually came for: paint, write, or reflect, whichever medium felt right, following your own relationship to water.

We called it Love Letters to Water, and the room genuinely did turn quiet in that focused, brush-in-hand way, punctuated only by the occasional laugh at someone’s very confident, very abstract lake.

Participants created paintings, poems, and reflections that explored water as memory, connection, identity, and responsibility.

The feedback afterwards showed the impact of creating space for both learning and reflection:

“They got me to think more about local wetlands that I was not aware of.”

“Each story is like the water, every environment is needed to survive.”

“As we go about our routine on a daily basis, we don’t realize how much water impacts all aspects of our life.”

Another participant shared that they learned about “salt water bodies and peat in Alberta,” a reminder that water stories exist everywhere, including far from the ocean. Everyone who participated left with a virtual certificate that night too.

Selected pieces will continue through the Love Letters to Water digital zine, with additional work being shared through ECHOFORM’s Fall showcase.

This event was made possible because of community.

Thank you to our project leads, volunteers, speakers, partners, and every participant who showed up with curiosity and care.

Thank you to Global Shapers Edmonton for co-hosting this experience with us, and to Edmonton Public Library for providing the space where these conversations could happen.

Photo credits @thekingsfame: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1UHXzZw7_jQIZ8zxRLk1QucEJaAETwQG-?usp=drive_link.

Food provided by UNIQ Pizza and Dil E Punjab Sweets and Restaurant.

This whole event was made possible through the generous support of ECOP Canada, the UN Ocean Decade and the SOI Foundation, with support from the Howl Experience, Righting Relations, Women and Gender Equality Canada and Ocean Week Canada.

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A landlocked city may not have an ocean at its doorstep.

But every community has a relationship with water.

And every story helps us remember that.

I left Edmonton for Calgary without knowing exactly what the next six days would look like. I knew it was a Howl Experience program, six days of land-based learning in Canmore and the surrounding Treaty 7 region, Îyârhe Nakoda, Niitsitapi, Tsuut’ina, and Métis Nation of Alberta territory, and I knew it was going to ask something of me. What I did not know was that it would start with our group getting stuck at a bus stop.

But, the mountains have a way of teaching you patience before you even see them <3

…The plan was to meet the group at Crowfoot LRT. While we waited, a handful of us who’d arrived early ended up grabbing food together, which turned out to be the first real conversation of the trip. The bus itself was doing pickups from the airport before it got to us, and by the time it rolled up, the folks already on board had apparently circled the city more than once trying to find everyone. We gave them a hard time about it for the rest of the week, and honestly, that shared delay ended up being a better icebreaker than anything planned. Nothing bonds a group faster than an inside joke.

From there the week actually began.

We got to Barrier Lake in the evening, the kind of golden hour that makes even a tired travel day feel cinematic, and after dinner we went straight into an opening circle with Terry Rider, an Elder, smudging, and introductions: name, pronouns, project, home.

That night, in our shared room, my roommates and I stayed up way later than planned, just talking. That kind of late-night talking where you laugh until it hurts because you are tired and unguarded and everyone in the room is a stranger who suddenly is not.

I remember thinking, somewhere around hour three, that I had known these people for less than a day and already felt like I owed them nothing and everything.

If day one was about arriving, day two was about putting hands to work.

It opened with a question, what does community mean to you, and then put us straight to work answering it. We spent the day volunteering at the Îyârhe Nakoda Food Bank on the reserve. We started in circle again, sharing a food memory or piece of food wisdom, then split into groups: hampers, greenhouse, planting, and the BBQ we set up so people picking up their food had something warm to eat while they waited.

The food bank had its own community garden, which stuck with me, rows of vegetables growing right next to where people came to receive them, no separation between giving and growing. After the hampers were done, a group of us walked to the berry patch everyone had been talking about all day, right next to a playground, and I understood the hype the second I tasted one. We closed with another circle before heading back, sun-tired but buzzing with the energy of having spent an entire day in such a impactful and productive way.

Then came the day that stayed with me longest:

Day three opened with a blunt question “who would be proud of you”.

We spent part of the day encouraged to just disconnect, no phones, barefoot in the grass, taking in the mountains without trying to document any of it.

It is genuinely rare to be given permission to slow down like that, and harder than it sounds when your thumb keeps twitching toward a phone that is not there.

Later we made bannock, starting with a conversation about the history and relationship people have to the food before actually making it together, flour on our hands and on each other’s shoulders by the end. Then we went into Banff for the afternoon, with time to walk around and learn more about the land and its history, tourists and mountains doing their strange dance around us.

The pace picked back up on day four, which took us to Canmore for a session on the grass at Lake Louise, then to Bow Valley, where we spread tobacco. That night we did karaoke, and one person’s performance was good enough that we spent the next twenty minutes convinced Mariah Carey herself had joined the group.

By day five, the timing lined up with something bigger than our own group. It landed on Indigenous Peoples Day, and we spent it with the YMCA, helping raise a tipi and taking part in their pipe ceremony, smudging, and flag raising, the poles going up against a sky that seemed to know the occasion.

By the last morning, packing up felt strange in the way it always does when a short trip has done a lot of work on you.

Six days is not long on paper, but this one gave me a much fuller sense of what Etuaptmunk, Two-Eyed Seeing, actually asks of a person when you are not just reading about it but practicing it: listening to the land, to Elders, to the people around you, and honestly, to yourself.

I am so incredibly thankful to HOWL for making such an experience a reality.

Written by An̄urika (Rika) Onyenso (she/her), Founder, ECHOFORM

Written from Treaty 6 territory, with thanks for time spent in Treaty 7 territory, the traditional lands of the Îyârhe Nakoda Nations, the Niitsitapi Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, Piikani), the Tsuut’ina, and the Métis Nation of Alberta, Rocky View Métis District.

The first is simple: we’ve extended the Artivism Cohort application deadline to June 30. If you’ve been meaning to apply, or you know someone who has, this is your sign to actually do it.

The second is bigger. This summer, the Artivism Cohort is happening in two cities, thanks to a new partnership with YPC Alberta.

Why This Partnership

ECHOFORM and YPC Alberta share something simple but not always common in how civic programming gets built for young people: a belief that youth don’t need to wait until adulthood to participate meaningfully in their communities. We both build programs where creativity isn’t a side activity to “real” civic work, it is the civic work.

So rather than trying to stretch one program across two cities, we’re running two cohorts, each shaped around the youth it’s built for, under one shared mission.

Edmonton: The Artivism Cohort

Civic education has historically been designed for adults, taught in classrooms, and disconnected from the real experiences of young people, especially equity-seeking and newcomer youth.

ECHOFORM starts with story.

This is an 8 to 12 week hybrid cohort for youth ages 16 to 30 across Canada, with a particular focus on urban and underserved communities, young people navigating dual identity and migration, racialized, LGBTQ+, disabled, and economically marginalized youth, and anyone already engaging with social issues through art, writing, or organizing who’s ready to go deeper.

Mandatory onboarding is July 3, followed by eight weekly civic exploration labs (Fridays, 6 to 8:30 PM) running July 10 through August 28, each built around a different theme: Belonging & Justice, Globalism of Climate Futures, Media Literacy & Digital Culture, Civic Engagement & Democracy, Health Equity, Global Citizenship & Systems, Arts, Storytelling & Public Imagination, and a closing Mentorship Circle. A retreat follows in September, and everything culminates in a public showcase on October 3 in Edmonton, where participants’ zines, toolkits, and other creative work will be exhibited.

Sessions are held in person at Edmonton Public Library, Stanley A. Milner, with food and refreshments provided every time, and virtual participation is welcome for anyone outside Edmonton. Every participant, whether attending in person or online, receives a scrapbook of the cohort experience, and those who meet the attendance threshold receive a certificate of completion.

Calgary: With YPC Alberta

In Calgary, YPC Alberta is running its own Artivism Cohort for youth ages 13 to 17, exploring the intersection of art and civic engagement. Sessions take place Sunday afternoons from July 26 through August 23, with each one followed by a weekly community challenge: participants identify environmental or infrastructure issues in their own neighbourhoods, document what they find, and share it with local decision-makers and community leaders.

Everyone who completes the program receives a certificate, and outstanding contributions throughout the cohort are recognized with additional awards. Specific locations, session times, and how to apply will be announced soon, follow along for updates.

Apply Before June 30

If you’re in or around Edmonton and between 16 and 30, applications are open now through June 30 at echoxform.org/apply. If you’re connected to Calgary youth ages 13 to 17, keep an eye out for YPC Alberta’s application details, coming soon.

And if neither applies to you directly, the most useful thing you can do is share this with someone it does.

Warmly,

An̄urika (Rika) Onyenso (she/her)
Founder & Managing Director, ECHOFORM
linktr.ee/echoxform

ECHOFORM acknowledges the Indigenous peoples whose lands and territories we live, gather, and work upon. We honour the enduring relationships First Peoples hold with these lands and commit to civic storytelling grounded in truth, accountability, and respect.

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What’s one true sentence about your life that the world should hear?

Not a paragraph. Not an essay polished until the rough edges are gone. Just one sentence, the kind that lives in your body before it ever makes it to paper. The kind that might make someone who reads it feel, suddenly and unexpectedly, less alone.

That’s what ECHOFORM and Canada Confesses are asking for this year through Stories in Public Spaces, a national sticker design contest open to youth ages 16 to 30 across Canada, co-created by both organizations and launching June 12, 2026. The prompts, prizes, design specifications, judging process, and the official submission form are all posted on the Canada Confesses blog.

We’re sharing this launch as part of our 2026 Ocean Week Canada programming. One of the contest’s three prompts, “the future I want to leave behind,” asks people to think about what they want to pass on to the generations after them, which is close to the spirit of Ocean Week itself.

Edmonton is landlocked and the water moving through this city is part of the same systems Ocean Week asks the world to pay attention to, so a sentence from a young person here belongs in that conversation too.

The other two prompts are open to whatever story is true for you, water related or not.

Rather than retell everything here, we’d rather point you to where it lives. The official contest post on the Canada Confesses blog has the complete prompts, prizes and recognition, design requirements, judging criteria, contest rules and timeline.

There are three prompts to choose from, ranging from something nobody asks you about but should to a conversation your community needs to have.

Pick whichever one is true for you.

Your design has to include the completed sentence as part of the sticker itself, not as a separate caption.

Submissions open June 12, 2026, and run through August 31, 2026. Winners are chosen after the deadline, and the results are announced in October at the ECHOFORM Artivism Cohort Showcase, where printed stickers will be on display alongside the rest of the cohort’s work. From there, everything moves into a permanent digital gallery hosted by both ECHOFORM and Canada Confesses.

No experience is required to enter this. Check out the blog post for a beginner friendly guide on all you need to know to start.

Have a question about the contest, your eligibility, or how to get started? You’re welcome to reach out directly:
ECHOFORM: echoformbyanurika@gmail.com
Canada Confesses: info@canadaconfesses.ca
Submission form: forms.gle/rxNGgSPxWrz482eCA
Full contest details: https://www.canadaconfesses.ca/post/storiesinpublicspaces-sticker-design-contest

Stories in Public Spaces was co-created by ECHOFORM and Canada Confesses. The full prompts, prizes, design requirements, judging criteria and contest rules are posted on the Canada Confesses blog.

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