It’s been a whirlwind, but in the last year, our small but mighty team at The Green Line and Concordia University have come together to bring you Documenters Canada. This project is growing and changing quickly, and this blog is a spot for us to tell you about how we did it, what’s coming, and how you can get involved.
Documenters Canada started as a dream, inspired by our friends at Documenters.org, who have been documenting public meetings in 25 (and counting) places around the U.S. for years. We took a tiny step towards realizing this dream in the fall of 2023, when a group of MA journalism students at Concordia spent the semester addressing this question: how could the Documenters program help to improve the quality of local news in three Montreal neighbourhoods?
Based on what the students learned, a sub-group of us formed a team to try to realize the project. For this initial phase, we decided to work with The Green Line in Toronto, one of the news organizations in Canada doing the most innovative community-centered work through its action journeys. (Montreal Documenters to come!) The Green Line was already planning an engagement outpost to connect with folks in Alexandra Park, a Toronto neighbourhood that has been underserved by media, and it felt like Documenters could flow naturally from what they learned there.
Once we figured all that out, things moved pretty quickly. We applied for and got a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and got to work, initially on producing all the materials you see on this website, like the field guide and trainings. In September of 2024, we were ready to launch Documenters at The Green Line.
Since then, we’ve trained five community-member Documenters, we’ve been tweaking our process, the academic team at Concordia has been working on some scholarly analysis of the experience, and we’ve been applying for funds and building our network for an eventual Documenters Canada expansion.
We’ll keep, er, documenting how things go, so watch this space. And feel free to contact us at documenters-canada@concordia.ca with ideas, questions, or if you’d like to get involved!
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