Weaving meaningful solutions for the challenges of our times
Our Vision
Communities of belonging, aliveness and power
Our Areas of Focus
Action Research and Project Development
Tapestry collaborates with non-profits, academia, municipalities, and community organizations to instigate and lead initiatives. We work with partners in community to explore and support tangible solutions to society's most pressing issues, including alternative economic systems, reviving the commons, food security and resilience, and housing as a human right.
Our systems change projects have included: needs assessments, case studies, and policy analysis and recommendations. We bring skills to this work such as conceptualizing projects, fund development and grant writing, community-building, engaging partners, implementing communications strategies, facilitating opportunities for sector based knowledge sharing, and management/reporting.
A few projects we have helped to bring to life!
The Stir - The commercial food hub for the Kamloops region, led by the Kamloops Food Policy Council provides facility rentals, business mentorship, and support to help local food entrepreneurs reach a wider market than they could otherwise access. Tapestry conducted initial feasibility planning, provided implementation support, secured funding, and developed a vision and business plan for this regional food distribution and aggregation hub.
Propolis - Propolis Housing Cooperative, spearheaded by Tapestry team member Lindsay Harris, is using innovative community bonds to raise $1.1 million for a property purchase in Kamloops’ North Shore. The funds will help build a six-storey building with 50 affordable, resilient co-op housing units featuring minimal environmental footprints.
Gender Equity Project - The Gender Equity Project is led by the Kamloops and District Elizabeth Fry Society. The goal of this community-based EFRY project is to support systems change to address gender inequity in Kamloops by removing gender-based barriers that create discrimination against women, men, and gender-diverse people in our community. Tapestry led the initial needs assessment, developed the strategic direction, and provided evaluation and facilitation support.
Evaluation and Strategic Learning
The Tapestry team brings deep expertise in designing and implementing evaluations that support learning, strategic decision-making, and evidence-based communication. We help changemakers feel empowered to embrace a learning mindset, combining accessible tools with a focus on understanding results and making thoughtful adjustments to enhance their impact.
We specialize in evaluating complex, systems-level, and collaborative initiatives across diverse contexts and sectors. Our approach integrates accessible tools and frameworks with actionable insights, ensuring organizations can address root causes, align strategies, and communicate impact effectively to funders, stakeholders, and communities. We bring a collaborative and adaptive approach to evaluation, drawing on diverse ways of knowing—including both qualitative and quantitative insights—to help organizations achieve their vision and contribute to meaningful systems change.
Evaluation support includes:
Designing and implementing evaluation frameworks tailored to complex, multi-stakeholder initiatives, ensuring alignment with your goals and strategic priorities.
Facilitating collaborative reflection to help organizations understand and act on findings, adapting strategies as needed.
Developing and applying user-friendly tools to collect, analyze, and share data in ways that are accessible and actionable.
Tracking progress and measuring impact with an emphasis on systems change, equity, and long-term sustainability.
Communicating results effectively through clear, compelling reports and presentations for funders, stakeholders, and partners.
Arts-Based Engagement
Arts-based engagement creates a shared understanding by bringing people together through an generative process to connect and learn in a shared time, reflect on an experience, place and space, as well as proposing future directions or feedback. Arts-based engagement can communicate not only ideas, but the emotions/significance behind the ideas in a way the written text, surveys, or other methods of engagement do not. Arts-based methods invite participants into reflection and dialogue and include a debrief portion that is similar to a focus group.
Courses and Capacity Building
At Tapestry, we are passionate about using participatory approaches, and working with and alongside our clients, not just for them. Through our sister organization Weaving the Future, we also offer courses for individuals and teams to build skills, resources and capacity for making ambitious changes in their community.
Facilitation and Community Convening
The Tapestry team holds significant experience in online and in-person facilitation. We host sessions across a wide range of participants and purposes, including industry consultations, collaborative working groups, online university courses, and interactive workshops. We also provide mentorship and support to new and emerging facilitators. We approach facilitation with the aim of achieving accessibility and inclusivity, using liberating structures and other frameworks that invite authentic conversation and democratic participation.
We specialize in hosting communities of practice, bringing together people with common interests to build connections, share knowledge, collaborate, and learn from each other through regular interactions. Our facilitators choose topics, listen to the needs and desires of members, help them learn from each other, find guest speakers, and facilitate engaging discussions.
Facilitation support includes:
Working with you and your team to understand the purpose of the meeting or process that requires facilitation and design a method that best meets those needs;
Working with staff or partners to communicate effectively with all participants to ensure meeting objectives are achieved; and
A dynamic and enthusiastic voice to guide meetings.
Special acknowledgement to Transition Kamloops City of Kamloops.
Strategic Planning and Theory of Change
The best planning can be done when we understand how and why we expect change to occur. Theory of change and strategic planning help us get an explicit understanding of the work we do and the outcomes we want to see. A theory of change or plan can be done for an individual project or program, or for an organization as a whole. Our strategic planning processes are grounded in the everyday work of an organization, while also pushing into ambitious goals and visions for what they want to achieve. We aim to help through:
Clarifying language used to describe activities and their expected outcomes;
Getting a better understanding of how and why activities lead to expected results; and
Exploring the best way to describe these relationships in order to encourage shared understanding among program staff and stakeholders.
To explore any of these options, please book a call with a member of our team to discuss your organization or company’s needs, desired outcome and how we can support you.