Drawing on the Arts Across Ontario’s Worldwide Conferences

The arts have been integral and vibrant throughout the current wave of worldwide conferences taking place across Ontario. In both rural and urban contexts, the over 3000 friends who have so far gathered together in over a dozen conferences have experienced the way “the arts as a whole, so integral a part of the development […]

The Institute Inspires Expanding Conversations in Upper Don Mills

The Upper Don Mills neighbourhood, along Don Mills Rd and Finch Ave in Toronto, has been home to neighbourhood activities since 2006, during the first institute campaigns in Toronto. The work has concentrated in four smaller pockets since then, and as the process of growth strengthens, new pockets along these streets have opened to the […]

“They’re a Group of Youth at the Vanguard”: Working with Groups in Greenboro

In Ontario, several centres of intense activity have been making incredible strides towards their goals, witnessing the “swelling tide, whereby the capacity, confidence and accumulated experience of most communities are rising.” [1] Many friends and teams across the region are engaged in setting audacious plans for the summer. In the Greenboro-Heatherington neighbourhood of Ottawa, one […]

Service Week in St. James Town

In the fall of 2020, the team in Toronto’s densely-populated neighbourhood of St. James Town was thinking about how their efforts to draw new youth into the community-building process could continue. Winter was looming, and restrictions around the pandemic were likely to increase.  They were conscious of the need to weave together a pattern of […]

Bringing our Questions to Families: Collective problem-solving around Children’s Classes and Junior Youth Groups

In both the Springdale neighbourhood of Brampton and the St. James Town neighbourhood of Toronto, youth from the local population who have graduated from children’s classes and the junior youth program are now tutoring, animating, teaching children’s classes, and beginning to coordinate activities.  In both neighbourhoods, the expanding nuclei of friends holding activities are turning […]