Rural / Remote
Take turns with neighbours to host events, such as pop-up cinemas or local talent performances, on large properties or community fairgrounds.
Click on each of the icons below to find out how to spectacalize, festivalize and eventify your neighbourhood for everyone
Residences (Dwellings)
This strategy can be used to showcase the talents of people living in shelters or in older adult housing. Use common indoor and outdoor spaces in buildings including having each floor hosting a different activity (including one floor setting up a big table where everyone can eat. Residents can take the stairs for more activity. Campgrounds have lots of open areas and beaches where activities can take place.
Equity, Diversity, Inclusion
Enjoy dance, music, and theatre from different cultures. Ensure all neighbours have the opportunity to participate as a performer or observer. Coordinate a fringe festival in the neighbourhood. Host events in neighbourhoods representing people from different income levels, cultures, genders and sexual orientation. Find common areas to use that are in the centre of a number of different neighbourhoods to encourage people from all neighbourhoods to meet. Partner with libraries and settlement organizations to use their indoor and outdoor spaces.
Accessibility
Be sure that event layouts and spaces are accessible to people of all abilities, as both participants and observers. Provide adequate lighting for evening events. If you are holding an event at a building in the community, try to find one with universal washrooms.
Age-Friendly
If hosting a large event, be sure that the performers represent a range of age groups. Have instruments that can accommodate small hands and feature a wide variety of music. Be sure there is access to washrooms.
Seasonality
Provide umbrellas, blankets, hats and mitts for those coming to take in the entertainment.
Street Performers and Buskers
By sharing your talents with others in your community in a free and accessible setting, you can express your creativity, transform public space and spark conversations among your neighbours.
Make it more active – Engage those who come to watch you by teaching them your skill or invite them to showcase one of their talents.
Rent a Bounce Castle
An activity that is fun for everyone, regardless of age! Try setting up a bounce castle to get some physical activity — and a lot of laughs with your neighbours. Explore sharing the cost of the rental with other participants, and deciding the space and times you will operate within.
Pop-up Cinema
Bring neighbours together in the evening with a pop-up cinema in your yard! Get inspired by London, England’s many pop-up cinema locations and events when creating your own.
Make it more active – physical activity increases alertness and is known to improve your imagination so encourage your film goers to use active transportation to get to the “theatre”. While there, set up some food stations they can move around to and use high tables without chairs to encourage standing.
Porch Festival
Do you love to listen to or play music? Consider hosting, organizing, or attending a porch festival or street concert. Those around you can enjoy listening to music and make social connections. Stage a porch festival on your own porch or balcony, and maybe expand to other accessible locations in the neighbourhood with a little more work and organization
Make it more active – Include and encourage dancing during the concerts.
Block Party and Play Streets
Get together and organize a local block party to enjoy each other’s company outdoors! You can theme it to celebrate a specific holiday or special event, make it a potluck and have everyone bring a game or activity that can be adapted to include people with disabilities and people of different ages ensuring more neighbours can participate. Check your municipality’s website for permits and safety information. Also see Block Parties and Play Streets: A guide for organizing a successful neighbour gathering from the City of Edmonton, Alberta
Make it more active – Close the road so everyone can walk/wheel or cycle to the event. Consider limiting nearby parking to encourage more walking.
Open Your Street
The Open Streets Project aims to prioritize street space for pedestrians over cars and to better connect the people in a community. Visit Open Streets Project for a toolkit and inspiration for starting your own project!
Make it more active – Ensure there are active games for all ages and invite local physical activity and sport groups to set up a booth with information about how people can get involved in active pursuits in your community.
Winter Carnival
Ice sculptures, snow sculptures, skating, snowshoeing, hot drinks, and food galore! Make winter just as enjoyable as summer by organizing a winter carnival. Check out the world’s largest winter carnival in Quebec for more details and inspiration!
In Lloydminster, Alberta, they hold “Wintegration,” partnering with a number of non-profit organizations to welcome newcomer families by providing them with skates to borrow.
Rock-paper-scissors Tournament
Create a 30-minute rock-paper-scissors tournament on the street, with neighbours either meeting together in one place or going door-to-door. Going door-to-door ensures that folks who may be house-bound can still participate.
Make it more active – Going from door to door to participate adds an element of physical activity to this activity. If you are all together in one area, spread people out so that they can get more activity moving to each competition.
The Deep Dark – A project from Medicine Hat, Alberta. Created by artists Caitlind Browne and Wayne Garrett
The Deep Dark is a spatial installation intended to illuminate the inter-space between our sacred (and natural) environments and cultural constructs of darkness. To develop the installation, the artists conducted interviews, asking: Why do we fear the dark? Is darkness a presence or an absence? What separates real fears of nighttime from imaginary fears of things we cannot see? By unearthing commonalities between interviewed participants, a loose narrative emerged, exposing a collective insight into our human relationship with the deep dark. The Deep Dark uses domestic doorways as an entry point, inviting you to move through ghostly architecture. As you pass through each frame, you are blinded by intense white light that overexposes your eyes. The darkness beyond the frames is magnified to blackness, much darker than before. As your eyes adjust to the dark, the next illuminated doorframe becomes visible in the distance, beckoning you onward. From an outward perspective, as viewers step through the gates, they disappear completely. Intended to impose artificial light into the wild darkness, The Deep Dark is light by which the darkness grows darker and disillusions the night.
On top of the beautiful installation and its meaning, the project got people out of their homes, down to a local park area, and got them exploring outdoors, at night, in the winter, and using art!
Quick Tips and Ideas
- Provide entertainment in nature — designate a meeting spot on a local, accessible trail with music. Or provide music at local markets and parks to draw people outdoors and into a social environment.
- Put up art installations that have an accessible and age-friendly activation component.
- Host a community Art at Night Festival.
- Host snowman or sandcastle competitions.
- Host music at bandstands and fairgrounds in rural communities.
- Create designated theme days on trails.
- Organize an ATV Meet and Ride for rural communities.
- Create indoor walking spaces with different types of community organizations such as the local hockey rink, the mall, community centres, the library and at schools. Check out Make Your Move Antogonish.
- Organize a group to walk /wheel through the neighbourhood and personally invite people to community events, ensuring those who are more isolated or live further away are included.
- Gather outside community halls/recreation centres prior to an event with “welcome” or “come try it” signs, encouraging those passing by to check it out.
- Add “foam parties” to other warm weather festivals.
- Consider replacing fireworks with lights and lanterns.
- Host a tree climbing event throughout the neighbourhood (for all ages).
