VANCOUVER—Facilitator, consultant, former ballerina, and all-around creative person, Amanda Gibbs inspired Vancouverites at Friday’s CreativeMornings/Vancouver.

Gibbs’ talk aimed to motivate a design/communications-oriented audience to take action in the sphere of civic engagement. She envisions a future where cities create platforms for conversation and places for people to gather.

Gibbs said, “I think the people in this room have the power to change the future.” She explained to the audience that they as creative people can use their communication skills to transform cities into engaging, exciting places.

She noted how there is a worldwide shift towards city living. With this movement, cities are becoming bigger and therefore less personal. Gibbs, who showed up to present wearing an “I [love] Strathcona” T-shirt, said about Vancouver, “I find it disorienting to live here.” (Strathcona is an eastside Vancouver neighbourhood.) She noted that Vancouver gets constantly rated as having one of the highest qualities of life, yet there is a lack of social cohesion. She noted that this is due in part to the extreme income gaps that exist in Vancouver, but more importantly, due to a lack of creative collaboration.

She shared many examples of projects that citizens are doing around the world to create social change in their cities, from pop-up learning labs to collaborative art spaces.

Listeners left armed with inspiration, ready to make change in their neighbourhoods; to create spaces conducive to conversation, to beautify and green their neighbourhoods, to define areas where people can get together.

Creative Mornings will continue to engage all types of creative people with February’s speaker Gagan Diesh of DesignStamp who has asked a question in advance of his talk: How many in the audience have the word “design” in their titles?