Knitting & Bassets = Community, oh my!

As you might have recently read, I’ve taken on a new role at Alberta Recreation and Parks Association (ARPA). I’m now a Programs Manager whose main focus is on community-related initiatives. Like with my work with ACE Communities, I find myself really having to think about what the word ‘community’ actually means.

Just the other day, I was speaking with my neighbour Veronica Murphy who is owner of STASH – one of our local Inglewood businesses (STASH is a knitting, sewing, and crafting studio). I’ve known Veronica for a few years now in your typical neighbourly way. When she goes out of town, I will sometimes watch over her rabbit Mr. Freckles. We’ve gotten together for New Year’s Eve and the occasional summer deck party. My husband borrows her husband’s power tools.

In our recent conversation, Veronica was telling me about her booth – which happens to be a converted 1956 Shasta trailer… how cool is that! - which she currently has at the Calgary Folk Festival. As part of her roles as a ‘vendor’, Veronica also planned a series of free guerilla-like knitting circles in an effort to develop community connectedness during the festival.

Veronica’s plans for her knitting circles got me thinking. When we do sit down to contemplate ‘community’, we often think of geographical connections like the ones we have with others in our neighbourhoods and in our towns or cities. Community is often associated with place.

The insight that popped into my head, as I was chatting with Veronica, was that we shouldn’t forget about the OTHER kind of community. This is the kind of community that’s defined by our passions, by our common interests, and by our feelings.

If you were to ask someone what it truly means to be part of a community they would probably say that it was somewhere that they felt they belonged and where they knew that they could always make a positive impact.

Here’s a case in point. A few weeks ago, I mentioned to Veronica that I was doing a bottle drive to help raise funds for the basset hound rescue that I help run as a volunteer. Veronica took action and placed a note in her newsletter saying that anyone willing to donate their bottles to my cause would get a free knitting lesson at STASH. And the bottles came in by the bags… Many didn’t even take up the offer of the free knitting session, they just wanted to simply help out.

Her knitting community helped my basset community raise much needed funds. My basset community helped Veronica’s knitting community feel like they were connected to a greater cause like helping animals in need.

Veronica is also a supporter of East Village initiatives, she donates her space for use as a venue for the Calgary Fringe Fest, and is planning monthly events at STASH that will fundraise for and support local arts programs. So the fact that she was instigating free knitting circles as part of the Calgary Folk Festival, and helped out homeless hounds in need, is not that surprising.

When people come together to share in a passion, true community is formed. Don’t forget that community doesn’t necessarily have to be out your front door.

Live in Calgary? Make sure to visit Veronica and her pale blue Shasta trailer this weekend at the Calgary Folk Festival. She’d love to hear your thoughts about your community.

And who said?

The girls were having a blast… their friends had all arrived for the party. There was a pink frosted cake, gifts to be unwrapped, loot bags, and the whole neighbourhood had turned out. My little Cleo and Sammie were turning five and I was a proud momma. Sure – Cleo and Sammie are basset hounds but those are the kind of details I never bother to dwell on.

Before the final Community Building webcast with Ian Hill this past Friday, I mentioned on the chat board that I was planning on hosting a basset birthday batch. This had Ian in stitches.

“That’s pretty hilarious,” he said later on the webcast. “But, hey, community can happen anywhere.”

This really did make me think. It is true, community does happen anywhere. Because let’s face it, even I know that birthday parties for dogs are a little silly. The reason for this bash, like with many others that I’m sure will happen this summer, was that I really just wanted to be surrounded by my people… my peeps… as the cool kids say.

This was undeniably a fabricated way to bring my community together. One of the messages that ACE Communities promotes is that it is ok to dig up a reason to build community. Back in the day we had the barn raisings, quilting bees, and canning circles as ways of bringing people together. Nowadays, we seem to have lost those positive avenues or catalysts for individuals to connect to different types of community.

It was interesting to see what transpired during my basset bash. I had my parents mixing with the ladies from my basset hound rescue group (they brought the basset guests). Our art-world friends hung with my group of tried-and-true neighbours. One of our basset hound foster moms met my neighbour who happened to work at the Calgary Humane Society. They exchanged info and job-hunting tips.

The same foster mom reconnected with one of my husband’s artist friends who happened to have taught her how to make pottery a year before. This pottery teacher is a rather new addition to our street so she was able to formally meet all of the neighbours that she had only ever knew in passing.

Two new moms with similar aged children watched as their kids played with each other’s toys amongst the basset hound chaos. Everyone sang happy birthday when the girls’ cake came out because that’s what you do at a birthday party.

I would say I had 20 people at my shindig from the age of 3 months to 65 – and those were just the people. Six basset hounds, two great danes, and one grandma poodle made up the rest.

One friend volunteered to go shopping for me when I got too busy with other party-related things. One of my neighbours went over to the other’s to help her organize her two young children for the basset party – help that was much appreciated as her husband was away for the weekend.

I even had the young, impressively tattooed guy from across the street knock on my door the following morning with Cleo in tow. A partygoer had forgotten to close the gate and so Cleo went for a morning stroll down the street. Until that point I had never even chatted with this unexpected Good Samaritan but boy was I relieved that he had taken the time to note that we were the house with the crazy bassets.

And who said that basset hounds couldn’t build community?