Last year, Learning Again In Almonte hosted a six week programme called This Place We Call Home, in which seven dynamic experts shared some of the innovative possibilities to deal with the tsunami of growth that is coming our way. When it was over, people were excited and wanting to know how community members can contribute ideas and create structures to nurture and shape those ideas. So, we invite you to join us for a one day of facilitated round table discussions that will give you the opportunity to share your answers to the following questions:

 

What do you love about your community?

What do you fear you will lose with growth?

What excites you about the potential for growth and the good it might bring to our community?

What ideas do you have to both harness your excitement, address your fears and put them into concrete action to benefit our community?

 

Guest speakers, who will provide context to our discussions, are:

Mike Moffat, the Senior Director of Policy and Innovation at the Smart Prosperity Institute, whose insights into why the housing crisis exists and why the issue of affordability is so challenging, will shine a light on why growth is both necessary and inevitable, but just how that growth happens is not.

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Jennifer Hemmings, Regional Director of NAK design strategies, a landscape architect who has been at the forefront of community design in Toronto and Ottawa for more than 22 years and will demonstrate how community design can serve the priorities of those who live there.

 

 

Additionally, Mississippi Mills Mayor, Christa Lowry and Lanark Leeds Home Builders Association President, Pierre Dufresne will speak briefly on the challenges and opportunities they see for themselves and their sectors in this exchange of ideas.