Sessions - 2026 - Civic Canopy

Schedule

Thursday, May 21

Friday, May 22

Thursday, May 21

Friday, May 22

Session Descriptions

Thursday, May 21st

Play Station 1 | 10:00-10:30AM

We Already Have the Pieces: A Practical Approach to Shared Civic Purpose

Tawnya Russell
Presented in English

In a world where citizens feel disconnected and institutions struggle to keep pace, clarity of purpose is more important than ever. In this interactive session, participants will engage in a hands-on group puzzle challenge in which teams use identical sets of limited resources to accomplish a task under time pressure. Although each group receives the same materials and instructions, they often approach the task differently — revealing how varying interpretations, assumptions, and decision-making styles shape collective outcomes. Through a guided debrief, participants will draw direct parallels to civic systems: What happens when communities have the same pieces but see the “point” differently? How do misalignment, unclear purpose, or uneven voice — rather than true scarcity — create barriers to collaboration? And how can greater clarity, inclusion, and shared purpose transform how we use the resources already present in our civic ecosystems? Together, we will explore how purposeful alignment, equitable voice, and adaptive use of existing assets strengthen civic participation and institutional responsiveness — key to reviving democracy and redefining civics.

Rhythms of Democracy—Drumming as a Pathway to Civic Engagement, Love and Collective Healing

Francis Agyakwa
Presented in English

Democracy, much like a drum circle, thrives when every voice finds its rhythm in harmony with others. Rhythms of Democracy invites participants to experience civic connection and collaboration through drumming. A universal language that transcends differences, fosters empathy, and reconnects people to shared purpose. In this immersive session, participants will explore how rhythm, listening, and group creativity can help communities transform tension into trust and polarization into partnership. Using West African drumming principles, this workshop turns civic engagement into a sensory experience—rooted in respect, balance, and love.

Co-Leadership in Practice: Sharing Power, Strengthening Organizations, and Leading Through Complexity

Teva Sienicki, Erik Hicks
Presented in English

What does it look like to truly share leadership—beyond titles and theory—inside complex, mission-driven organizations? This session explores Metro Caring’s lived experience implementing a co-CEO leadership model, examining how shared leadership can strengthen organizational resilience, improve decision-making, and better align internal culture with community-led values. Presented by Co-CEOs Teva Sienicki and Erik Hicks, the session offers a candid look at why Metro Caring chose co-leadership, what it required to operationalize, and how it has transformed governance, strategy, and day-to-day execution.

Building Understanding with Pragmatic Conservative Values

Patrick McCabe, Shirley Peel
Presented in English

Listen to insights from Shirley Peel’s pragmatic conservative campaign for Fort Collins Mayor: no single-use materials, no attacks, just listening and deliberating with constituents. Afterwards, stay and engage with the “Values Wall,” where you will rank and discuss principles like fiscal responsibility, safe communities, and sustainable growth. Find shared values, contribute your ideas, and leave with a greater understanding of conservative values in divided times.

More Than a Vote: Everyday Advocacy and the Power You Already Have

Jaime Burgher
Presented in English

Many people want to create change but aren’t sure where to start—or which actions actually make a difference. This interactive session focuses on everyday advocacy and the power individuals already have beyond voting. Participants will move through real-life scenarios, compare different ways to engage, and discuss why certain actions are more effective in specific situations. Designed to be welcoming and values-neutral, the session builds confidence, sharpens decision-making, and helps participants identify a realistic civic action they can take in their own lives or communities.

Session A | 10:30AM-12:00PM

The Rural Civic Renaissance: Lessons from the Edge of the Map

Aaron Miltenberger
Presented in English

Across rural Colorado, communities are quietly leading a civic renaissance—reimagining democracy not from capitol buildings but from small-town gyms, libraries, and youth centers. CoCenter has spent five years weaving networks of residents, nonprofits, and public partners to co-create civic systems grounded in care, connection, and shared responsibility. In this interactive 90-minute session, participants will explore real stories of rural civic innovation—from youth-led policymaking to collaborative models that bridge county lines. Together, we will identify the design principles that make rural civic culture durable: small scale, high trust, distributed leadership, and shared learning. Participants will also engage in a hands-on prototyping activity to practice strengthening civic spaces in contexts where power imbalances, institutional distrust, and burnout are common. The session culminates in the co-creation of a “Rural Civic Renaissance Blueprint,” helping participants identify assets, allies, and first steps they can take to foster civic spaces rooted in love, belonging, and shared decision-making rather than conflict.

Centering Historically Excluded Communities in City Decision-making

Ryan Hanschen, Adriana Paola Palacios Luna, Ana Silvia Avendaño-Curiel
Presented in English

Community Connectors empower the City of Boulder to make better decisions by partnering with staff to co-design culturally-proficient community engagement processes that elevate the experiences and voices of historically excluded communities. During this panel, Community Connectors themselves will share how they build trust between local government and community, increase inclusion within city decision-making, review and give feedback on Racial Equity Instruments, reduce barriers to better understand community input, facilitate ‘Building Power & Raising Voices’ sessions, amplify community needs during annual budget process, and share updates with city council. This session will also focus on how the city evolved support for Community Connectors, including on-going wellbeing programming and the co-development of a Community Connector Manual.

Leading with Love: Redefining Civic Power through Connection and Care

India Phoenix, Jamie Rasmussen
Presented in English

In a time when civic spaces are marked by burnout, polarization, and disconnection, this session invites participants to reimagine leadership through the lens of love. Drawing from community-based practices and the By the Brujas framework of holistic collaboration, this interactive session explores how connection, care, and compassion can serve as powerful tools for civic transformation. Participants will reflect on their own leadership practices, identify opportunities to embed love as a guiding value in their work, and co-create a shared understanding of what it means to lead with humanity in complex civic ecosystems. Together, we’ll uncover how love, not as sentimentality but as strategy, can reshape the ways we build, sustain, and repair community.

Turning Listening into Activation: Community-driven Democracy Redesign

Dr. Landon Mascareñaz, Amy Spicer, Jamie Engel
Presented in English

In 2025, Courageous Colorado conducted a statewide Listening Tour, visiting 20 communities to hear directly from Coloradans about courage, representation, and the future of our democracy. Those conversations inspired the Activation Tour, where local leaders began building cross-partisan teams and testing new models for civic collaboration across the state. Now, in 2026, this session—led by Dr. Landon Mascareñaz, Executive Director of Courageous Colorado and co-author of The Open System—shares how those efforts are translating into real action: community-led redesign efforts, new coalitions bridging rural and urban regions, and the growth of a statewide family of leaders redesigning democracy from the ground up. Participants will not only hear these stories—they’ll also have the opportunity to design their own open-systems process, learning how listening and activation can become practical tools for transformation in their own communities and organizations.

Session B | 1:30-3:00PM

Those Who Gather Oats

Jordan Smiley
Presented in English

We are living in unprecedented times – an era that Arundhati Roy has described as a new world being born. Life in this historical moment is characterized by the many truths of a birth – it is an incredibly painful time to be alive, but also an era of great potential. Embodying democracy in this era will happen partly in the birthing rooms of governance, but primarily in the way we explore collective power in our homes, relationships and our interpersonal lives. For every midwife attending to a birth there are hundreds of hands across the village helping. Some keep the fires burning, some wrap blankets around the elders. And some walk the fields patiently gathering oats – preparing on everyone’s behalf for all that is to come. Our collective resilience and ability to create functional expressions of democracy depends on many people faithfully doing small but impactful practices, often without knowing how exactly they will be applied. Knowing how to work with the range of our nervous system, attune to our emotions effectively and access the wonders of co-regulation and play increase our somatic intelligence. As somatic practitioner and author Prentis Hemphill says, “a calm body is our most powerful body because it’s the body in which we have choice.” What does it take to have a resilient nervous system? Through breath awareness and gentle breath-led movement, community connection, sound, rest and other forms of somatic research, we’ll playfully expand our windows of tolerance, practice downregulation and explore what it takes to care for change as it is happening. Every small act or preparation and care matters – even the ones the size of an oat.

Transforming Language Equity Practices

Lauren Barrette, Isabel Serrano Torres
Presented in Spanish & English

Most language equity trainings tell you why it matters; this session makes you feel why it matters. We begin with a deliberate reversal of the status quo by immersing the audience in a space where English is not the dominant language. This experience triggers the physical and emotional reality that multilingual community members face every day, serving as the catalyst for a deep dive into transforming our professional practices. Led by a bilingual facilitator and a professional Spanish interpreter, this session moves beyond theory into a practical masterclass on language inclusion. We will break down common mistakes that inadvertently exclude others and replace them with a proven partnership model. Attendees will walk away with a practical checklist for working effectively with interpreters.

Forged in the Fire: Transformative Lessons for Organizational Resilience

Joy Lujan
Presented in English

This interactive workshop invites participants to explore what it means to lead with steadiness, empathy, and adaptability when the pressure is on. We will reframe leadership through the lens of transformation: how pressure, conflict, and uncertainty can become catalysts for clarity and growth. Drawing on Metamorphic Consulting’s Forged in the Fire framework and the nine elements of organizational resilience, participants will identify the internal and external “fires” shaping their leadership, uncover the systems that either sustain or strain their teams, and practice tools for reflection, alignment, and renewal.

¡Aquí sí nos escuchamos!

Maricruz Herrera, Carlos Herrera
Presented in Spanish

Aquí sí nos escuchamos!” is a hands-on session grounded in cultural circle practices and community dialogue tools we use to address fear, misinformation, and division affecting our communities today. Inspired by Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, participants will surface generative themes from their own lived experience, engage in guided storytelling, and practice forms of conversation that reduce isolation and build mutual understanding. This session mirrors what we have consistently seen in our community work: when people have a safe space to express themselves and be truly heard, connection grows, clarity emerges, and a renewed sense of unity, hope, and collective power becomes possible.

The Stories We Tell: Aligning Voice, Values, and Vision in Civic Work

Jamie N Rasmussen, India Phoenix
Presented in English

Stories shape what we believe is possible about our communities, our democracy, and each other. In this interactive workshop, participants will experience a “mini” version of Metamorphic Consulting’s Narrative Lab, a participatory process that helps organizations and coalitions unearth, reshape, and amplify the stories that guide their work. Through guided storytelling, creative reflection, and collective sense-making, participants will explore how narrative shapes power and belonging in civic spaces. Together, we’ll practice tools for story mining, framing, and values-based messaging that center lived experience and collective wisdom. We’ll also experiment with creative methods (visual mapping, word collage, embodied storytelling) to connect Head, Heart, and Hands, blending strategy and imagination, which is vital for creative solution-making. Participants will leave with a deeper understanding of how shared narratives can align internal culture, external messaging, and systemic impact, and with practical tools to shift stories in their own communities.

Friday, May 22nd

Session C | 10:00-11:00AM

By Young People, For All People: Inside the Youth Agenda

Silvia Entenza
Presented in English

We know that when empowered, organized, and prioritized, young people can transform their communities and strengthen democracy. In this session, participants will learn about the process New Era Colorado employed to compose the Youth Agenda, its core issues and how we advocate for positive change through policymaking, community organizing, and civic engagement, and reflect on steps we can collectively take to elevate young people’s voices.

Civic Power: Reimagining Participation Through Community, Culture & Collective Voice

Maryori “MJ” Guzman, Sandra Ortega, Cecilia Sanchez, Jason Medina, Kevin Hernandez
Presented in Spanish & English

Civic Power is a bilingual, interactive workshop that helps communities move from burnout and frustration into clarity, confidence, and collective action. Instead of traditional civic education, these sessions use storytelling, hands-on activities, cultural grounding, and community dialogue to demonstrate how everyday people can influence local decisions — without needing titles, credentials, or political connections. Participants leave with a deeper understanding of their civic rights, their local power, and practical strategies to create change in their neighborhoods, schools, and towns, all while building a network.

Nothing About Us Without Us: How Directly Impacted Leaders Shape Our Ballot & Legislative Agenda

Brizai Gomez Cortez
Presented in Spanish & English

This session will explore Metro Caring’s community-led model for creating ballot and legislative agendas with directly impacted community. Participants will learn how we move from listening sessions and popular education into shared issue analysis, power mapping, prioritization, and a democratic decision-making process that produces a people-shaped policy agenda each year. Through concrete examples, facilitation tools, and a participatory mini-activity, attendees will see how lived experience becomes strategic direction, and how community leadership drives both policy priorities and campaign readiness.

Designing Our Future: Community Engagement on the Estes Park Development Code

Jay Shields, Melissa Westover, Susan Stewart
Presented in English

In October 2025, Community Conversations (partnership between Estes Valley Restorative Justice and Estes Library) partnered with the Town of Estes Park’s Community Development Department to host two public deliberations as part of the Town’s Development Code update. Eighty-seven residents engaged in small-group discussions focused on affordable workforce housing, growth, and preserving community character. Participants strove to find common ground around a moderate approach to growth through supporting affordable housing while protecting wildlife, open space, and Estes Park’s small mountain town identity. This session highlights the process, findings, and lessons learned from this model of deliberative public engagement in community planning.

Turning Outward: Using the Harwood Approach to produce greater relevance, significance, and impact

Diane Lapierre, Currie Meyer
Presented in English

Being “turned outward” is a mindset that uses community voices as a reference point to create meaningful change. Using this frameworks and tools have led to intentional choices and actions that have strengthened connections and sparked actions to build civic culture. This session will share how this approach has been used in several public library settings and give participants a chance to practice one of the basic tools to gather community aspirations.

Play Station 2 | 11:30AM-12:00PM

Keynote Lunch | 12:00-1:00PM

Mi’Jan Celie Tho-Biaz, Ed.D., Kennedy Center Citizen Artist

Mi’Jan Celie Tho-Biaz, Ed.D., is a 2019 Kennedy Center Citizen Artist who moves between oral history, art, ritual, and civic engagement to produce meaningful, forward-facing cultural projects. Mi’Jan was a 2023–2024 Mellon Foundation Fellow at the Huntington Library, where her research with Octavia E. Butler’s archives continues to unfold. In 2023, she served as a Fulbright Specialist in Ecuador, advising Universidad de las Artes on pedagogical framework design. Previously, Mi’Jan curated and hosted Unfinished Network’s inaugural salon on themes of multiracial democracy; designed and led Gloria Steinem Initiative’s public policy storytelling pilot; and held appointments at Columbia University, NYU, and Banff Centre.

Session D | 1:00-2:00PM

Belonging by Design: Creating Models that Honor Community Wisdom

Lindsay Reeves, Matt Guy
Presented in English

Communities thrive when people feel seen, heard, and trusted to help shape the future. Yet too often, technical assistance arrives as something to “implement” rather than something to co-create. This session reframes that dynamic. Through stories and lessons from community-led efforts, including work where residents, experts, and funders learned to design together, we will explore what becomes possible when civic spaces shift from compliance to collaboration. Rather than forcing communities to fit pre-set models, we show how local wisdom, lived experience, and shared purpose can strengthen any approach. Attendees will hear how neighbors with diverse perspectives built trust, found common ground, and transformed challenging conversations into opportunities for connection and creativity. Participants will walk away with practical ways to foster belonging, spark shared vision, and create civic spaces where everyone feels empowered to shape solutions, not through conflict or hierarchy, but through curiosity, collaboration, and collective ownership.

Planning Through Play

Teddy Leinbach
Presented in English

When the Town of San Luis was awarded a planning grant to hear from community members what recreation amenities they wanted to see in Town, we couldn’t bear the thought of another community meeting. So instead of gathering around a table to talk about recreation, we gave the community a chance to play. And while we played, we planned. Now, two years later, we are ready to begin construction on the new San Luis Recreation Park.

The Secret Sauce of Cross-Sector Leadership: Building Systems That Actually Work

Adrienne Russman, Carlye Sayler, Eudelia Contreras, Elsa Tharp, Kate Bartlett
Presented in English

Lake County’s Leadership Roundtable isn’t just efficient—it’s an act of civic love. When government, schools, nonprofits, and public health leaders chose collaboration over going it alone, they made a deliberate choice that’s already shifting resources, accelerating decisions, and strengthening community resilience. Hear directly from decision-makers about how they transformed the way they work together: how they built enough trust to come to the table across disagreement, how they redistributed power by listening to community members, and how they’re practicing civic joy even while tackling urgent challenges like food insecurity. This panel will be an honest conversation about both the wins and the real obstacles they’ve encountered. It’s a masterclass in what “voting every day” actually looks like when leaders choose to move at the speed of trust.

From Polarization to Progress: Leading and Impacting in a Time of Challenging Polarization

Katy Anthes
Presented in English

How can we strengthen our relationships with our communities, civic leaders and citizens in a time of challenging polarization in our country? Data shows a continued and dramatic increase in polarization within our communities and because of that we are losing trust and civility with each other. This prevents us from working together and solving tough problems. The FORWARD initiative at PEBC contends that If we build awareness and knowledge about deep polarization forces, and we skill up in strategies to prevent, manage and deescalate polarization, then we will have stronger communities, more sustainable governance structures, and more productive conversations about issues of the public good. Come to this session to make progress toward leading this environment by building our “healthy conflict” muscles—muscles that allow us to be curious, disagree, problem solve, bring new ideas to bear and then go have dinner or go to a little league game with the people we disagree with. This session will share a framework on strategies to decrease polarization and keep our systems in a place of productive, healthy conflict– an important ingredient for progress in our communities! We will explore and practice skills like how to rethink issues, see the complexity in our positions all while building bridges that lead us to progress for our nation.

Guide to Sessions

Each session and play station will feature skills related to each area of the Community Learning Model and will feature a variety of learning styles. Use the following guides to help you navigate each session.

Community Learning Model Legend

Use the following icons to understand which sessions will focus on each area of the Community Learning Model (CLM).

Results How do groups create a result they want to achieve? How do they measure their progress toward that result?

Include How do groups ensure the various people, perspectives and systems involved in the work are engaged in the process?

Dialogue How do groups create a high-quality conversation that clarifies values, surfaces tensions, and taps into creativity? How do we establish conditions of genuine respect for the views and needs of the other?

Act How do groups make sure the planning leads to action, both within planning processes and at each stage of implementation?

Learn How do they learn from experiences and translate that information into more effective actions? How do groups ensure actors remain accountable to a shared vision and “return learning to the system” as a mutual contribution?

Culture of Collaboration How do groups strengthen the capacities that support collaborative work such as facilitative leadership, communication, information sharing, and shared accountability?

Learning Styles Legend

While many conferences feature inspiring speakers with valuable expertise, they tend to focus on just one learning style. The Canopy Summit will feature sessions that engage participants’ head, heart, and hands.

Use the following icons to understand which sessions will engage the following learning styles.

Head – These sessions will get people thinking and learning with their brains. It may include a presentation, data, or a toolkit.

Heart – These sessions will get people feeling with their heart. It may include storytelling, art, or a performance.

Hands – These sessions will get people moving. It may include a hands-on activity, dance, or exercise.

Interpretation & Translation

The Summit will be conducted in English and Spanish, and all sessions will have bilingual interpretation and translated materials. Wearable interpretation devices will be available for all participants. Below you’ll see which languages the presenters will provide each session in. If you don’t speak that language, don’t worry, you’ll have interpretation.