You have evidence that isn’t getting used.
We can turn it into a publication, interactive tool or learning experience that helps people understand and act on it.
Work with us
You know this work matters.
Let’s give it a place.
Your work depends on relationships—with communities, between teams, across places and responsibilities. You see the work people do to sustain them. You may also see how much goes unrecognized, unfunded or without a voice in decisions.
You want your organization to support that work. The Department helps you make it visible, build the case for investment and try out what could change.
The offer
You bring the hope.
We bring the feathers.
Emily Dickinson called hope “the thing with feathers.” We help shape your work, research and lived experience into things people can touch and try—from an art installation to a new way of making decisions.
You see important work going unsupported.
We can document what it contributes and help make the case for resources and responsibility.
You have an idea people need to experience to understand.
We can build and test a prototype together.
You’re trying something promising and need to understand what it’s changing.
We can build research and shared learning into the work, generating evidence that helps you and your partners adapt as you go—and informs what happens next.
Research, creativity and play give people room to contribute, discover possibilities and build support for action.
Put the Department to work.
Commission research, a public work, a prototype, a talk or a learning experience—or bring us inside as a Neighbour in Residence to develop the work together.
What we bring to the work
Imagination, with experience behind it.
Institution-building
Founder Dr. Kate Mulligan was the founding scientific director of the Canadian Institute for Social Prescribing. She brings experience connecting policy, research and community practice to a new institutional mandate.
Research and policy
Kate’s two decades of work with governments, universities, health systems and communities inform the Department’s approach. Her prior experience supports the studio’s new commissions.
Creative public practice
The Department’s early public work includes street poetry and Vote With Your HE/ART: invitations to participate, make something and consider our relationships with a place.
See examples of workPolicy + research · Knowledge + mobilization · Public works + prototypes · Residencies · Speaking + teaching
Start a conversation
Let’s make this official.
Tell us what you’re noticing, what keeps getting overlooked, or what you’d like to make possible.
hello@departmentofneighbouring.org