This summer, Iron & Earth hosted a series of Dotmocracy sessions in Surrey, BC, inviting local residents to share their thoughts on sustainability, renewable energy, and community infrastructure.
Building on prior Community Talks conversations held in 2024, these events brought a fun, low-barrier format for public engagement directly into the community. There were ten pop-up engagements in total for 2025, taking place at libraries, farmers markets, and music festivals.
We spoke with Dotmocracy facilitators Alisha and Isabela to learn more about the initiative, how it was received, and what they learned from engaging Surrey residents face-to-face.
How does it work?
“Dotmocracy is a form of engagement where a facilitator runs a Dotmocracy table, a board, or booth,” explained Isabela. “There is a list of questions, and participants who are interested are provided with four different cups… We ask them to vote on how important, from a scale of very important to not important, each of these prompts are personally and on a community level.”
In Surrey, the four prompts on the Dotmocracy board were:
- Easy access to subsidized air conditioning
- Functional pedestrian infrastructure
- Every workplace having the responsibility to act more sustainably
- Community ownership of solar energy
These prompts were developed from concerns voiced by community members during the previous year’s engagement sessions. “We would tally up the results,” said Alisha, “and often they would have more in-depth questions about what each one meant… and that sparked some interesting conversations as well.”
Encountering Dotmocracy "In the Wild"
Participants encountered the Dotmocracy sessions in a variety of settings, from local libraries to public festivals. The process was designed to be as accessible and convenient as possible, with various prizes and goodies to incentivize participation: “It would take under a minute, 30 seconds, to go over each one and drop in your token,” said Alisha. “After was the prize, which they chose, and then a ‘Share Your Thoughts’ section… then they would also be in a draw to win another prize.”
And once one person participated, others followed. “We talked about this yesterday in another meeting… it could be quite contagious… When other people saw a lot of people interacting with our table, we found that it had a positive effect in terms of participation.”
Why Surrey?
Both facilitators emphasized that Surrey was a particularly important place for this kind of engagement.
“Surrey is one of the fastest growing cities in Canada,” Isabela explained. “The city has been going through so much… [with] development and housing and the landscape… and it can be hard for residents to keep up with these changes that are happening on a policy level, to feel like their opinions and their voices matter.”
She continued, “The work that we were doing with Iron & Earth… helped give residents a platform to boost their concerns to folks in an organization that they know will listen and will do something with that.”
Alisha echoed this, saying: “Oftentimes the bottom-up approach is not the case. So I think one of the ways that this work is really meaningful to me and the Surrey community specifically is that there is that opportunity to really gauge where Surrey residents [are at].”
“With policy, sometimes the intentions are good, but it misses what the actual needs are, because there’s that missing piece [of] speaking to people on the ground level.”
Lessons From the Ground
Both facilitators mentioned that keeping the prompts as open as possible helped gather diverse perspectives on various topics.
“One big thing for me was the fact that this sort of engagement is kind of broad,” Isabela reflected. “There’s different ways to approach answering the prompts. Everyone is going to see this experience from different experiences, from different perspectives, and everyone has their own biases.”
As facilitators, their experience also confirmed the importance of remaining neutral. “We are trying to be as objective as possible,” she said, “not trying to see the results in a certain way, not trying to favor one level of importance over another.”
Alisha added: “There’s a lot of different walks of life and differing opinions… So just really making sure that people feel like it’s a space where they can be heard is a good way to approach it.”
She also noted some practical takeaways: “Keep in mind what kind of programming is going on at the same time,” she said, referring to a session at a library that coincided with an Indian Film Festival. “Because of that, we met a lot of really interesting people that wanted to partner with us for future sessions.”
Highlights and Community Impact
Looking back, Alisha noted that one of her highlights was seeing young people get excited about Iron & Earth’s mission: “There were a few students at the Salmon [Sessions music] festival… that were like: oh, I’d love to volunteer part-time because this is work that I’m passionate about.”
She also appreciated hearing a wide range of perspectives from the Dotmocracy participants: “Even people disagreeing sparked discourse… That was really interesting for me to see, because really we’re doing this work to gauge where people are at and what their thoughts are around these topics, rather than trying to assuage them to feel a certain way.”
For Isabela, one special moment was reconnecting with a past participant. “A participant came up to the panel, very excited to see us, and they mentioned that they had been a part of our Community Talks dialogue circle that happened last year… They were just so pleased to see us back in the community.”
She also described a growing sense of connection: “We had developed such close ties with the other vendors that were participating in the market, that they were happy to see us back every week… it was just that feeling of community.”
While the sessions are over for now, participants and facilitators alike are hopeful that the Dotmocracy findings will inform local policy and lead to further engagement in Surrey. Alisha puts it perfectly:
“There's just so much change there, and so much potential for positive change… And so it's super important that the change that is there is reflective of what's actually needed.”
⚙️🌎
To check out reports from previous sessions or find upcoming events near you, visit communitytalkscanada.ca/
Community Talks is a comprehensive, inclusive, and community-oriented initiative aimed at fostering climate conversations to devise strategies for a community-led energy transition, and bolstering socio-economic resilience within for Indigenous Peoples, fossil fuel workers and their communities. With shifts in Canada's economic, social, and environmental landscape, this program invites members of fossil fuel affected communities to engage in discussions about their ideas and solutions for community development and energy diversification.