March 2017

100in1Day Canada Impact and Learnings 2014–2016

E d m o n t o n • 2 0 1 7

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 3 PROGRAM OVERVIEW 5

KEY FINDINGS 8Impacts on Individuals and Groups 8

Spotlight: Workshop 11

Spotlight: Intervention Leader 12

Spotlight: Volunteer 13

Impacts on Communities 14

New Ideas and Solutions 14

Spotlight: Project 15

Spin-off Projects and Initiatives 16

Impacts on Local Government 18

Reduced Red Tape 19

CHALLENGES 20

CONCLUSION 21 APPENDIX 22

We would like to thank United Way Toronto & York Region, The McConnell Foundation, Toronto Foundation, Hamilton Community Foundation and Holcim for their support of this initiative. Special thanks are due to our city lead organizations CoLab (Halifax), CITYlab (Edmonton), Make Something Edmonton and Montréal Urban Ecology Centre.

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100in1Day Canada is a civic participation platform that supports community leaders in testing new ideas and bringing their visions for a better city to life.

100in1Day Canada is part of a growing global movement that is changing how people interact with their cities. Originating in Bogotá, Colombia in 2012, 100in1Day has encouraged hundreds of communi-ty-based interventions in the streets, sidewalks, parks, alleyways, public squares, waterfronts, front lawns, porches and common spaces of cities around the world. The initiative draws participation from a wide variety of groups including residents, neighbourhood asso-ciations, arts and environmental organizations, anchor institutions, local governments, small businesses and Business Improvement Areas (BIAs). Interventions are simple, often low-cost community projects or actions that are free, open to anyone, and designed to create positive change, like pop-up parking space parties, plant swaps and seed giveaways, alleyway concerts, community art creation and neigh-bourhood potlucks. Interventions like these take place all on one day, in a series of city-wide 100in1Day celebrations that demonstrate the collective power of small actions.

100in1Day Canada was launched by Evergreen in 2014 when 400 citizens in Toronto, Halifax and Vancouver led 300 local interventions on the first Saturday in June. By 2016, participation had grown to six cities nation-wide: 740 citizens in Toronto, Vancouver, Montréal, Edmonton, Halifax and Hamilton led 563 local interventions that year. In total, since 2014, more than 1350 interventions have been led by over 2000 community members, engaging an estimated 100,000+ people.

Lasting Impact

Though the emphasis of 100in1Day is on small actions, it is a move-ment that challenges the entrenched cynicism and culture of risk aversion that says regular people can’t get involved or have an impact on their community. The result of hundreds of people coming together to make a difference can extend well beyond the one-day celebra-tion—it can inspire people to act, build connections and capacities, develop innovative solutions, and even support policy change.

INTRODUCTION

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The result of hundreds of people coming together to make a difference can extend well beyond the one-day celebration—it can inspire people to act, build connections and capacities, develop innovative solutions, and even support policy change.

This report identifies and documents stories of lasting impact 100in1Day has had on people and communities. It also examines the challenges to sustaining and scaling community-driven projects to understand better how the networks and capacities built through 100in1Day can be leveraged to increase impact.

Methods

We conducted in-depth interviews with a sample of twenty lead orga-nizers, volunteers, community partners and intervention leaders in the six participating cities. We asked them what 100in1Day has done for them and their cities, and how it has helped make change easier. We also looked at existing data and reporting at the local level, such as the record of community workshops and interventions that took place in each city.

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The ultimate goal of these workshops is to develop new urban intervention leaders through active, inclusive, and engaging dialogue and activity.

Organizers

National backbone support for 100in1Day Canada is provided by Evergreen: this includes overall program development, coordination, workshop toolkits, fundraising support, branding, a website platform and evaluation. Evergreen has also been the lead organizer of the program in three cities: Toronto, Hamilton and Vancouver.

Local partner organizations are the lead organizers in Edmonton (CITYLab – City of Edmonton, and Make Something Edmonton), Montréal (Urban Ecology Centre) and Halifax (CoLab).

In 2016, more than 35 additional community partners supported 100in1Day by donating space, time and services, amplifying the message to their networks, hosting workshops and engaging their staff and volunteers to lead interventions of their own.

Community Workshops

In 2016, more than 60 ideation and skills-building workshops were held across the six participating cities from March through May.

Ideation to action

The ultimate goal of these workshops is to develop new urban inter-vention leaders through active, inclusive, and engaging dialogue and activity. These workshops bring together people who are interested in having a positive impact on their community. Participants identify shared desires for change, map local assets, and generate tangible projects and interventions to advance their change. Common themes include active transportation, BIAs, housing, laneways and urban agriculture.

PROGRAM OVERVIEW

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Skills building

These workshops are designed to increase participants’ abilities to drive successful change with their ideas. They include a deeper dive into particular topics that are identified as skills-gaps by communi-ties and intervention leaders. Topics include things like fundraising, navigating city-hall, inclusion, networking and volunteer engage-ment.

Project Support

In addition to the workshops, intervention leaders are provided with access to individual support and toolkits including:

• 1-on-1 and group project coaching• Navigation of municipal policies, permitting, and insurance

requirements• Tips and toolkits for developing, promoting and fundraising for

interventions• 100in1Day logo and branding materials• Posters, t-shirts templates, and promotional materials• Intervention checklist• Access to the website including a map of registered interven-

tions and a unique URL to use for promotion

Citizen Activator Volunteers

Volunteer Citizen Activators are supported through “train the trainer” workshops, facilitation toolkits, and other opportunities to develop their skills. They then support local partner organizations and inter-vention leaders with the following:

• Planning and coordination• Workshop facilitation• Communications and outreach• Documentation/photography

These workshops are designed to increase participants’ abilities to drive successful change with their ideas.

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Intervention Day (1st Saturday in June)

Interventions all take place, coast-to-coast, on the 1st Saturday in June. Common themes and projects include:

Wrap-up events provide opportunities to share experiences and celebrate the work of organizers, community partners, volunteers and intervention leaders.

Interventions are documented in photos, blogs, media coverage, on the 100in1Day websites for each city and on the Evergreen and part-ner websites. Documentation of interventions is an important way to promote and celebrate discussions, projects and actions that are happening; connect them to new audiences and encourage everyday leaders to participate.

Social & community connection

• Block parties• Community potlucks & BBQs• Random acts of kindness• Cultural festivals• Cross-generational gardening• Community history tours• Movie nights• Neighbourhood games

Beautification & animation

• Murals• Parking space parties• Chalking• Pop-up theatre• Installations• Art walks• Greening projects• Live street music

Healthy & sustainable cities

• Planting parties• Clothing swaps• Community clean-ups• Yoga in the park• Good food markets• Seed giveaways• Bike parades• Local cooking workshops

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The 100in1Day platform encourages intervention leaders to break down big ideas into small, tangible projects that can be implemented on one day.

Impacts on Individuals and Groups

People get and stay involved in 100in1Day for different reasons, including the volunteer opportunities, to practice or learn new skills, to be a part of something, to have an impact and contribute positive-ly to their community, to challenge cynicism and embrace hope, to do something creative and exciting, to meet new people and to make new connections.

After participating in 100in1Day, our interviewees reported the following key impacts:

KEY FINDINGS

Individuals& groups

More action-oriented

Stronger networks and ties to the

community

More confidence in ability to have

an impact

Reduced fear around active participation

Desire to use their experience to inspire others

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More action-oriented

The 100in1Day platform encourages intervention leaders to break down big ideas into small, tangible projects that can be implement-ed on one day. In particular, intervention leaders cite the workshops and the city-wide festival, insofar as it is a deadline and a collective commitment, as key tools that have helped them unstick ideas. This method of moving ideas to action stays with people long after 100in1Day festival is over. In fact, participants have noted that capacity-building tools introduced through program workshops are often recycled and adapted for use in other community projects, enabling participants to move their ideas into action faster.

Stronger networks and ties to the community

Through volunteering, attending workshops and leading interven-tions, 100in1Day participants develop new relationships and are exposed to new ideas and initiatives. As a result, they feel more connected to their community, have more opportunities to par-ticipate in civic life and have increased confidence to gather with like-minded people and groups.

Reduced fear around active participation

100in1Day helps reduce risk and fear around permission to partici-pate as a “regular” person. Beyond actual policy barriers, our inter-viewees told us there is a perceptual barrier in their cities that often prevents people from taking action in public spaces. The 100in1Day platform gives people an “excuse” to do something in public for that first time, provides them with support navigating local bylaws and gives them a sense of comfort in participating with others as part of a sanctioned event.

More confidence in ability to have an impact

100in1Day is a hopeful event that combats the widespread beliefs that participation must be complicated and that individuals can’t make a difference. After leading an intervention for the first time, people increase their confidence and feel they “now know how to do this”. They feel pride in seeing their ideas manifest in the world, develop a greater sense of confidence in their ability to impact their surroundings and feel more comfortable with the idea of taking on bigger and more complex projects.

“The strength of 100in1Day is to start with an idea and make it happen over the course of three months. There is always so much discussion, debate and talking but never very much action. We know that the intervention may not be perfect but at least the leaders learn from it, and that may transfer to other projects and other ways they are working in the city.”

– Tristan Bougie, Montréal Urban Ecology Centre

Montreal Urban Ecology Centre

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Desire to use their experience to inspire others

100in1Day participants develop a strong desire to share their experi-ence and new confidence with others, using the record of grassroots successes in their city to encourage new people to participate.

“I don’t know if it’s everywhere but in Vancouver there is a cynical attitude like, ‘Well there is nothing we can change so we might as well just accept things the way they are’, and 100in1Day is a way to combat that. You can point to the things people are doing, share it with your family and friends and say ‘actually it is possible, look at this, you really can make a difference.’”

– Christine Nguyan, Volunteer and Intervention Leader, Vancouver

“Let’s Connect”, Vancouver 2016. Photo: Deanne

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Workshop Spotlight 100in1Day Kenilworth

Kenilworth Avenue is a street in Hamilton’s Crown Point neigh-bourhood that struggles with issues like storefront vacancies and illegal, inadequate housing. The Kenilworth Revitalization Team was formed by a group of residents to address these issues. In 2015, they co-hosted 100in1Day Kenilworth, an ideation workshop focused on the street to discover what simple actions residents could take to make a difference.

According to Lyna Saad, the neighbourhood’s Community Developer, that workshop was instrumental for showing residents how to break down big ideas and overwhelming projects into small and tangi-ble pieces. “Around capacity, I saw a complete change in people’s actions and how they think about projects. We actually re-used a lot of the workshop components in our other work in the neighbour-hood.”

After the workshop, Roberta Prince, one of the organizers, said she felt it had brought people in the neighbourhood together in a new and exciting way. “There is a bubbling energy here that I haven’t felt or seen before.” One of the workshop participants said she felt like a 17-year-old again, with more inspiration and energy than she had experienced in a long time.

Lyna insists the projects developed in that workshop came at a key moment, when the neighbourhood was really struggling with hope-lessness and a lack of direction. “The area has far bigger problems than what community volunteers can change on their own, but [100in1Day] gave them small things they could contribute. It boost-ed the morale on the team because then they could talk about what action they took that made a difference. I’m not sure what we would have done without 100in1Day in that year.”

After the workshop, Roberta Prince, one of the organizers, said she felt it had brought people in the neighbourhood together in a new and exciting way.

Ideation Workshop

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Intervention Leader Spotlight

Surprise!Hamilton

Surprise!Hamilton is a Stinson neighbourhood-based volunteer group that got together to transform public spaces and introduce more colour and spontaneity to daily life in their neighbourhood. The group consists of three core leaders and ten volunteers.

They led two interventions in 2015: Fireflies in the Night, which temporarily transformed a rail trail in Downtown Hamilton with hundreds of paper lanterns installed by volunteers and Stop and Smell the Flowers, which wrapped stop signs with flower stems to encourage vehicles to obey the signs and come to a complete stop at the intersection.

It was at a 100in1Day workshop that the group realized the trail illumination idea they had been kicking around was the perfect combination of low effort and high impact. “100in1 Day gave us the cover, if you will, to finally do the things we’d only been talking about, and do them with the blessing of the city. Left to our own devices, we’d still be planning.”

Despite fears that they couldn’t achieve their vision, in the end, it was a success. “Along the way we found that dozens of others were inspired to join us spontaneously as they stumbled across us while using the trail as part of their usual habit. We really treasure the spirit of giving and enthusiasm that these spontaneous participants bring to the event. Their delight and enthusiasm is infectious, and is the fuel that keeps us all going throughout the five hours or so that the intervention takes from setup to final cleanup.”

Looking ahead, in addition to repeating their interventions in 2017, the group is currently working on developing a more complex instal-lation that involves lighting the underside of an overpass where it passes through the Stinson neighbourhood. They are seeking funds and technical support from the City of Hamilton for this installation, which they hope to debut on Canada Day 2017.

The group credits 100in1Day for preparing them for this project. “100in1Day has helped us in many ways, not least of which is having the confidence to think big. Stinson is a small neighbourhood, but being part of 100in1Day allows us to reach across the entire city. It also gives permission to do things in/with public space just for the sake of doing them.”

“100in1 Day gave us the cover, if you will, to finally do the things we’d only been talking about, and do them with the blessing of the city. Left to our own devices, we’d still be planning.”

Top: Stop and Smell the Flowers. Bottom: Fireflies in the Night

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“The reason I am involved and stay involved is really about affecting change and having a positive influence. It is small changes, over time, locally. It’s also an opportunity to learn and grow.”

Volunteer Spotlight Dave Rose

Dave Rose is a volunteer who first heard about 100in1Day in 2014, during its first year in Toronto. “I began to see it as an interesting and unique opportunity. About 2–3 days before the festival, I was reminded that it was coming up, so I started planning how to participate. I found one intervention description that really grabbed me. It was elegantly simple—what 100in1Day is all about.”

The intervention was called Pet Your Neighbour, and the idea was to bring people with dogs together with people who don’t have dogs to facilitate social connection and get people talking to one another. “I live in a condo and I can’t have dogs. I really enjoyed the inter-vention and fell in love with 100in1Day.”

The very next day, Dave was e-mailing the organizers to find out how to get more involved. “For me, it led to looking for ways of stay-ing involved and changing it to be more personal and longer term. I started looking for other opportunities, and that very summer I started volunteering with the Humane Society. I have been doing it ever since, for three years.”

Dave is also a committed volunteer with 100in1Day Toronto, where in 2016 he worked to bring a communications team together to do community and media outreach. “The reason I am involved and stay involved is really about affecting change and having a positive influ-ence. It is small changes, over time, locally. It’s also an opportunity to learn and grow.” For Dave, the biggest impact has been a change in his attitude. “I am more aware of my community and hoping others can see there are easy ways of connecting with their community. They always think of some long drawn out political process and that really deters people. But it really can be so simple and easy. For me, it has an effect on a daily basis, even in my work. It’s all about affecting change in simple and easy ways that people can relate to, and that can lead to major changes over time.”

Dave Rose

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Impact on Communities

100in1Day generates impacts at the community-level by enhancing neighbourhoods and spawning new ideas, solutions, projects and initiatives.

New Ideas and Solutions

Although small-scale and often temporary, interventions are an opportunity to experiment with new ideas and solutions. They inspire dialogue, challenge the status quo and raise awareness of new possibilities.

Alleyway animation

One example of how 100in1Day can be used to prototype solutions is a series of alleyway-based interventions in Toronto and Edmonton. Acknowledging the cultural and historical importance of alleyways and their role as transportation corridors, a number of intervention leaders have sought to clean them up, bring new life to them and draw attention to their role and potential. This includes recognizing the potential use of the alleyways in addressing a range of local issues, from affordable housing to environmental sustainability. “100in1Day really helped to instigate talk about important issues, like solving space issues by using laneways. So now when people talk about doing something like laneway housing, that concept is some-thing people are already familiar with—they already somewhat saw the idea in action.” – Kyle Rostad, Garment District Neighbourhood Association, Toronto

“Laneway Games”. Photo: Nicole Bruun-Meyer

Communities

New ideas and solutions

Neighbourhood beautification and

improvements

Spin-off projects and initiatives

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Project Spotlight Animate the Alleyways

Animate the Alleys was a series of interventions using paint and pop-up animation to bring life to alleyways in the 118th Avenue neighbourhood of Edmonton. The neighbourhood faces a lot of social and economic problems, and struggles with negative per-ceptions where people think it’s dangerous and only know what they hear about it on the news. The objectives of the intervention were to improve a well-used alleyway, facilitate revitalization, and improve perceptions of the neighbourhood.

“I got involved because I wanted to raise the profile of my neigh-bourhood within Edmonton and create positive attention, to let people know there are other things happening here than what they hear on the news or other people saying. I wanted to challenge that story that gets told about our neighbourhood.”

It began with one painted garage and a pop-up patio in 2015 as part of DIY Cities (the predecessor to 100in1Day in Edmonton). “After having done this for DIY Cities, when 100in1Day came around we expanded the idea.” For 100in1Day 2016, intervention leader Wesley Andreas organized drop-in sessions at a community coffeehouse and helped his neighbours develop their own ideas to animate the alleys.

“I used the painting that was there from the year before as a pilot to encourage others in my neighbourhood to do something to ani-mate their alley. A barrier that I helped them overcome is that they didn’t know how to get connected or didn’t know that they could do this, so the mural from last year was a living example that they can do it.”

In the end, there were 12 different interventions registered under the “Animate the Alleys” banner. “Everyone did something involving paint, whether it was painting their fences or murals on their garag-es like I did.”

“There was a dual benefit in the sort of temporary movement around placemaking that happens on the day, but also by creating a perma-nent artifact. It’s something where people walking by today see that and know someone cares about the space.”

“There was a dual benefit in the sort of temporary movement around placemaking that happens on the day, but also by creating a permanent artifact. It’s something where people walking by today see that and know someone cares about the space.” – Wesley Andreas, Intervention Leader

Before.

After. Animate the Alleyways. Photo: Wesley Andreas

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Neighbourhood beautification and improvements

Some interventions have either created or led to permanent beau-tification projects and neighbourhood improvements, like new community art and infrastructure. These changes, especially when in a strategic area or concentrated within a hub or neighbourhood, have helped revitalize neighbourhoods and make communities more livable.

Example beautification and improvements resulting from 100in1Day:

Spin-off Projects and Initiatives

Some of the successful interventions have gained traction and devel-oped into permanent projects that live sustainably outside of the 100in1Day platform, scaling up or out and attracting new funds and resources.

Rain gardens of Danforth East

Marc Yamaguchi set out to plant a rain garden in his east Toron-to neighbourhood as a part of 100in1Day 2015. The rain gardens beautify local streets and build in resilience to better cope with the effects of climate change.

Red Swings of Halifax

Front Yard Benches of Inglewood, Edmonton

Asteroidea Mural, Halifax

18th Ave. Alleyway Art, Edmonton

SoBi Bikeshare Wayfinding Signs, Hamilton

Cannon Street Utility Box Art, Hamilton

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The pollinator-friendly plants nurture and breathe biodiversity back into the neighbourhoods, especially helpful to those insect popu-lations that have experienced dangerously rapid declines in their populations. By placing rain gardens directly in the path of down-spout disconnects’ stormwater runoff to the streets, they delay the watershed and help reduce the burden on our city’s water infrastruc-ture. The project could be easily scaled up as it is a cost-effective Low Impact Development.

Another key reason for building rain gardens is that they limit the amount of water entering the local storm drain system, reducing the potential for flooding, drainage problems, and the quantity of pollutants that run from our yards and roads straight into our water-ways.

Marc went on to win the Toronto Foundation’s Vital Innovation grant, which enabled him to transform 10 additional front yards in the Danforth East Village–East York neighbourhood by planting rain gardens. In 2016 Marc led public walking tours and handed out toolkits as a part of 100in1Day for people who wanted to transform their own backyards.

CBC and Metro covered Marc’s intervention. In partnership with the David Suzuki Foundation, he has created a video to tell his story and encourage citizens to transform their backyards. The video can be viewed here: raingardensunited.com

#SitTO campaign

#sitTO started as a guerrilla intervention to add public seating around the city and has evolved into a broader conversation on how we use our public spaces. Led by a group of urban advocates as part of 100in1Day 2016, the #sitTO crew unfolded simple Ikea chairs and tables in several spots around Toronto.

Toronto has a critical shortage of public seating. For this group aimed to transform public spaces around the city with pop-up IKEA chairs and document people’s reactions. Intervention Leader Stas Ukhanov said. “Streets are not just for moving, they’re our greatest public land assets.” He added “The challenge is finding enough space for seating. The city must consider accessibility, the desirability of a sitting spot, and maintaining rights-of-way.”

This intervention generated 1000+ responses from the public includ-ing Toronto Chief Planner Jennifer Keesmat (see one of her many tweets on SITTO): twitter.com/jen_keesmaat

CBC, Toronto Star and other media outlets covered this intervention.

Rain Gardens of Danforth East

#SitTO Campaign

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Impacts on Local Governments

Urban interventions that push the envelope can help identify, troubleshoot and challenge policies and procedures that limit participation and can inspire new initiatives at the municipal level. 100in1Day has the potential to lead to cost savings for local governments by mobilizing citizen networks to support a variety of city-wide goals, policies and plans.

Community mobilization of policies

100in1Day mobilizes citizen networks to support a variety of estab-lished city-wide goals and plans, supporting grassroots change at the community level and reducing reliance on limited government resources. Some examples of municipal goals and plans supported by 100in1Day include:

• The Way Ahead Community Vision – Edmonton• Our Future Hamilton Community Vision – Hamilton• Centre Plan – Halifax• Engaged Cities Taskforce – Vancouver• Neighbourhood Action Strategy – Hamilton• Greenest City Action Plan – Vancouver• Other city goals may include dense and walkable neighbour-

hoods, healthy communities, culture and heritage, public health, and overcoming fear and isolation

“100in1Day plants the seed that it isn’t just the City that is the city-builder, it is everybody’s responsibility to build a city that reflects them.”

– Yvonne Pronovost, City of Edmonton

Local Governments

Community Mobilization of Policies

New pilots and initiatives

Reduced red tape

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Reduced Red Tape

100in1Day organizers in Hamilton, Toronto and Vancouver have negotiated changes to policies and procedures that allow for easier access to permits and insurance for small-scale citizen interventions.

Red Swing Project

Organizers of the Red Swing Project in Halifax installed approx- imately 12 red swings around the city to be enjoyed by all—the idea was to remind people what it’s like to be a kid again. The Red Swing Project has become somewhat of a staple in Halifax, sparking a twit-ter campaign (#redswingfx) when it was suggested that the swings might be removed. Despite the initial opposition, the City of Halifax has permitted the red swings to remain in place, striking a delicate balance between encouraging placemaking and concerns for risk and liability.

New pilots and initiatives

In Hamilton, a series of local interventions making use of on-street parking spaces have helped inspire an initiative at the City to pilot seasonal on-street patios. The City of Hamilton is also considering implementing more walkability signage as a result of temporary way-finding signs introduced through 100in1Day.

“People have fun with 100in1Day, and there have been some ideas generated that have potential to turn into something more permanent. Some of the pop-up public spaces and the walkability signage are the two that come to my mind. It also serves as a general recognition of the importance of programming and animating spaces.”

– Jason Thorne, General Manager of Planning and Economic Development, City of Hamilton

Red Swing Project

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This is important since one of biggest strengths of 100in1day is building confidence and capacity in new leaders.

100in1Day has clear and substantial positive impacts on the individu-als and cities that participate, particularly where it comes to building individual and collective capacity to move from ideas to action. The above examples of spin-off projects, groups and policies tangibly demonstrate the potential for 100in1Day to act as an incubator of new ideas, solutions and initiatives.

However, not enough is being done to maintain the networks and momentum of 100in1Day or to support bringing new initiatives to scale. The impact of 100in1Day is also limited by the capacity to reach people who aren’t already engaged. This is important since one of biggest strengths of 100in1day is building confidence and capacity in new leaders.

Barriers to Outreach

100in1Day organizers face barriers to reaching out to new groups, particularly those not currently engaged in city building initiatives. The reasons cited for people and organizations not getting involved include limited time, lack of skill or confidence, competing priorities and lack of understanding of the value or relevance of the program. Another challenge is the limited planning cycle of the program, which forces organizers to focus outreach mainly on their existing networks.

Barriers to Sustaining and Scaling Community Projects

Organizers and participants identified a number of reasons why community-based interventions fail to scale (up, out or deep) beyond 100in1Day, including a lack of interest, time, energy, momentum, ongoing support, and funds. Many agreed that not enough is done to maintain the momentum or networks beyond the June festival. They also cited policy barriers, particularly around concerns for risk, liability and accountability that are sometimes perceived as undue or excessive (i.e. “red tape”).

CHALLENGES

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Support local organizations to embed 100in1Day as a platform to achieve their existing program goals.

Recommendations For Increasing Impact

1. Create more consistent, year-round opportunities

Leverage the networks and momentum of 100in1Day by creating year-round, low-barrier participation infrastructure. This could include a platform to collect project ideas and connect people to participation opportunities.

2. Develop a capacity building program

Develop a program to work with community leaders to bring viable projects to scale. This could include scale up grants plus coaches and connections to resources and learning opportunities. It should also include a deeper integration of community-driven skill-building workshops into the program.

3. Position 100in1Day as a platform to support existing initiatives at the local level

Support local organizations to embed 100in1Day as a platform to achieve their existing program goals. Workshops should be flexible and framed as a tool to implement the ideas and projects they are already working on.

4. Develop stronger partnerships with local governments

100in1Day can be used to leverage citizen networks to help local governments implement their plans through local resident empowerment/mobilizing. It’s important to communicate this value and involve key decision-makers more deeply in addressing the culture of fear and risk that limits participation. Local govern-ments can better support the program by:

• reducing excessive “red-tape”• communicating their support for residents and groups to

experiment in public spaces• viewing interventions as pilots for new policy initiatives

CONCLUSION

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How Do the Workshops Work?

1. Introduction & ice-breaking

Set the context for 100in1Day and give the participants an opportunity to see who is in the room.

2. Building connections

Stretch creative muscles and get participants to think quickly about different aspects of their city and/or neighbourhoods. In one and a half minute intervals, participants will respond to the following questions:

• What do you love about your city/neighbourhood?• What is missing in your city/neighbourhood? • What change would you like to see in your

city/neighbourhood?

3. Idea factory

Each group will brainstorm a set of ideas that could achieve one specific change for 100in1Day—there a lot of different ways that attention can be brought to each desired change! In one & a half minute rota-tions, each group will brainstorm different ideas that would fit into each type:

• Entertainment (concert, games, competitions, etc.)

• Education (speaker series, sign-posts, tours, etc.)• Space Animation (beautification projects, art

installations, public performances, etc.)• Building Connections (plant-swaps,

neighbourhood show & tell, etc.)• Other/Combination

4. Share and support

Get a sense of the ideas generated and give par-ticipants the opportunity to support each other’s idea. Each group shares 2–3 ideas that were generated at their table and the facilitator helps them put their ideas through the “Impact/Effort Matrix” to identify if the projects are:

• Quick and easy• Tough slogs• Lots of potential, but lots of work• Quick and big wins

5. Plan and implement

A chance to connect with others about interven-tion ideas, and map out who and what it will take to make them happen.

APPENDIX