CURIKO - Filling the Spaces in Between
Description
Community inclusion for people with developmental disabilities is and always will be a driving force for DDA. However, here in 2024, some new players and organizations are emerging to fill the spaces in between to help broaden horizons and cultivate relationships for people of all abilities. Say hello to CURIKO.
TRANSCRIPT
CURIKO – Filling the Spaces in Between
Welcome back to another episode of DDA's Encouraging Abilities podcast. I'm your host, DDA Communications Manager, Evan Kelly. Doing things a little bit differently today. We normally have one person either in the studio or on the phone, but today we have three guests in the studio, four, including myself. We only have two mics, so we're going to have to be agreeable when it comes to sharing. No fighting. So joining me today are Sarah Knowles, John A and Rodrigo Galvan. They are part of a new digital platform called Curiko.
They're here to talk to us about what Curiko is and why it's here. So all of you, firstly, thanks for making the effort to come out and, you know, make the trip, as it were, it's a lot harder than getting on a phone. So thank you for being here today. Thank you. Thanks so much for inviting us and also for accommodating, you know, allowing it to be three of us. That's kind of how we run with Curiko. We like to.
switch things up and kind of push the bounds a little bit. Exactly. Well, you know, for those of us, for those just listening, that's awfully cozy in our little pod booth here. So it's going to start to get warm, I think. So perhaps maybe just start by telling me a little bit about yourselves. How about you first, Sarah? Yeah. So I'm Sarah, Sarah Kay. And I'm a Cureco team member. I'm what we call a curator.
And all that really means is that I work with all sorts of individuals, organizations, and businesses to share their passions with others. Um, outside of work, I'm just someone who absolutely loves people and really am always happiest when I'm on top of a mountain. On top of a mountain. So you're hiking or like actual climbing? Hiking.
I do indoor bouldering, but haven't actually gone into the outdoor climbing scene yet. And John, how about yourself? Well, I'm not sure. I'm just, I'll just say that I'm getting three words. I'm a Catholic autistic gamer.
Catholic Autistic Gamer. That looks good. And what's your role with Kiriko, John? Just a member. And I guess I'm starting hosting. Oh, that sounds good. We'll get into that in a little bit. And how about yourself, Rodrigo? Hi. Well, yeah. My name is Rodrigo. I'm a Catholic.
What can I say about me? I love exploring. I'm a nomad at heart. I like food. I like cooking. I like trying new things. And I'm, I started as a member and I'm a host. It has been almost a year as a host in Curico.
And we were talking just earlier, you're from Mexico. Yes, I'm from Mexico. See, I said that properly. Yes, in Spanish, Mexico, right. And how long have you been in Canada? Five years, a little bit more than five years. So what brought you here?
I used to be a digital nomad. I travel around the world. I arrived here in Canada at the end of 2017 and I fall in love of the trees the trees that were near the the SkyTrain I was like this amazing. I want to stay here. So you you've given up Sun for rain is what you're saying Yes, but let's put it like this. I prefer cold. I don't like
warm weather, so I'm in the right place. You're an anomaly. You're an anomaly, I'll give you that. Okay, so Sarah, let's just talk about Curiko. What is it, what is it for, how does it work? Yeah, so...
We like to describe Curiko as a community building platform. So we have a website, Curiko.ca, and on this website, you can find tons and tons of different experiences. And these are all sorts of opportunities for anyone. Anyone can go on these, and these are kind of activities or events that can be one-on-one or group, in person or online. And they're just opportunities
to have different types of connection. More moments of connection to themselves, connections to other people, connection to spaces, to ideas, to a sense of, you know, culture. And so really that's what Curiko is, is we're a community building platform. We offer up opportunities for people with and without disabilities to come together and have experiences. So when was this started?
Yeah, so Curiko as Curiko kind of got started at the very end of 2020, very beginning of 2021 was kind of the time. However...
Um, Curiko kind of actually is just the most recent iteration of kind of a 10-year process. A 10-year process of research and development that actually came out of, um, a big kind of partnership between three really big disability-facing organizations, uh, Possibilities, Kinsite, and the Burnaby Association of Community Inclusion. We know them well. Yeah.
maybe something you know a little less well, which is a social design organization called InWiF Forward. So they came together with this social design group and started what is now a 10 plus year process of research and development. You call that InWiF Forward? InWiF Forward. In with? Yeah, InWiF Forward. InWiF Forward, okay. It's a social design organization. And Curacle is kind of one of the now most kind of
developed prototypes that came out of that organization. And so, your website mentioned some research that's been done before this. I'm trying to get a sense of the mission or the goals behind this that means you gotta do all this research. Can you talk to a little bit about that? Yeah, so what happened was these kind of three disability-serving organizations kind of came together.
And they really had this really, really brave kind of question they asked themselves. And that was, in the work that we are doing, are the people we supporting with intellectual disabilities actually living flourishing lives in community? And they answered, maybe no.
And based on that, they kind of reached out and partnered with this, at the time, very small but very exciting social innovation firm. And what they did together is they sought out to kind of therefore investigate.
What is it, how does social isolation for people with adults with intellectual disabilities look like? So based on that overreaching question, a group of people from all four organizations actually went and lived for several months back in 2014 in a social development complex in Burnaby. They lived there and they talked to people. They talked to them.
And not only did they get a sense of how their lives currently were, but they also asked what could they be. And some big things came out of that. Some big things was that social isolation wasn't just a matter of not having people, it was a matter of actually feeling connected to those people and also having a sense of a couple of things. So having a sense of purpose in their lives and also a sense of kind of novelty.
this kind of idea that maybe there wasn't really kind of flourishing lives. So lives that were connected to lots of moments, big and small, of different types of connection. You know, moments of awe and beauty and also purpose. Mm-hm.
And so that that was kind of missing. And so what started was initially something called Kudos. And that was creating opportunities for people with intellectual disabilities to go on experiences hosted by all sorts of individuals and businesses and organizations to just kind of share their passions with people. So these were one-on-one in-person experiences. And that happened for a really long time starting in 2015.
took on a life of its own, got funding. But eventually, with continued ongoing kind of research and listening and evaluation, it reached a point, kind of came to a head right before the pandemic, that, oh, maybe actually some of the existing power structures that led to maybe a sense of not flourishing lives are being replicated now. And so it led to changing again. And that's where kind of Kyrraco came in.
came out, whereas Kiriko now has kind of taken this idea of experiences and opened it up.
So now absolutely anyone can go on a Curiko experience. There is no eligibility requirements. And also anyone can host experiences. So people with and without disabilities both go on experiences and host experiences. And these can be group and one-on-one, in-person and virtual. So it's really open to that. So Rodrigo for instance, not only hosts experiences,
experiences and so does John. Yeah, I want to talk about that shortly as well because it's now did this is obviously an online platform which helps. I mean, let's let's be honest being on the digital world helps people get connected than then just, you know, prior to the year 2000. But did did COVID
sort of make you move faster in this direction. Because that got me that shut everything down shut up. I mean it made people who were lonely even lonelier presumably. But it also kind of required to shut down like kudos was functioning as an in person one on one and it had to stop.
couldn't do that anymore. So in the space of that couldn't happen, it allowed for the ability to try new things. And so in the immediate
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