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Resources

Educational resources and presentations on some of the many topics we’ve covered, as well as tools to support inclusive, accessible community engagement.

Holding Space: A Community Engagement Toolkit

To commemorate 10 years of university-community engagement, SFU Public Square is proud to publish Holding Space: A Community Engagement Toolkit. Offering the principles that guide our work and the methods behind what we do, it was designed as a blueprint to support others at post-secondary institutions in developing their own community engagement initiatives. However, its contents should be valuable to any community-serving organization.

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Accessibility and Inclusion in Community-Engaged Events

For 10 years, SFU Public Square has held space for Simon Fraser University and the communities it serves to learn and work together towards equitable and sustainable solutions to our complex challenges. We humbly offer this guide outlining our approach to programming accessible and inclusive community engagement events and initiatives.

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Towards Equity resources

Dig into the themes of the Towards Equity Community Summit Series—including equitable pandemic recovery and the intersecting crises of economic inequality, systemic racism and climate change—with these resources, compiled with the support of SFU Library (with special thanks to MLIS co-op student Janet Hilts and SFU Belzberg Library head Ebony Magnus).

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Economic reconciliation resources 

For a comprehensive list of resources about economic reconciliation and engaging more deeply with Indigenous histories and perspectives, check out these recommendations from Sxwpilemaát Siyám (Chief Leanne Joe), Lackett Joe Hereditary Chief of the Squamish Nation, and the transformative storyteller for economic reconciliation at SFU’s Community Economic Development Program.

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Disinformation resources

Resources compiled in advance of the Confronting the Disinformation Age Community Summit in 2019. Want more? Check out this reading list prepared by SFU Library.

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Presentations

Presentations given by members of the SFU Public Square team about community engagement and knowledge mobilization.

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.