Public learning at a larger scale
Big Issues Need Room for Public Conversation.
Think City conferences bring people together to examine important public issues, hear informed perspectives and create space for deeper civic learning and constructive dialogue.
Conferences can connect experts, organizations, community members and decision-makers around questions that affect how our communities grow, respond to challenges and participate in public life.
Why conferences?
Some Questions Deserve More Than a Short Conversation.
A conference creates time and space to examine an issue from several directions. Participants can hear informed perspectives, understand competing priorities and connect individual concerns to the larger public conversation.
Understand the Issue
Hear context, evidence and expert perspectives that help make complex civic and social questions easier to understand.
Hear Different Perspectives
Bring people with different knowledge, responsibilities and experiences into the same public conversation.
Build Public Connection
Create opportunities for participants, organizations and decision-makers to learn from one another and continue the conversation.
Current conference
The Way We Move
A Metro Vancouver Conference on Transportation
Transportation affects whether people can reach work, school, appointments, services and one another. The Way We Move brings people together to examine how Metro Vancouver can build a transportation system that is more reliable, accessible, affordable, safe and connected.
Issues shaping public life
Conferences Can Open Up the Questions That Shape Communities.
Think City’s conference programme can explore major public questions through civic education, expert perspectives and community dialogue.
Civic Engagement
Public participation, democratic processes and the relationship between people, institutions and civic decisions.
Human Rights
Equality, inclusion, accessibility and the conditions people need to participate fully in community life.
Sustainability
Environmental responsibility, climate resilience and the decisions communities face as they plan for the future.
Media Literacy
Information quality, critical thinking and the challenges people face navigating a complex media environment.
More than a stage
Listen. Question. Connect. Continue.
A useful public conference should create more than a sequence of presentations. It should help people understand an issue and give them something meaningful to carry into the next conversation.
Listen
Hear informed perspectives, lived experience and different ways of understanding the issue.
Question
Examine assumptions, identify tensions and ask the questions that deepen understanding.
Connect
Discover how individual experiences, public policy and community priorities intersect.
Continue
Take new understanding into future conversations, decisions and civic participation.
Conference programme
Looking for Current or Future Conference Information?
Conference topics and schedules develop over time. Confirmed public events are published when dates, venues and participation details are available.
Join the conversation
Be Part of the Next Big Public Conversation.
Attend The Way We Move, explore future Think City events or continue learning through civic insights and educational programmes.