2023 Prototypes

We continue to experiment, learn and adapt.

In 2023, RECOVER Urban Wellbeing is supporting 6 prototypes. One is winding down - Expectant. Three are continuing and evolving from earlier years (Soloss, Auricle and The Gallery); one is new this year (PAWSibilities) and another is emerging (TBD - housing related).

Each prototype is being done in partnership with others. We are privileged to learn alongside many others and try to cultivate a community of shared learning and mutual support. In all of our prototypes, we centre the lived experience of community members.

Soloss

Soloss is community care for loss and grief, offering peer-to-peer support and the co-creation of individual and neighbourhood healing rituals. It is a network of Edmontonians legitimising and destigmatizing loss and grief. By bearing witness to loss in all its forms and giving grief a concrete form -- as paintings, objects, songs, dances, meditations and stories -- Soloss seeks to foster a deep sense of respect, connectedness, and meaning.

This year, it is one of 5 prototypes related to the City of Edmonton’s Encampment Strategy.

Auricle

It is about measuring wellbeing in a new way and de-colonizing data, by rebalancing data as story, data as learning, and data as relationships.

This year, it is being tested in transit spaces - in support of safety and wellbeing in public transit.

The Gallery

It is about nurturing healthy reciprocal relationships between members of the downtown business community and street-involved people, and it explores the role of a sidewalk space in doing so.

PAWSibilities

It is about using wellness dogs downtown to draw people into an interaction that helps bridge the gap between people who are from different walks of life.

Expectant

It is about finding a way to connect with, and provide support for those people who don’t have a supportive network of people around them as they make the transition into parenthood.

Emerging Housing Prototype - TBD

This one will draw upon ideas from the 2022 lived experience research conducted by InWithForward for the City of Edmonton’s update for its Affordable Housing Needs Assessment.