What Is It, Exactly?

What exactly is a Community Design Workshop? What happens? Why should you sign up? Get the answers below!

What exactly is a Community Design Workshop?

The Musqueam Community Design Workshop, which you may hear called a “charrette,” is a six-day, community-driven design workshop. 

What makes this engagement different is that the design team is actually designing options for the future of Musqueam Reserve in real-time and in your community. For six days, they will be putting on paper the ideas you have already shared, or intend to share at the workshop!

During the week, there are many opportunities for you to meet and share your ideas with members of the planning, architecture, engineering, transportation, environmental, and landscape consultant teams. 

You can see your ideas put on paper, discussed, and vetted. 

You might even see your ideas make their way into the final plan!

Why should you care? 

This is your land, and it needs to be optimized to provide for Musqueam members for now and generations into the future.

For thousands of years, Musqueam have lived here and thrived here. As stewards of our land,  how the community chooses to develop, preserve, or sustain this land today will determine the future of Musqueam families for generations to come. 

The primary goal of this plan is to create more housing options for Musqueam families, so that Musqueam band members who want a home of their own on-reserve can do so. 

There are other options and opportunities to consider in addition to housing. 

For instance, how might land also be used for: 

  • Creating revenue for Musqueam programs, services, and self-governance needs?
  • Preserving Musqueam culture, heritage, art, and traditions?
  • Ensuring a sustainable, environmentally-compatible place for generations to come?

These are all questions that only the community can answer. That’s why it’s important for you to sign up and show up!

So, how does it work?

On the first day of the workshop, the Master Plan team will present to the community an overview of the research done to date on Musqueam Reserve IR2, including the valuable input you provided during the December 2021 family dinner and the design survey online

This information will include things like environmental, cultural, and flooding concerns and assessments, as well as a timeline for developing the land, including leased lands. The opening presentation will also share some of the key goals and principles guiding the planning team for the upcoming week. 

Then, the team of consultants start to draw, and listen to you, and draw again, and listen some more, and so on. 

During the week, you will have several opportunities to share your ideas, review the plan options, make suggestions, and provide feedback. You can even do this in real-time, while the plan options are being drawn up! 

At the end of the week, during the Saturday Open House, you will be able to review the different plan options developed over the past five days and comment on them. These plan options will also be available for review and comment online following the event. In addition, each plan option will be evaluated by the consultant team members technically for issues related to sustainability, environmental preservation, revenue opportunities, and housing types.

Then, after all of that community input and feedback, a final draft, or consensus, Master Plan will be developed for presentation to Chief & Council, and the community in the fall. 


 

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