I am currently the Manager of Brand and Creative at Evergreen Canada, a national charity based out of Toronto that is building better public spaces in our cities for the health of people and the planet. Despite being a 'step down'—going from Director level roles to a manager role, I was really drawn to the work Evergreen was doing. A few years prior I had written an essay on the theology of public space as one of the final courses for my Mdiv. It felt like a great opportunity to advocate for the kind of infrastructure changes that have an impact on several of the bigger challenges our society is facing.

My role has been leading the brand and creative team, which oversees the brand execution as well as the impact storytelling we do.

Brand Management

Evergreen has just completed a rebrand with an external design agency right before I joined. I would be responsible for rolling it out and maintaining it across the organization. It was an interesting challenge as the lived needs of the brand were much more comprehensive than what the agency had provided. Over the next year, my designers and I would create a consistent visual system that worked within the complexity of the organization's multiple programs. This included thinking about our national programming, our social enterprise work, as well as our community hub—Evergreen Brick Works. I got to think about this brand in digital, print, signage, paid media, and even on a shuttle bus wrap.

Beyond just the visual system, it was also about the brand narrative. Evergreen had a few narrative challenges that it was working through:

• The 'Brick Works' was a more known brand than Evergreen was. This meant a lot of consistency around ensuring that Evergreen was moved front and centre in how we talked about ourselves, both externally and internally. It was a similar brand challenge I faced when working at Youth Unlimited.

• Because of the strength and popularity of our Toronto hub, Evergreen was struggling to present itself as a national charity. Meeting this challenge meant bringing our other work to the centre and describing what we do as more than just operating a great public place. Our work in climate ready school grounds became the right thing to lead with, as it provided a really clear and strong example of how we can transform spaces that have a positive impact on the users of the space and address things like climate change at the same time. Using language around how the Brick Works is like a testing site or living laboratory that leads to our national work was also important to make the connection clear.

• Another problem was that Evergreen's 30 year history was linked to tree planting, and while we wanted to hold those roots (🌲), we also wanted to make our current work clear. Telling our story was important. The work we did bringing nature into cities back was very much connected to our work of creating green, thriving public spaces. It leveraged our expertise while wrapping it in language that fit our current work.

• A final challenge for us was that our work doesn't feel as 'urgent' as other charitable work. Rather than manufacturing something, we spoke to the way public spaces act as essential infrastructure in meeting the crisis of loneliness. This formed the basis of many of our year end campaigns. It also allowed us to build on great work already out there such as the Toronto Foundation's vital signs report.

More to come...