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.

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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Today is World Ocean Day. It’s also World Ocean Week — a moment the international community has set aside to pay attention to something that is paying attention to all of us: the water that covers most of this planet and makes all of life on it possible.

I think about water a lot.

Not always in the scientific, policy, or activist sense — though all of those matter enormously.

I think about it in the personal sense…

In the way certain bodies of water hold specific memories for people. In the way diaspora communities carry the rivers and oceans they crossed in their bodies, long after arrival. In the way kids growing up in Edmonton, one of Canada’s most landlocked cities, might feel disconnected from conversations about ocean justice even as those conversations shape the world they’ll inherit.

That disconnection is civic. And civic disconnection is something ECHOFORM exists to address, not by lecturing, but by creating space for people to tell their own stories, in their own voice, in their own time.

What does a landlocked city have to do with the ocean?

More than we sometimes realize.

Through our partnership with Global Shapers Edmonton Hub’s Alberta Net-Zero initiative, we’ve been exploring what it means to build a more sustainable future in a province that is both deeply connected to energy and increasingly shaped by climate change.

The ocean may feel far away, but it quietly carries part of that story.

It absorbs enormous amounts of the carbon humanity releases into the atmosphere, helping stabilize the climate systems that connect us all.

In celebration of Ocean Week 2026, ECHOFORM is doing what we do — bringing young people together to make something, feel something and say something that matters:

Ocean Futures Lab: A Paint Night Event — on June 30, ECHOFORM and Global Shapers Edmonton are hosting a free three-hour creative evening at the Edmonton Public Library – Stanley A. Milner.

Painting, poetry, letters, conversation.

No experience required.

All ages.

Selected works will be published in a collaborative digital zine called Love Letters to Water.

I want to invite you to do something small today, wherever you are. Think about your earliest memory involving water. A bathtub, a storm, a lake at summer camp, a flood, a river you crossed, an ocean you stood beside or dreamed about. What does that memory carry? What does it tell you about who you are and where you’ve been?

You don’t have to share it anywhere.

But if you do want to share it, we have a space for it on June 30.

And if you can’t be there in person, we have a digital zine that will carry your words far past Edmonton.

This is what civic storytelling looks like when it meets climate. Not despair. Not data. Not distance. Just: your story, water and community.

The Artivism Cohort 2026 applications close June 30. If today's reflection landed somewhere in you, consider applying.

Your story, including your relationship to water, belongs in this cohort <3

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We’re doing something a little different at the end of June. On Tuesday, June 30, ECHOFORM and the Global Shapers, Edmonton Hub are hosting a paint night — but not just any paint night.

Ocean Futures Lab: A Paint Night Event is a three-hour creative gathering at the Edmonton Public Library’s Stanley A. Milner branch downtown. We’re bringing together young people to explore our relationship with water — through painting, poetry, letters, drawings, and honest conversation about climate, identity, memory and connection.

Here’s the thing about Edmonton: we’re landlocked. But water connects everything. The rivers that run through this city, the lakes you grew up near, the ocean your family crossed to get here — it all belongs to one living system. This evening is about noticing that.

• 5:45 PM — Doors open. Arrive, settle in, meet people.

• 6:00 PM — Welcome from ECHOFORM and Global Shapers Edmonton.

• 6:15 PM — A short interactive conversation on water, climate and personal connection.

• 6:35 PM — The main creative session. Paint, write, draw, reflect — guided by prompts, at your own pace.

• 7:45 PM — Community sharing circle. Optional — share what you made, or just listen.

• 8:15 PM — Collective wrap-up. Selected works will be compiled into a digital zine: Love Letters to Water.

No artistic or writing experience required. This is a welcoming, relaxed space. Bring yourself exactly as you are.

This event is also connected to the ECHOFORM Artivism Cohort 2026 — if you’ve been curious about the cohort, this is a beautiful way to experience the community before applications close on June 30.

Applications for the ECHOFORM Artivism Cohort 2026 are open and they close on June 30.

The cohort is eight weeks of civic storytelling, community, and creative making. It’s free. It’s hybrid — so you can be in Edmonton or join virtually from anywhere in Canada. It’s for people ages 16–30. No prior experience in art or activism is needed. The only requirement is that you have something you care about and you’re willing to bring it into a room with other people who also care deeply.

• Mandatory onboarding: July 3, 2026 — 6:00–8:30 PM

• Weekly lab sessions: July 10 – August 28, every Friday from 6:00–8:30 PM

• Venue: Edmonton Public Library – Stanley A. Milner (Downtown). Food and refreshments at every session. Virtual participation fully supported.

• September retreat and October public showcase — both part of completing the program. Limited travel support for retreat and showcase may be available for participants outside Edmonton.

• What you’ll produce: Contributions to a collaborative zine, advocacy toolkit, digital literacy toolkit, and a personal civic roadmap. Certificate of completion. Scrapbook featured in the showcase.

• 25+ partner organizations co-facilitating, including Righting Relations, Canada Confesses, Global Shapers Edmonton, and many more.

The labs cover: storytelling and belonging, restorative justice and health equity, civic engagement and democracy, media literacy, global citizenship, climate and ocean futures, mentorship circles and arts-based healing. Each one is co-facilitated by a partner organization with deep roots in that work.

You don’t have to have all the answers. You just have to show up.

Applications close June 30, 2026. The application takes 20–30 minutes and is reviewed on a rolling basis. If you’re between 16 and 30 and have a story — this is for you.