The Power of Placemaking
Learn more about the unique role that community-led placemaking initiatives play in cultivating collective wellbeing.
Download the report and accompanying resources to make your own case for placemaking!
This is an online space to foster togetherness, joy, and connection; a space to expand our collective imagination around placemaking and continue learning and evolving together. The pandemic has unleashed the resourcefulness of communities across Canada as they support their members through challenging circumstances. Let’s keep building back better!
Canada’s Placemaking Community is devoted to:
We hope you find inspiration, share knowledge, and discover/share activities and events.
“The surest way to make great public spaces is Placemaking—the conscious act of fostering communities that allow everyone to thrive, prosper, and enjoy themselves in inspiring settings” Build Back Better, Together (Kent, Madden, & Davies, 2021)
Canada’s Placemaking Community works to share inspiration using stories and events, facilitate knowledge exchange, connect like-minded community leaders, and amplify activities taking place at the local level across the country.
To help you learn and discover how placemakers across Canada are building vibrant local communities and creating a sense of belonging.
To create and share a crowd-sourced resource library to support, inspire, and help bring your placemaking projects to life.
To foster a network of placemakers and community-builders across Canada who are committed to building vibrant and accessible public spaces.
To facilitate greater access to local events and gatherings across the country in order to bring people together.
Throughout the pandemic, community-builders from across the country have been using resourcefulness and creativity to strengthen communities and rebuild public space. The Healthy Communities Initiative, a over $60-million investment from the Government of Canada, supports this work toward transforming public spaces in response to COVID-19.
Via the Healthy Communities Initiative, the government of Canada has funded over 1000 pandemic-responsive placemaking projects to date. Canada’s Placemaking Community builds on the creativity and inventiveness of the over 6000 local organizations that applied and an even bigger network of practitioners across the country in an effort to build a nation-wide placemaking community.
Canada’s Placemaking Community is organized and curated by the Healthy Communities Initiative team at the Canadian Urban Institute along with our partners: Community Foundations of Canada, 880 Cities, Network for the Advancement of Black Communities, National Association of Friendship Centres, Jay Pitter Placemaking, Park People, Vivre en Ville, MaRS Discovery District, Canadian CED Network, ICLEI Canada, and the Canadian Centre for Nonprofit Digital Resilience.
This project is funded by the Government of Canada.
At Canada’s Placemaking Community, we understand that relationships are the building blocks to vibrant, thriving, and resilient communities. That is why we facilitate opportunities to meet with other practitioners, exchange experiences, and get inspired through the Mentorship Program and Small Group Discussions.
Community engagement is about people working together and energizing each other to get involved. We invite you to reach out to us and to share your community dreams and aspirations. Don’t be shy, we want to hear from you!
Gabriela is a creative thinker and curious learner who aims to expand our collective imagination and support people who spark change. Before joining the Healthy Communities Initiative, Gabriela worked internationally in the fields of social business, community engagement, and inclusive innovation. She combines an ability to think strategically with her dedication and skill to design relational and caring processes.
You can find Gabriela cross country skiing or hiding behind a book in her free time. From Barcelona, she currently lives in Toronto, ON – the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.
Naomi is a passionate storyteller and community-builder who sees relationships as the starting point for change. Completing her master’s degree in social justice education, she combines the desire for equitable and care-oriented social structures with an understanding that relationality and reciprocity underscore thriving, resilient communities. She believes that through listening and sharing our stories, we develop pathways of understanding, empathy, and care that can bring our creative imaginings into realities.
She resides in Toronto, the traditional territory of many nations including Mississaugas of the Credit, the the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.
