Launching in 2024, The Literacy Lab is a multi-year social lab with a focus on addressing the challenges related to childhood literacy in Calgary. The Literacy Lab will bring together diverse community participants from across traditional boundaries, backgrounds and sectors who bring different perspectives and lived experience to the issue. Together, the Lab will dive into the patterns, structures and mindsets that are keeping the challenge entrenched in order to uncover root causes, identify systemic interventions and design and test new ideas for addressing this issue. 

A partnership between The Trico Changemakers Studio and Calgary Arts Development, the Artist as Changemaker (AAC) project started in 2018 as an initiative to expedite the capacity of socially engaged artists to create meaningful social change. Over the past few years, a cohort of local artists have developed a residency program to employ their artistic mindset and systems-change knowledge to discover unique and creative ways to address complex social challenges.

The ASCN: Calgary Hub operates in partnership with Calgary Arts Development, Trico Changemakers Studio, and the International Centre of Art for Social Change. The primary mission of the Calgary Hub is to cultivate, promote, and nurture the field of art for social change and community-engaged arts in Calgary, harnessing its potential as a tool for driving social transformation.

In January 2023, the Studio welcomed our first Changemaker in Residence - Steacy Pinney. As the former CEO of the treasured local nonprofit Calgary Reads, Steacy is a true changemaker with a passion for early childhood literacy and an incredible systems mindset. In 2023, Calgary Reads will be dissolved as a non-profit through a “dandelion dispersal,” transferring its programs and knowledge to seven different seed partners. This dispersal allows for established programs developed by Calgary Reads to grow into something new and continue to have an impact on the community, even after the organization ceases operations.

Anitopisi Learning Circles are a space to gather with Indigenous and non-Indigneous people to learn about, and engage with, processes of reconciliation. We will sit in circle with Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers, and engage with ways of knowing and being that will help us move forward in good ways together. There will be four circles that take place monthly over the winter and spring. The topics are protocols, language, land and reciprocity. Whether you're brand new to ideas around reconciliation, you're ready to get started, or you've been walking this road for a long time, these circles are for you.

Mount Royal University is designated as a Changemaker Campus by Ashoka Canada - a designation awarded to less than 50 post-secondary institutions worldwide. This year we have had the privilege of interviewing folks across campus - MRU alumni, staff, students, and faculty - all who embody the values of a changemaker. These incredible folks come from a breadth of departments and their work covers many disciplines; but these folks all embody the characteristics of a changemaker: they prioritize empathy, embrace humility, and are committed to making a positive difference.

Launched in 2020, Anitopisi is a co-curricular leadership program that is situated at the intersection of reconciliation and changemaking. With the support of Elders and Indigenous knowledge keepers, students learned through land based, lectures, storytelling, creative arts practice and group activity. In May 2023, we completed the 2-year pilot and can learn more about the journey and learnings at the link below.

The Changemaker Conversations Project is a space for generative dialogue, meaningful connection and inspiration. After dozens of virtual conversations, with hundreds of participants tuning into learn about the topics of Right Relations & Racial Equity, Wellbeing & Belonging, and Environment & Sustainability, we are pressing ‘pause’ on Changemaker Conversations for the 2024-25 season.

Released in 2024, this podcast was an eight-part extension of the generative dialogue of Changemaker Conversations. Our host Priscilla Cherry interviews four incredible changemakers on topics like climate grief, transformational systems change, the mental health journey, and active allyship. As with Changemaker Conversations, we are pressing 'pause' on this program.

In 2021, Calgary Foundation, in partnership with the Trico Changemakers Studio at Mount Royal University (MRU) embarked on a multi-year social lab to explore how we might reimagine and transform how the nonprofit sector co-creates thriving and resilient communities in the context of increasingly complex pressures and challenges.  Using a systemic, co-creative approach, the lab set out to deepen our understanding of the complex challenges facing the social sector and focused on building resilience and adaptive capacity while prototyping, testing and identifying high-potential solutions. 

Held throughout the Fall of 2022, Hayden Melting Tallow shared his knowledge of Blackfoot history, language and worldviews in the Trico Changemakers Studio. This program provided participants with a welcoming learning environment and connection opportunities.