To hear a great interview about this project, click on the July 12 podcast link with Radio NL’s Paul James and our Dr. Kim Naqvi!

Locals and visitors alike are being invited to experience our city in a new way via a series of walkable, self-guided audio tours with a sustainability theme.

Sustainability Stories was created by the Community Alliance for a Resilient Kamloops, a loose partnership of local groups and individuals. Signage at various locations features a QR code, scannable with a smartphone, which links users to the website. Listeners can click on the audio and enjoy a 5-minute story as they continue walking.

The first tour to be launched focuses on the downtown area. Each of the five stops highlights a different aspect of our development, past, present, and future. The tour can be done all at once, or a stop or two at a time, in any order.

The working group and story creators have drawn on their own experiences of sustainability: events that transpired during their life in Kamloops, businesses or agencies they have interacted with, or natural places they have sought out for rejuvenation.

“We wanted to focus on potential and current solutions, however experimental and tentative, and to connect people to the landscape. ,” says Kim Naqvi, one of the program’s creators. “Whatever change occurs will also be carried out by everyday people in their everyday lives, thinking about how they work, play, and shop. New experiments and new ideas will shape the city of the future. They need to come from us and from our discussions and practice.”

“The stories complement the City’s Community Climate Action Plan, which was adopted a year ago,” says Deb Alore, another creator. “Sustainability is integrated into every facet of our community. By raising awareness of how we interact with each other and with the land around us, we’ll hopefully sow some seeds and get more of us talking about how we want Kamloops to develop in a healthy way in the future.”

The official launch of Sustainability Stories will be a public tour of some of the downtown stops this Thursday, July 14 at 10 am. Participants should meet at Cunliffe House in Riverside Park in time for a 10 am departure. Pre-registration is not necessary, but people can contact Transition Kamloops at info@transitionkamloops.net for more information.

“We’d like to continue adding stories to the tour and explore other areas of town, maybe going to the North Shore next,” says Alore. “It’s also important to point out that these stories were written and produced on the unceded, traditional territory of the Tk’emlúps te Secwe̓pemc, and we are looking forward to sharing our platform with Secwe̓pemc storytellers, who have been living sustainably in this valley since time immemorial.”

Do you have a Sustainability Story to share? Get in touch!

This project benefited from a Social Planning Grant received by the Kamloops Naturalist Club.

Photo credit for Victoria Street image: Dave Whiting