The Manifesto Festival of Culture and Community concluded yesterday at Nathan Phillips Square with a fantastic day of activities. As their website promotes, ”The critically acclaimed Manifesto Festival Of Music, Art & Culture is 4 days of incredible events across the city, culminating in a massive free outdoor concert at Nathan Phillips Square in the heart of downtown Toronto”.
Armed with our HP Touch Screen Computers, a branded tent and excitement over the beautiful weather, Emily, Mary, Morgan and myself went out with the Civic Footprint Kiosk to talk one-on-one with festival goers about their Civic Engagement and contributions to the community.
Our Civic Footprint Kiosk is used at events to bring awareness and have conversations about your contributions to your community through formal and informal giving of your time, talents and money. We use our Civic Footprint Calculator and social media tools to illustrate the potential “Civic Footprint” of each participant, offer recommendations for national organizations that they may consider getting involved with, and then promote the event through Facebook and Twitter (tagging sweet pictures like this one).
It is interesting, heartwarming and inspiring to talk with so many people who are not only active in their community (formally and informally), but who are genuinely interested in planning their civic engagement, and in learning how to do more. We had several conversations with people interested in our recommendations for other ways to get involved, and who were curious about how our Civic Footprint Calculator illustrates how big their impact could be.
Manifesto was a great place to bring the Civic Footprint Kiosk. An excited crowd, friendly conversations, and great music made for a lovely Sunday afternoon. We’re busy on the road with the Civic Footprint Kiosk this month – watch our Twitter feed for updates on where we’ll be next.
Side Note: Torontoist has a blog post on the Toronto Art Map 2009, a project commissioned for the Manifesto Festival of Culture and Community, which saw local artists in the city network with each other as well as local councillors to produce a great work and message about art and community.
