The Pulse: July 28, 2023

An unorthodox research initiative called Auricle is returning to Edmonton this year to learn more about how safe and well people feel in transit centres.

The $90,400 project, which is run by social design agency InWithForward, is looking to recruit eight "local listeners" to collect stories at the Clareview, Churchill, and Jasper Place transit centres about what influences transit users' sense of well-being. Applications close on July 30 for the positions, and the work will take place from August to early November.

The project isn't just about looking at things like the number of security guards at a transit station, said Natalie Napier, InWithForward's lead of research and storytelling. Instead, the project aims to explore the factors that influence people's sense of community, as well as reach those who are normally left out of traditional engagement methods.

"We are trying to understand what influences the way that people are interacting in these spaces," she told Taproot. "People who might be regarded as the cause of the safety issues in transit spaces, they will be among the people we speak to. We're not just talking to your middle-class professional commuters."

Rochelle Nieuwenhuis, a community co-researcher with InWithForward, said the approach Auricle uses differs from conventional data collection methods.

"Just using numbers as a way to represent well-being misses so much of the context for people," she said. "One of the things that's unique about Auricle is because it uses micro-stories as data itself, it can look at the context, and what does something like well-being means to different people."

Nieuwenhuis was a local listener with Auricle during its first project in 2021, which focused on Alberta Avenue. Dressing up like a clown was one of the things she did to draw people into conversation.

"Some of it is based on just creativity and the emergence of what the local listeners come up with as ideas," she said. "We don't want to come across as like a salesperson. We want to bring some joy and some intrigue right off the bat."

• The Community Outreach Transit Team, which connects vulnerable people with community services, has expanded to seven teams of outreach workers from the Bent Arrow Traditional Healing Society and transit peace officers. COTT launched with two teams in September 2020 and grew in 2022. It now runs seven days a week from 6am to 2am and is expected to continue operating until at least 2026.
• Provincial data shows emergency services in Edmonton responded to 753 overdose incidents in the past month, compared to 306 in the same period last year. More than half (57%) of the 1,321 overdose responses across Alberta since June 26 were in Edmonton. Darren Markland, an intensive care doctor at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, told CBC up to 30% of overdose patients in his unit are unidentified, having been found unconscious or dead on the streets or in the river valley. He said he has never seen so many overdoses and deaths due to drug poisoning in his 20 years at the hospital.
• The city began exploring ways to encourage bats to live in Edmonton as natural pest control after council voted to scrap its aerial mosquito control program in 2022. This year, the city began a bat monitoring program, which is the first-ever official assessment of what kinds of bats live here and where. Cory Olson, a program coordinator for the Alberta Community Bat Program, said bats in Edmonton are healthy for now but may be at risk due to white-nose syndrome, a bat-killing disease that first appeared in Alberta in January. Olson also said keeping pet cats inside is "one of the most important things that we can do to help bats in the city."
• Evolution Wonderlounge has suffered damages resulting in expensive repairs for the fourth time in six months. Police say it appears one person broke in on the morning of July 27 by smashing the window with a rock and left with an undisclosed amount of cash. Rob Browatzke, one of the bar's owners, estimates about $10,000 in damages and property theft. He said he believes it was a crime of opportunity and not a hate crime, but he added that "when you've got the climate the way it is right now, and you've got a Pride flag hanging outside, and you're the only place getting hit on the block, you can't not think that."
• Edmonton Centre MP Randy Boissonnault spoke to Postmedia about what his new cabinet post means for Alberta. He said his job as minister of employment, workforce development, and official languages is to work with Canadian workers to ensure they are "prepared and ready to embrace the jobs of the 21st century."
• Rod Klumph, a councillor for the Town of Barrhead, walked from the Alberta Legislature to Fort Assiniboine to draw attention to Fort Assiniboine's bicentennial celebrations, which took place July 7-9. He began the 160-kilometre walk on July 1 and arrived July 6.
• Tyson Gordon Jr., a 14-year-old Edmonton cricket player, has been playing as a member of Jamaica's under-15 cricket team since January. "Growing up, I tried to teach him that you've got to decide what you want to be in life. If you want to be a cricketer, you've got to start from a young age," said his father, Tyson Gordon Sr., who played for Jamaica's senior national team in 2005 and played for Canada in the Cricket World Cup in 2011.

Opportunities this weekend include a flowery date night, outdoor basketball, a nature walk, a run for everyone, a Chinatown gathering, and an Indigenous arts market.

• July 28, 6:30pm: Brews & Blooms at Blooms on Seven Flower Farm
• July 28-30: FIBA 3x3: Outdoor Basketball at the ICE District
• July 29, 10am: Community Trail Walk with the Fort Saskatchewan Naturalist Society, presented by the River Valley Alliance
• July 29, 10am: Kello Loop at Foote Field
• July 29, 6pm: Chinatown After Dark at 10566 97 Street NW
• July 29-30: CREATE | Indigenous Arts Market — kanihtâwihtahk kîkway ᑲᓂᐦᑖᐃᐧᐦᑕᕁ ᑮᑲᐧᕀ at the Art Gallery of Alberta

Find even more things to do in the Arts Roundup and the Food Roundup.

Photo: Van Loc is among the restaurants participating in Chinatown After Dark, which will take over the alley behind China Marble Restaurant on Saturday. (Mack Male/Flickr)