In the Spirit of the Season, New Scoop Pauses to Reflect, Express Gratitude

Sarah Arthurs

The New Scoop team extends a warm wish for happy holidays and takes this time to reflect as well as thank all those who have helped launch the news initiative.

Officially live for about 10 weeks, New Scoop has been a rapid experiment in surfacing, supporting and circulating local, community-based stories that are life-giving and generative. Feedback has been encouraging.

Mark Durieux

People are sharing appreciation and encouragement as they read the stories. The number of people engaging through the New Scoop Twitter and Facebook accounts, as well as with the New Scoop e-publication provide statistical evidence that this initiative is being received as useful and worthy of time and attention.

New Scoop would not be where it is today without the commitments and gifts of a number of people and organizations.

Sidney Craig Courtice

Sarah Arthurs, a key champion of the effort, expresses deep gratitude for all of these supporters, including New Scoop steering committee members who have come together and worked to help make this initiative happen over the last six months: Mark Durieux, Sidney Craig Courtice, Greg O’Neill, Sharon Ulrich and Peter Pula.

“Sydney and Mark have been fabulous,” Sarah says. “They’re both very well networked people both personally and in their professional lives and have been able to bring those links to the work we’ve been able to do so far.”

Greg O’Neill

The support of Mark, a social entrepreneur and author of Social Entrepreneurship for Dummies, has also been highly valued. And Greg has been a great coach and mentor with respect to launching the initiative as a co-op. “Greg has contributed a lot of pro bono work, (sharing) his wisdom and smarts in terms of what steps need to be in place as we (form the co-operative),” Sarah says.

Sharon’s strengths and background in editing and writing have also been much appreciated, including her crafting of one of New Scoop’s inaugural stories.

Sharon Ulrich

And Peter and Axiom News have been “right down in the trenches building this with us,” Sarah says. The Axiom News team has provided the website design, written content and publishing and social media services, not to mention the consultative support from Peter, some of it pro bono.

Otherwise, New Scoop is grateful to Versett Inc. for its pro-bono design of the New Scoop logo as well as to Cities for People and the J. W. McConnell Family Foundation for their financial and moral backing. “We wouldn’t have been able to do this without that catalytic support and recognition that what we were doing was worthy of (support),” Sarah says.

Peter Pula

With its commitment to operating as a co-operative, it’s hoped New Scoop will model an alternative, sustainable approach to supporting local, community-based stories that are life-giving and generative.

The work could be described as both collecting stories and shaping Calgary’s cultural story, all of which is centred on themes such as relatedness, co-operation, local vitality, resilience and creativity.

“We’re hoping that within the scope of New Scoop we can create more space for an alternate story with a capital S to have time and exposure and value,” says Sarah.

• More to Come on the last portion of New Scoop’s prototyping phase