Winter is a wonderful and challenging time of the year. The Wintermission project led by 8 80 Cities was set out to address social isolation, increase physical activity levels, and get cities and citizens to embrace wintertime.
A webinar was held to share the experiences and learnings from the program. We were inspired to hear about the success stories of the three participating cities: Buffalo, NY, Eau Claire, WI and Leadville, CO.
Here are some of the notable highlights from the event.
1. An inclusive engagement process is important.
It is a critical determinant of the overall success of each of the cities’ pilot projects. Bringing everyone in a room and ensuring that a wide range of voices and experiences are heard will have its challenges, but the cities managed it well by setting expectations and acting as conveners.
The community responded positively to each of the cities’ engagement strategies, the workshops, surveys, pop-up engagements and focus groups. From the results, they determined the public interests, ideas, existing barriers and challenges. Different experiences and relationships with winter also helped identify which are the most vulnerable groups to social isolation.
Based on insights from the stakeholders, the three cities were guided by their vision statement.
2. The pilot projects are inspiring.
It will serve as an inspiration to the other winter cities to do the same. It took collaboration, planning and persistence to make the pilot projects happen, responding to the main issues and opportunities raised during the engagement process. They came up with priorities in different areas. Still, they had an intersecting focus on better snow management, gear lending or sharing, winter accessibility and comfort, winter guidebooks and more inclusive winter events and activities.
These pilot projects brought collective ideas into action and engaging life into winter. It will also be part of the Winter City Strategy, which will shape future projects, programs and policies.
3. We are adaptive and capable of coming up with innovative alternatives.
In difficult times, we can be surprisingly adaptive. Covid19 happened, and the social distancing made it even more challenging for the winter cities. Nevertheless, it didn’t stop them from pushing community engagements and continued to focus on the goal.
They went to homes and distributed weatherization kits to community members. The “winter fun in a bag” that promotes family bonding activities and the volunteer programs that aim to help the most vulnerable group to social isolation were significant. The Wintermission social media plan was also a timely strategy to influence and spread positive information about winter.
It requires consistent effort and participation from all the residents, community organizations and stakeholders to reach the goal. The Wintermission and the three cities’ accomplishments will encourage others to develop their own unique winter city strategy for increasing social and physical activity in winter.