TRU partnership earns national recognition for Kamloops’ Cultural Strategic Plan
A 10-year cultural vision for Kamloops, shaped through research and community collaboration with Thompson Rivers University (TRU), has earned national recognition.
The You Are Here Kamloops Cultural Strategic Plan 2024–2034 received the 2025 Creative City Impact Award in Cultural Planning at the Creative City Network of Canada Summit in Kingston, Ont., on October 7. The award honours innovative municipal approaches to arts, culture and heritage planning.
In particular, the recognition highlights how the City of Kamloops, working with TRU, enhanced traditional asset mapping by documenting the community’s intangible cultural assets. Through individual story maps and in-depth interviews, the team translated local experiences into rich data that informed the cultural plan.
Pictured left to right: Barbara Berger, the City’s former arts and community development manager; Julia Cyr, museum supervisor at the Kamloops Museum and Archives; and Will Garrett-Petts, professor and interim dean of Student Development at TRU.
The planning process was guided by Barbara Berger, the City’s former arts and community development manager, who was an active member of the research team prior to her recent retirement. The plan itself was co-developed through TRU’s Researcher-in-Residence (RiR) Initiative, a collaboration between the City and the university that integrates community-engaged research into civic planning.
Led by TRU’s Dr. Will Garrett-Petts, professor and interim dean of Student Development, the RiR program has supported dozens of student researchers and faculty members working with City staff on cultural mapping, housing, climate governance and equity projects.
Among those contributing to the cultural plan was Dr. Cheryl Gladu, assistant professor at the TRU Gaglardi School of Business and Economics, who served as a postdoctoral researcher during the project’s early stages.
Pictured above: Cheryl Gladu, assistant professor at TRU’s Gaglardi School of Business and Economics, facilitates a discussion with microphone in hand.
“Cultural planning is about people and place, and about placemaking,” said Garrett-Petts. “It is an occasion for community dialogue, one that explores identity and sense of place. Without the expertise of Dr. Gladu and the support from the City, cultural consultant Patricia Huntsman, and Julia Cyr at the Kamloops Museum and Archives, we couldn’t have co-facilitated the cultural mapping process, which hosted over 3,600 visitors, included 36 interactive mapping sessions, resulted in 287 individual cultural maps, and gathered 1,370 responses to questions posted within the museum exhibition space.”
City Cultural Services and Events Manager Dušan Magdolen said the plan reflects a place-based vision for arts, culture and heritage.
“Culture is an essential component of a community’s shared identity,” he said.
The You Are Here plan is one of several achievements emerging from TRU’s RiR partnership with the City of Kamloops—an approach now cited nationally and internationally as a model for how universities and municipalities can work together to strengthen community life.
Creative City Network of Canada (CCNC) is a national non-profit association that supports and strengthens municipal cultural policy, planning and practice. Through research, knowledge sharing and professional development, CCNC equips arts and culture professionals in local governments with the tools to build vibrant, creative communities.