When a Small Studio Hosts a Big Conversation
I bought a projector before I had anywhere to use it.
It was an act of hope, and if I’m honest, a bet on myself. I had just stepped away from a career that had taken me far, to try something that felt more true. I didn’t have any stage yet. But I bought the projector anyway.
Days before, I had hosted a brunch. I called it the World We Want Brunch. I invited every person in my community I thought needed a little hope. To my surprise - everyone on the invite list showed up. I made my specialty, Norwegian waffles, and we talked about our dreams for the world, for our community, and for each other. It was a perfect February day. Blue sky and sunshine that bounced off the snow outside and brightened my many-couched living room.
So when the opportunity came to host and facilitate a community energy dialogue — part of the Northern Regional Energy Dialogues (NRED), a University of Victoria (UVic) and University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) research initiative under Accelerating Community Energy Transformation (ACET) — I took it on. It felt important that that conversation happen in my community. Around that same time, I'd landed on how to describe what I was building — Delve Recycled, a sustainability studio. Not just recycling. Something wider. The dialogue felt like proof of concept.
On February 12th, 2025, the projector finally had somewhere to be.
Fifteen people showed up to the Williams Lake Library. Some familiar faces, some new. They were, as they later acknowledged themselves, largely the usual suspects — the folks who wear multiple hats throughout the community, that sit on boards, show up to meetings, and are able and willing to share their perspectives on climate issues.
The conversation was honest and wide-ranging. We talked about energy assets, barriers, priorities, and what Williams Lake could look like in ten years. But one of the things that stuck with me most was an observation the group made early on — that the language we use around climate and sustainability can itself be a barrier. It was something I’d been bumping up against in my work for fifteen years. I'd first encountered it at a climate messaging conference in Calgary a decade earlier — a city that, according to the organizers, ranked second in the world for climate denying sentiments at the time.
What I learned there wasn't explicitly about messaging. It was about compassion. In places where livelihoods, family histories, and identities are tied to resource extraction, the climate conversation can land like an accusation. Language becomes so much more important when you’re navigating something that lives that deep. The approach I’ve learned, and on my good days try to practice, is curiosity. What do people actually value, what are they actually afraid of, what do they actually need. It's not a messaging trick. It's the only real path to action and necessary change.
I remember sitting with that and feeling the particular exhaustion of it. Another reframe needed. More time, more care, more work to meet people where they are. In the middle of everything else the polycrisis demands of us. And yet. That's the work.
Language was one of several threads the group pulled on that evening. They brought optimism too. Williams Lake, they noted, is up there on the list of sunniest places in the province. Solar energy could be a next step. The NRED research team synthesized the full conversation into a community report, and identified three directions for Williams Lake based on the dialogue: developing a collective community energy vision that invites broader participation; expanding training and education around renewable energy adoption, including climate literacy for municipal leadership and staff; and establishing local government funding programs — grants, incentives, and low interest loans that make renewable energy accessible to everyday households. The report also highlighted the group's energy around heat pump viability in cold climates, and the importance of Indigenous-led energy planning and decision making. The summary report for Williams Lake, and the other 8 communities that participated in an NRED can be found at the Northern Regional Energy Dialogues website.
The dialogue fed into a larger body of research on energy needs and aspirations across northern BC — and in the year since, Williams Lake has been identified as a hub of interest, with the next phase of research already starting. Fifteen people in a library room contributed to that.
I gave my time freely to this project, I jumped in as the community host because I wanted to see it happen. The ripples from that decision have travelled so much farther than I expected. I attended the North Climate Action Network (NorthCAN) conference in Prince George — a room full of researchers, community organizers, municipal leaders, and practitioners all pulling on the threads of the polycrisis together. Healthcare. Food security. Mental health. Community energy. Active transportation. Municipal governance. Education. At a time when hope felt hard to come by, I walked into a conference full of people who hadn't given up. That was its own kind of gift — and it connected me to a network of people doing meaningful work across the interior and north that I'm still in conversation with today.
It also gave me something I hadn't expected to need as much as I did: confidence. This was my first facilitation after stepping into something new. The projector came out. The room filled up. The conversation went somewhere helpful. A year later, we’re starting to see what that somewhere looks like.
A few weeks later, I heard from Sue Hemphill - a local naturalist, botanist, and role model of mine. She’d been at the dialogue and reached out afterward with a hunch that we shared a lot of the same thoughts. She was right. Sue had the same flavor of climate concern and community solution-building that I did, and we’d apparently both been looking for someone to talk to about it. We laced up our skis on a bluebird winter day and wound our way through the forest and trails near her home - talking about our grief, our overwhelm, and our need to seek out and stoke hope, and share that with others. The Cariboo Climate Circle launched not long after. A story for another article.
If something in this resonated and you think I might be a right fit for what you're working on — I'd love to connect.
Reach me at emma@delverecycled.ca or delverecycled.com