Engaging directly with Vancouverites in a variety of purposefully-selected forums will be a key component to our awareness building campaign.  Conversations to date have been around the following activities and initiatives:

 

• Vancouver’s Pop-up City Hall provides mobile city services throughout the city – and also offers a chance to engage community members on issues of importance.  City staffers who man Pop-up City Hall are ideal ambassadors to help spread the word about rising seas.

 

• The summertime festival season has become an ideal venue to engage with large numbers of city residents in meaningful ways.  A robust outreach exhibit could be developed around the City of Vancouver’s Climate Change Adaptation Strategy highlighting Sea Level Rise as a major threat we will have to adapt to in the coming years.  Some ideas for the Sea Level Rise aspects of this traveling exhibit include:
  • A floodable scale model of Vancouver, showing people just what parts of the city are threatened by rising tides.
  • Sandbag filling station
  • Children’s activities

 

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  Along with a photo contest (that we are told may already be part the City of Vancouver’s plans) of King Tide events in Vancouver, an exhibition/installation of the most dramatic and iconic images could be staged in public spaces which are susceptible to flooding.

 

 

• More formal public consultations, at City Hall, community centres, churches, neighborhood houses, public spaces or other accessible locations around the city may work well to share information with the most engaged of residents.  (Note, however, that this engagement tool may be better used later in a Sea Level Rise consultation campaign to garner input on how the City should go about responding to the rising ocean.)