On social connection and policy
For last week’s class, we got off campus and into the “field” — and it was wonderful. We started the day at the Evergreen Brick Works, where our instructor Jo Flatt and her colleague Marina Queirolo gave us a tour of the grounds.
After a morning of activities at the Brick Works, we hit the road to visit the Evergreen storefront location in Hamilton. Jay Carter, Evergreen’s Hamilton Program Manager, told us about some of Evergreen’s projects in Hamilton. The one that caught my attention most was 100in1day.
This initiative, described as a “a global festival of citizen engagement,” involves many residents of a community each leading a small action to improve their city, all on the same day. An action could be a walking tour, a plant sale, a book swap, a free yoga session, a paint-in…or a thousand other things. I was struck by the similarities to a program I had helped coordinate when I previously worked at the Victoria Foundation, the Neighbourhood Small Grants program.
As we drove back to downtown Toronto, I thought about the connections between these kinds of grassroots actions and policy on a larger scale. Some of the projects that have come out of 100in1day in Hamilton have had longer-term policy impacts — for example, Jay told us about one citizen-led action that prompted the city to review its policies on roadside patios. But I also think these mini-projects contribute to a broader desired policy outcome: social connection.
More and more, researchers and policy-makers are pointing to the negative impacts of loneliness and social isolation. Some public health experts say that loneliness can be as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. The UK recently appointed a “minister of loneliness” to address this public policy problem.
An issue like loneliness isn’t something that’s going to be solved by some traditional government intervention. Social connection happens neighbour-to-neighbour, street by street. It may be a policy issue that concerns government, but the solution is surely rooted in community. I’m left wondering about how policy discussions at the macro level interact with actions at the micro level — in this case, how something like a prime minister’s announcement of a “minister of loneliness” interacts with all of those tiny, beautiful shared moments between people that add up to social connection. Politicians can talk about social isolation at the highest level, but the work is really done by the people on the ground — something that is likely true for many policy issues.
