Unlock your research impact: Engaging community events

Janet Webber (executive director) and Seth Erais (program manager) from SFU Public Square delivered this knowledge mobilization presentation to the SFU Library Research Commons to share some of the essential questions and best practices to assess before you begin a community engagement project. They look at some of the considerations and approaches for designing an event or process, discuss what it means to understand more about accessibility, power and inclusion, and how to avoid some of the bigger challenges that often arise in this work.

Holding Space: A Community Engagement Toolkit 

Janet Webber (executive director) and Doug Hamilton-Evans (communications manager) attended the 2022 Canadian Knowledge Mobilization Forum to discuss their new publication, Holding Space: A Community Engagement Toolkit. Offering the principles and methods that guide SFU Public Square’s work, it was designed as a blueprint to help others at post-secondary institutions develop or expand their own community engagement initiatives. But its content (and this session) should be valuable to anyone working in relationship with communities for the reciprocal exchange of knowledge.

Distant, not disengaged: Digital community engagement in response to Covid-19

Distant, Not Disengaged was a weekly, experimental online co-learning series that met the need for community to stay connected during the height of COVID lockdowns in Canada. In this remote presentation to the 2021 University Social Responsibility Summit at the University of Pretoria, Janet Webber (executive director), Dr. Jennifer Wolowic (Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue) and Doug Hamilton-Evans (communications manager) spoke about how the series developed, the emerging issues it tackled, how it made space for communities to share and learn from each other.