SCARP ICP's final practicum presentations a great success and a special community day

On April 16, 2024, SCARP gathered in community for the ICP Practicum final presentations, one of the most special events of the SCARP year. 

UBC and the School of Community and Regional Planning gather and teach on the traditional ancestral and unceded territory of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ speaking xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people. SCARP were thankful for the chance to gather in community at the Musqueam Cultural Centre, to hear the findings of ICP students who learned and worked on xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and sísqeʔ (Siska) land. 

Those gathered were welcomed by Musqueam artist Alec Geurin, who said of ICP, 

This program is something that has become really near and dear to my heart.

"There is no 'view from nowhere'."

-Deborah McGregor

What is ICP?

Indigenous Community Planning trains a new generation of community planners who will break with the colonial legacy and culture of planning in order to work in respectful partnership with Indigenous communities. Founded in 2012, ICP is a concentration of SCARP's Master of Community and Regional Planning program.

We seek to equip emerging community planners with the necessary theory, skills, knowledge, and capacity to support Indigenous communities in achieving their own aspirations for land stewardship, cultural revitalization, strong governance, health and well-being. 

Our approach is grounded in community and land-based learning, emphasizes mutual and transformative learning, and integrates these principles with grounding in Indigenous worldviews: ways of being, knowing, and doing.

Some ICP practicums represent continuations of ongoing partnerships between SCARP and an Indigenous nation.

Paraphrasing ICP Profesor Emerita Leonie Sandercock, ICP Practicum lead Jessie Hemphill said:

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The Indigenous Community Planning program isn't so much about teaching a way of doing planning, as it is a way of teaching a way of being a planner; a planner who is atuned to the living nature of the world, and the living transformative nature of community; who is atuned to relationship building; to working in a way that is flexible and relational and interconnected and healing and centred on Indigenous determination and well-being, as well as that of the planners.

Jessie Hemphill has described to us before that her language situates everything we describe in its cultural context: all water comes from certain land, all land has a story alongside the people who have curated it, and all people are situated in a cultural context in relationship with the land they inhabit. 

In this spirit, one of the most important skills students have learned at ICP is to always describe each of our contexts, including introducing yourself in a good way to our hosts on whose land we have gathered, elaborating from what perspective we each describe what we learn, and storytelling our journeys with a community. With this context we will have truly gathered in community and know each other, and can create together in a good way. 

The space we were welcomed into and the facilitation of the event was as usual an inspiration of how any gathering to share knowledge could be: not only sharing knowledge in partnership, but a space of self-care and mutual celebration.

The ICP students, their partners, and their partnerships

Voices:

A Census-Based Approach to Monitoring & Evaluating a Comprehensive Community Plan

with xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam Indian Band)

Presented by ICP students Cloé St Jean and Maya Blood

Looking at numbers isn't enough to understand what's going on in a community... The keys to planning a community lie within the community.

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Planning as a Journey;

Lessons we Learn along the Way

with sísqeʔ piʔełcítxw (Siska Indian Band)

Presented by ICP students Hannah Phillips and Zoë Tapert

Planners as Change Agents centers self-awareness and relational awareness, requiring of us reflection not only on action but reflection in action.

No matter what, we are always held in relation to one another. We are never alone in what may seem like individual moments.

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Community Planning

with xwkwa’lexwem (Qualicum First Nation)

Presented by ICP student Rajpreet Sidhu

Feminist Planning tells us that planning cannot be done in a top-down scientific approach, but has to be done in the community.

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Weaving Connections:

Working with Sḵw̱xwú7mesh Úxwumixw on their Community Planning Projects

Presented by ICP students Graeme Clendenan, Maureen Long, and Megan Uglem

Sḵw̱xwú7mesh people are not just inhabitants; they are the land.

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Congrats everyone and thanks for a special day!