Guest Article: Words for a dream for our city, Toronto
Naryan Wong's reading of Toronto
Updates and acknowledgements
First, I’d like to begin by saying thank you to all of my new followers, most of them coming from Heidi Priebe’s Substack.
Special thanks to her for helping set my new followers record in November. Expect more content about collaboration and social experiments in Toronto in the near future.
Today’s article will be a guest article from a friend and collaborator of mine, Naryan Wong. He has a foot in many leading edge communities and possesses a unique prosocial mentality that I carry with me everytime I participate in events in my city. Naryan, like myself, is constantly exploring potential paradigm shifts and bringing words to “the emerging” (and is so much better at it than I am). I was very proud to read this article and now I’m excited to share it for all of you to see.
Without further ado, off to the guest article…
Words for a dream for our city, Toronto
By: Naryan Wong
Intro
Wassup y’all, I’m a guest author here and my name is Naryan (pronounced ‘na-ryan’). I was born in Etobicoke, have lived downtown since graduating university, and have made a conscious decision to choose Toronto as the home for the son I’m expecting next spring. I tend to look forward more often than backward and I love imagining brighter futures and paths to get there. Like a child describing what they ‘want to be when they grow up’, I lean into a naive optimism vibe, though the dreams and thinking behind them change and evolve as I go through life.
These days, as I transition from young-ish adult into fatherhood, I find myself dreaming of a Toronto that I’d be proud for my son to call home. I have a sense that my dreams do contain some magic and that the magic is multiplied when the dreams are shared by others. In this spirit, I share a dream that I’ve been holding, shape-shifting as it comes in contact with the dreams of my neighbours.
A map of an emerging scene
Last summer, I teamed up with my friend Meghan Hellstern to unleash a Social Systems Map into the wilds of what we felt to be an emerging ‘scene’ in the city. We expected to find the social web branch outward into distinct subgroups - with each of the different interest areas connected within themselves and a few ‘bridgers’ intersecting multiple communities. What we found surprised us, and the people on the map!
As we’ve explored different communities over the past few years, from Chocolate Groove, to Civic Tech TO, to Being & Becoming, to CSI, and many others - we’ve noticed that many people we met intersected several communities, like us. Intersecting tech & social innovation, or ‘earth hippy’ and philosophy, or new economy and poetry; we glimpsed a ‘golden thread’ that connects.
Many folks we met were creating events, start-ups, friendships, wisdom practices and more; from an energy to:
Grow and heal oneself, to learn, to find meaning and peace, to become badass - though not in the same vibe as hustle culture
Build connection, friendships, friend groups, and community. Beyond the transactional, folks want relationships actually care about, that grow with us over time
Play a role in hospicing/healing/reimagining our systems - to participate in collective thinking and acting, to learn to live in more wholesome and pro-social ways, to work together on stuff that matters.
With a kick-off party, 35 network weavers, and 200+ old-school business cards with an invitation via QR code, we released our invitation to join a crowd-sourced social map.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Four months later, over 200 folks from across the city had joined the map, revealing:
Who they were connected to
What parts of the scene they were interested in
What they dreamed of for this network
And what they wondered about.
We invited this group to gather in person, to ‘connect the dots’ with IRL conversation, to make sense of the map together, and of course, to dance!
This map is just one tiny layer among thousands of overlapping ‘scenes’ in Toronto. It is but one of the many complex stories that could be told of us these days, but it’s one that stokes my own energy to act/reflect/connect. Here are a few patterns that I found as I gazed into the network map:
A cohesive scene
This network was attracted by inner growth/healing & its connection to collective & systemic growth/healing. It was so interconnected that the automatic community detection algorithm only detected one community - not the 20+ communities we seeded the invite with. Each person was only a degree or two away from anyone else on the map - clearly there are forces and conditions that are mixing and integrating across differences. Several folks at the party expressed surprise at seeing so many people they knew from different places.
An undercurrent of ambition
What might be Toronto’s unique gift to the world? What is uniquely possible here, given our people, our histories, our aspirations? In a recent post, Misha invites us to Stop Pretending Toronto Is More Than It Is. I sense this resonates across many in our network - we yearn to be globally relevant, yet find ourselves playing small and scared. We don’t want to offend others, and finances are too tight to fail. Where are all the wacky and wild experiments? Compared to places like SF, NY, or even major European cities - who are we? Do we have an identity, something to be proud of?
And this ambition for ambition pairs quite nicely with a complementary energy:
Presence and communion
What is already here? Right now, at this moment, with these people? Can we notice the perfection and beauty - amidst the rising cost of living, the bike-lane removals, and the encampment muddle? At this gathering we have samosas and cucumbers and wine that strangers have brought for each other. We have a beautiful space and DJs flowing while new friends dance. Sure there is a more beautiful world worth yearning for, but we also take joy and nourishment from each other, appreciating what is present.
And how cool is it to be in a scene that can notice and appreciate this polarity, the yin in the yang, the yang in the yin.
As I sit in my role as instigator and convenor of this little experiment, participants are wondering ‘what comes next?’. There was so much excitement in coming together, but what is it all for? Can we meet up again, and if we do, why?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I imagine a world where Toronto is on the leading edge of ‘collaborative culture’. In a few decades, my son will have an assumption that if he were to meet a random group of neighbours - different ages, economics, identities… - that the group would be able to work/play together. That they could discover shared values, and their differences make the group stronger rather than weaker (#pluralism).
That’s it, that’s my current dream. Awesome right?
Right now, I don’t have that assumption about any group of random Torontonians. We live in a city of tremendous diversity, but without the capacity to really integrate our differences and work together. Where our differences lead us to say “I can’t work with them” or “I don’t want to talk to them”, we create walls and silos. We fracture into parts, and this negatively impacts the systems we share. Some parts actively work against others. We lose the opportunity to support each other with our unique gifts and unique challenges. I take this to be the default of the world these days, not just Toronto.
We end up with:
One government installing bike lanes and another removing them
A multi-unit affordable rental house torn down for a single family, who complains about the new encampment across the street
A police team sitting in a community meeting hearing complaints about symptoms of problems beyond their control, where half the neighbours want them to do more and the other half to do less
A city of rising stress, with old friends getting fed up and moving away. There is much to grieve.
Yet for each person leaving, there are more who are excited to move in. A new neighbour from Argentina, experiencing a Toronto halloween for the first time. She’s also interested in transforming economic systems, and excited to join the new Doughnut Economics Collective that held a 100-person kick-off at CSI the following week. An event where people from government, academia, business, and social innovation gathered over tasty donated doughnuts and warm conversation.
Within our city there are spaces where people gather through shared interests, though the rest of their lives may be wildly different. There are community builders creating events that invite us to listen to each other, to find deeper layers of connection, to hold our own ego lightly and stop assuming we are right all the time. There is a vibe:
Of being a co-creator rather than a consumer
Of curiosity rather than defensiveness
Of vulnerability & authenticity
Of caring for ‘we’ as well as ‘me’.
It’s not everywhere, but this vibe seems to be a part of the golden thread that connects the network I see. The topic or content of the event almost doesn’t matter - my experience of these spaces leaves me feeling nourished, energized, connected. I walk away with new ideas and understanding. New dreams, bigger than before.
I like to imagine a scene like this growing and discovering itself. For people inside, we are growing in individual and collective agency, in ways that bring more joy and meaning to our lives. People on the edges are welcomed in and feel attracted to the vibe. Participants grow into hosts and creators, bringing a quality of ‘attuned facilitation’ that brings this vibe into new communities, co-evolving with other scenes to bring out a hundred different expressions of collaborative culture. It’s not a mono-culture, but a de-colonial process that invites more and more parts of the web into greater awareness and intentionality.
This is starting to sound pretty hand-wavy, and I’m sure some readers are starting to think ‘weird cult but ok’. I’ll be a bit more specific on some elements that I imagine may add up to the thing I’m trying to describe.
Toronto could be a place of world class facilitation, with tangibly more awesome events
Perhaps I’ve read too much of ‘The Art of Gathering’, but I often see events as group processes - held with intention. Whether it is to share cool ideas, to connect participants with future friends, or to create a space for creative flow and expression; some events are better at bringing their intention to life. I know some parties I host have felt mushy, unclear on intention, and mostly forgettable. The guests said they had a good time, and have come to following parties, yet I have a higher bar.
What if the current ‘quality’ of events in our city is good, but also only a fraction of what is possible? How might our city change if the frequency of ‘home run’ events were to double? The kinds of events where the hosts and the guests say “that was way better than I imagined”. I imagine less loneliness, more innovation, a stronger arts scene, and neighbours who know each other.
Great facilitation opens up a whole new world of possibilities. Organizers who are in tune with their community’s cares and desires, planning just the right event. Hosts who are attuned to the participants, creating meaningful experiences where each participant’s presence matters. Well designed events that invite us to be the people we want to be, doing more than we imagined possible.
An improvisational scene
Not literally an improv scene, though Toronto has several. I mean where hosts attend each other’s events, drawing inspiration and building off of one another, ‘yes-and’ style. It’s like when the impressionist movement built momentum in Paris, with artists stealing from each other and experimentally building out their own styles. In a highly connected social web, a certain aesthetic becomes intersubjectively tangible to those with eyes to see. “There is a thing here” people will start to say.
And now the thing can be described and discussed, which pushes the understanding and creativity forward. The thing attracts attention, power, money. Momentum builds.
In my imagined future, many of the events my son attends are creative, experimental, and feel meaningful on a larger scale. He and his friends will appreciate the event afterwards with a discerning eye that views them almost artistically. “I appreciated how the break-out group conversation connected to the DJ set later in the night” he might say. Events in Toronto just hit differently, in a similar way to how country music hits differently in Nashville.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is one weird path that I suspect not too many people think about. I feel excited to support it, and I feel lucky to be in a community with others who also love to talk about this stuff with me. I want to meet others who have their own weird theories of change towards a more vibrant Toronto, that I would find novel and inspiring. I want to support them and be supported by them.
At its heart, that’s what this post has been about the whole time - finding new ways of supporting each other across our differences. I’m not fighting for my current dream to ‘win’ over others, rather hoping that me describing my hopes may inspire others to ‘yes-and’. Hopefully not to deny my dream, but to explore how our dreams may integrate into something even better.
Let’s continue putting in the reps, building our capacity to integrate differences - person to person, community to community. Let’s put Toronto on the global map as the city where we are capable of taking advantage of our diversity in radically better ways. Where we work together with our neighbours on local challenges with global impact.
Two ways to participate from here:
Visit these communities(and beyond) and connect the dots for yourself. Talk with others about patterns and outliers that you notice. Individual curiosity leads to collective awareness! Visit the map with clickable names or visit Chris’s calendar of events.
If you are interested in this ‘network of networks’ conversation, reach out to me on LinkedIn or Twitter!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Final words from myself (Chris): I hope many people in Toronto can reference this article to be more in touch with all of the exciting stuff that is happening here. I certainly will reference this article if people ask. I think it could pass off as a solid orienting document. While I was reading it, I felt as if my adventures were more “intentional”, which feels somewhat paradoxical to the exploration that I have undergone. This guest article was definitely the closest thing that could put words to my experience.
Thanks for reading this guest article! Stay pretty y’all and see you next time!