Project Objective
Connect with residents on the best ways to bring new life and energy to Celebration Square.
The Colour the Square campaign was launched in partnership with the Town of Whitby to connect with residents on the best ways to bring new life and energy to Celebration Square.
Celebration Square is a plaza located next to the main branch of the Whitby Public Library. An award-winning building, the library is a heavily used community hub. Despite the proximity, adjacent Celebration Square is often abandoned. Colour the Square set out to change that.
The first phase of the campaign took place over the winter of 2016-2017 and focused on connecting with a wide swathe of Whitby residents, folks of all ages and backgrounds. By taking engagement to the streets, we could spark conversations all over town about the future of the Square. What keeps people away from Celebration Square? What would encourage them to spend more time there? How can we enable community led activation of the plaza? We conducted workshops with city staff, local businesses, youth leaders, and others to develop pilot project ideas and work plans to bring new programming to Celebration Square.
The findings were summarized in our final report, which highlighted the most popular ideas and main themes residents spoke to and detailed a list of actions the Town of Whitby could take to bring more life to Celebration Square. Based on this report, the Town has launched the second phase of the Colour the Square campaign in the summer of 2017, bringing many of the ideas to life.
