Reinventing the walking tour model – Presentation given in the Ignite style 20 auto-advancing slides x 15 seconds each
Slide 1 –
Have you ever considered the architecture of a bank? Why it has spacious rooms? (This is a picture of the CIBC on Sparks Street, by the way). That’s because the architects of bank buildings have been specifically told to make them roomy enough in case there are many people in line. If you’ve seen the movie ‘it’s a wonderful life’, you will be familiar with the concept of a bank run. That’s when everybody wants to withdraw their money from the bank at the same time. Banks will do anything in their powers to get you to NOT do that, one, because it’s bad for business, and two, because they physically only have about 2-3% of all the money that they hold. The rest is virtual.
Slide 2 –
Welcome to Ottawa (de)tours. We offer walking seminars with a twist on various complex issues that are shaping Canada and Canadians. (de)tours guides lead intentionally-small groups on leisurely walks around Ottawa’s streets that are most imbued with significance for a particular seminar theme. Think of it as a cross between a Jane’s Walk, and an urban terrain exploration using a particular lens, followed by a meal or drinks.
Slide 3
- We believe people should get to know their cities, their neighbourhoods, and their neighbours if they want to know where they came from and where they are going.
- We believe learning to “read” a city is fascinating and that what’s not out there tells you almost as much as what’s out there
- We believe everybody has a bias and that that is quite alright. Our seminar guides believe in disclosing their biases; they will tell you plainly what their side of the narrative contains, where it fits in with the official narrative, and what other currents of thought exist on the issue
- We believe people are creatures drawn to narratives – stories are the most powerful learning tool; we want to use it for good as our guests dream and imagine what can be
- We believe people’s lived experiences are more valuable than the most insightful of books; we are constantly amazing and inspired by the iconography of central Ottawa, and the depth and expertise among its citizens
- We believe stories need to be shared before they are lost. We have amazing stories among us – if we have ears to hear.
Slide 4
Walking seminars – exploring new places while questioning the spaces around us – offer us a unique journey. Apart from the obvious benefits of getting outside and into the real world and getting some physical activity, we have created these experiences to consider Ottawa in a new light. First, there is the opportunity to ‘come and see’. When your feet hit the pavement and you get to sweat a little or experience a colder chill, you are experiencing a special connection with your environment. Like eating, it is a personal and intimate experience. Second, focusing on only one particular thematic lens while walking may bring about unexpected outcomes. You might have walked that same street every day for years, yet that one lens can allow you to zero in on the particular angle. Third, the streets of Ottawa are full of stories that will inspire you, encourage you to question some of your assumptions, and help you make connections between ideas you didn’t think had a link. The physical terrain found walking any city allows for endless props, impromptu interactions, and countless unique-yet-fleeting opportunities to interact with the complex topics we attempt to wrestle with as part of (de)tours. Finance, war/peace, democracy or food are interconnected, multi-faceted and multi-directional, much like our day-to-day interactions. (de)tours gives us all the luxury of revisiting the issues discussed along the way through a facilitated conversation over a meal or drinks. We can then later keep revisiting the same terrain during regular life, recognizing that we may have just added to our understanding of the way things are.
Slide 5
According to a recent survey, Canadians care about (in this order): the economy (15%), health/health care (11%), environment/green issues (10%), employment/job creation (9%), government leadership/accountability/transparency (9%), education (4%), government spending/finances/budget (2%), debt/debt reduction (2%), immigration/citizenship (2%), and poverty/homelessness (2%). We wanted to empower Canadians to talk about these issues. The walking tour model is a great vehicle for doing that, especially given that our public spaces for inter-generational debate and community are shrinking.
Slide 6
You meet your guide, who professes to know a little about a certain topic, and who has the ability to help you re-examine it from the ground up. She doesn’t give you all the answers, but does raise a bunch of new questions. She does share information, but more so, she shares a way of critically examining the subject through place. You are asked a series of important questions to keep in the back of your mind as the walking seminar progresses. You play interactive games, or are asked to play the role of an ethnographer. You then gather together as a group, have a conversation over a meal or drinks, where you get to know a little more about your tour guide, and maybe a little more about your fellow attendees. You engage with the viewpoints of other participants, who come to it with different perspectives given their unique life experiences. When it is time to go home, you are given access to a set of links and resources on the topics at-hand, to keep the questions flowing.
Slide 7
Does this sound familiar? Well, it shouldn’t, because there are not many alternatives around that offer this type of thing. Aside from some Jane’s Walks, one or two Context Travel walks, or the Corruption Tours of Prague, Czech Republic, this is a novel concept. What differentiates us from a usual walking tour are are few elements: Emphasis on CRITICAL THINKING, INTERACTIVITY, fostering a SAFE SPACE TO DISCUSS/DEBATE, creating the OPPORTUNITY TO CONNECT, and establishing a relationship that allows us to CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION.
Slide 8
As many of you in the room know, there’s something very special that happens when you put people in the same room and ask them to discuss things they deeply care about. My favourite part about a (de)tour, and this has been confirmed by many people, is the conversation part at the end of a tour. If we’ve done it right, people have the safe space to go back to basics, and they can just learn simply by leaning over and asking the person next to them what they think. One of our favourite stories is that of our feminism walk, where we had a few people in their early teens come out, but we also had a lady in her 70s also join. The conversation about women’s rights became a bit more real for the younger folks, when the elderly woman started talking about not being able to divorce during her lifetime.
Slide 9
In this tour, we examine the dependency of our financial system upon faith and ask whether that faith is justified. We look at the creation of money, the systems that protect our monetary transactions and try to understand how they work. We examine the connections between debt, the creation of money, inflation and economic growth. We will consider how making money from money has been viewed historically, as usury in Judeo-Christian society and riba in Islamic society. In contemporary Canadian society, the creation of money and our economic system depend for existence upon debt and interest upon that debt. We examine how the Canadian approach to money plays out in individual lives – from Canadians’ relationship with banks as well as other financial institutions, such as Payday Loans companies. Throughout we will consider whether the structure, and the roles, rewards and penalties of the participants are justified. We want to be part of a discussion: is this system the best possible? What do we lose and what do we gain in a system committed to perpetual growth? Are there ways to improve or support our system?
Slide 10
We often think of play as divorced from the stuff of real life: politics, the economy, etc. This tour asks you to take play seriously, to think of it as a window onto rather than an escape from the politics of everyday life. In particular, we will reflect on the ways in which gender, class, and race have informed and continue to inform where, what, and with whom we play. The tour begins in Sandy Hill, at Strathcona Park, an early example of state efforts to beautify the city of Ottawa and to create a “play space” for the growing number of people with time for leisure. The tour ends in Lowertown at The Lafayette, Ottawa’s oldest tavern and the perfect spot to continue our conversation about the politics of play. As we make our way from Sandy Hill to Lowertown, we will stop at a variety of play spaces including a community centre, library, and cinema. In each spot, we will inquire about the origins and uses of the site. Even more importantly, we will discuss who had access to this play space and under what conditions. Play, we shall see, is more than just fun and games. It is profoundly political.
Slide 11
Here’s a photo of one of our stops. You may notice two entrances, one for males and one for females. I may be stealing from Jess, our tour guide, one of her juiciest stories, but she tells the story of how swimming was one of the few acceptable sports that women could participate in, as the fact that they were in water meant that no sweat was seen – meaning we didn’t have to see women straining themselves or exerting themselves in public (which was clearly unacceptable).
Slide 12
This walk highlights not only the role of women in Canadian society and history through existing landmarks, but also their absence in representations, recognition and accolades in public spaces and consciousness. The first stop is the Women are Persons Monuments—a rare tribute to women in Canadian history—on Parliament Hill discussing the legacy of the Famous 5 and continue across Parliament Hill to the Supreme Court of Canada and down to City Hall. Participants will consider women’s historical roles, and the myriad of firsts: the first female Member of Parliament, the first female Prime Minister, the first female Supreme Court justice, the first female mayor of Ottawa, among others. But participants will also reflect on contemporary issues: how are women faring today? How can we further women’s advancement? This tour will challenge our perceptions of how women are recognized and situated in Canadian history and society.
Slide 13
You may recognize this as a map of downtown Ottawa. As you examine the street names, you may notice that I’ve highlighted the only two references to women. Just one of the games we try to play on a (de)tour. Try it next time you’re out, and let us know if you come up with more.
Slide 14
This has been our #SummerOfBeta. Because this type of thing doesn’t exist elsewhere, we wanted to test our assumptions with real people ‘in the field’ (as opposed to armchair designing). We also wanted rapid prototyping, to remain lean, and try to scale once we have a good model. The summer of beta also means that all tours look very different one from another. For instance, our Play walk visits a classic tavern, and our guide is a beer expert. Our Local Food Solutions walk includes the chance to taste-test bounty from a backyard permaculture project. Our Money tour stops at the Standard Tavern on Elgin, which accepts Bitcoin.
Slide 15
Aside from logistical challenges, which, as you can see from our photo of the Supreme Court lunch time hours, were many – it seems getting people in the same place at the same time and hoping that the weather is nice is harder than you think – we are looking at approaches to make the walk (and talk) as interactive as possible; this has worked with mixed results so far, for a number of reasons: many people are used to a walking tour in which they remain very passive; we’re also taught in school to respect the authority of the teacher. So we’re experimenting with different facilitation tools in various tours to make people ‘unlearn’ what they think are proper rules of engagement for a walking tour (incorporating elements of ethnography that allow people to immerse themselves into the experience). Our summer of beta also means that our seminars were run for a nominal fee, which allowed us to test our booking system and our initial operating assumptions. In exchange for the low cost of our offerings ($2), we asked folks to fill out a quick post-seminar online survey, and chat with us about what does and doesn’t work.
Slide 16
Our tours will run until the end of October. We will then take a break, and start building the next season. If you want to propose a topic we should cover, if you know just the right person to lead a tour, or if you want to host a special edition tour with us, do let us know. We do have a WATER tour in the making, as well as a HEALTHCARE tour (Colonnade Pizza is where Tommy Douglas, the founder of our healthcare system, used to regularly eat his lunch while living in Ottawa). The great thing about the (de)tours model is its flexibility: we could add 20 new types of tours tomorrow, and our booking system would absolutely handle it. And we received proposals to expand (de)tours to other Canadian cities (as well as abroad – in South Sudan of all places), so we are open to have a conversation.
Slide 17
Once we become profitable, or recuperate some of our initial costs, we are really hoping to make (de)tours a viable social enterprise – we want to offer mentorship opportunities to youth in a key developmental phase of their lives, the 19-22 years of age, and by this we mean giving them the chance to have lunch or a coffee with inspiring people, be it Paolo Freire or Manjit Basi.
Slide 18
We would like to announce that we have an upcoming special edition (de)tour, in partnership with Spacing Ottawa. It will happen on Saturday, October 18, 2014 at 2:00pm. Join us as we …
Tickets are $25/person, and you can book through our website, at www.ottawadetours.ca
Slide 19
We’ve been featured in many places around Ottawa, including: CBC Ottawa Morning (radio), CBC’s Our Ottawa (TV), Apt613 (blog), Metro Ottawa (newsprint), among others. There’s a certain buzz going around (de)tours at the moment, and we couldn’t be more thrilled!
Slide 20
For more information, please go to our website, www.ottawadetours.ca
You can reach us on twitter @ottawa_detours, or email us at info@ottawadetours.ca
We look forward to welcoming you on one of our (de)tours. You have until the end of October to just us during this season.
Thank you for listening!