Our Officer Manager, Hugh Daly, explores what it means to be a Canopian through one of his most recently sold paintings, Procession in Red.

At a recent weekly staff meeting, Canopy team members were asked to share a story of an impactful project they were working on.  Folks shared some amazing stories of our work in the community – from holding small group conversations in Steamboat around affordable housing needs, to hearing from diverse participant voices in multiple languages at a Growing our Future Coalition meeting, to bringing indigenous voices into recreation planning in Greeley.

As Office Manager at The Civic Canopy, I don’t often get to witness firsthand the important work my fellow Canopians do in the community.  My work is typically relegated to organizational support (don’t get me wrong, I love my role). I ensure our team has the tools and resources to do their work, and that our organization has the structure in place for Canopy to achieve its mission and vision.  While I’m not out directly contributing to project work, I do get to see our internal workings very closely, and I know that who my colleagues show up as internally is who they show up as when working with partners.

I am also an artist. As I grasped for a show-and-tell idea of my own to share, I was thinking about a painting I had sold the previous weekend through  NKollectiv Gallery co-op.  The painting titled “Procession in Red” depicts a group of crows in a captured moment in a journey.

Now permit me to digress a moment. At The Civic Canopy, we don’t have an org chart, nor do we have ‘supervisors’ or anyone we report to.  We are all leaders, and we each play an active role in organizational decision-making.  What we do have are Guides. Each Canopian has a one-on-one Guide who supports their learning and growth. The role of the Guide early on is to serve as a source of information and support as new staff are onboarded to Canopy culture, but equally important, the role of the Guide evolves over time to provide targeted feedback on given topics, skills, or developmental areas. Canopy Guides tailor their support to the staffer’s own professional journey.

So how does this show-and-tell, Procession in Red, and Canopy Guides tie together?  When I studied the painting for the umpteenth time, I realized it was really telling the story of Guidance at the Canopy. The lead crow is gently guiding but pausing to take a pulse on where other members of the group are at, knowing that though different members of the group may be present and following the path, each is on their own developmental journey, seeing the journey in their unique way, and that’s perfectly ok.

Looking carefully, the background of the painting is an assembled collage of different maps, which further serve as a metaphor for finding direction, or finding common ground, which is what I think we do best at the Canopy.  When I start a painting, I don’t have the end result in mind; rather, it’s an evolving exploration and learning process.   Canopy Guides don’t provide direct solutions to problems or make decisions.  Instead, they may help visualize something differently, or help identify different roadmaps for tackling a challenging problem using the same five values that guide everything we do:

• Relationships first – building authentic, respectful, and open relationships is necessary for transformational change​
• Center equity – centering those who are furthest from thriving will create the most equitable solutions​
• Change is constant – everything within us, around us is in constant flux; we choose to move with and embrace change​
• Embrace complexity – to solve the big, sticky, wicked problems, solutions will need to embrace an increasingly complex world​
• Practice not perfect – we are a collective of practitioners who are honing our practices, growing, and evolving along the way