Jane’s Walk Calgary
Festival dates: May 4, 5, 6, 2018
Organizing for our 2018 festival is underway! Last year we had a whopping 82 walks in various neighbourhoods across the city on topics as diverse as skateboarding, to urban design, to climate change resiliency. Over the past decade we have welcomed over 250 volunteer walk leaders and thousands of participants including dogs! Jane’s Walk Calgary has been an initiative of the Calgary Foundation since 2008 in partnership with Jane’s Walk international.
Interested in leading a walk? Visit the new Jane’s Walk Calgary website!
A Global Movement
Jane’s Walks are free, locally-led walking tours inspired by legendary urban activist Jane Jacobs, in which people get together to explore, talk about and celebrate their neighbourhoods. Where more traditional tours are a bit like walking lectures, a Jane’s Walk is more of a walking conversation. Walks can focus on almost any aspect of a neighbourhood, and on almost any topic you can think of. Walks can be serious or funny, informative or exploratory; they can look at the history of a place, or at what’s happening there right now. Anyone can lead a walk–because everyone is an expert on the place where they live!
Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) was an urbanist and activist whose writings championed a fresh, community-based approach to city building. She saw cities as ecosystems that had their own logic and dynamism which would change over time according to how they were used. With a keen eye for detail, she wrote eloquently about sidewalks, parks, retail design and self-organization. At the core of her work and thinking was the need to get out and walk your city and observe how people, through their actions and interactions, create communities with a strong sense of belonging.