Bonding on the block

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This article was published 29/05/2023 (884 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If you throw it, they will come.

That was Brian Pincott’s thinking when he threw his first block party in 2021. As a new Winnipegger — he moved from Calgary in 2019 — he thought it would be a good way to get to know his neighbours.

“I don’t recommend moving to a city right before a pandemic. It’s not the best way to meet people and build community,” he says.

He met a couple of neighbours here and there but didn’t really get to know anybody. So when the summer of 2021 rolled around, he decided it was time to get out of the house and start meeting people.

“I asked some of the neighbours, ‘If I organized a block party, do you think that’d be a good idea?’ And they were like, ‘Yeah, that’d be cool.’ So I did,” he says.

Pincott, a former Calgary city councillor, lives in West Broadway, a neighbourhood he chose specifically when he moved here. He wanted a community that was vibrant and thriving.

“I live on Spence Street between Broadway and Portage. When I moved here, and my partner and I were looking for a place to live, we intentionally chose West Broadway because it isn’t gentrified. It’s the diversity that attracted us,” he says.

“We’re within a 15-minute walk of music venues, restaurants, bars and ethnic shopping. Honestly, West Broadway is perfect.”

Equipped with some volunteers — all with the goal of getting to know their neighbours better — Pincott threw the party that June, complete with food and live music.

“I think we probably hit between 150 and 200 people, including all the people that walked through,” he says. “Nobody had done it before, and that was enough reason to do it. It changed the flavour of the street and people became more connected with each other right away.”

Knowing neighbours, according to sociologists, can be beneficial to people’s health and well-being and to communities as a whole. Pincott says it also provided support to newcomers in the area, allowing them to meet other members of the community.

The party was so successful he did it again. Last summer, another 100 or so people took part. He’s currently getting ready for this year’s event on June 17.

Communal activities such as a block party often just need a little nudge to get going. In this case, Pincott’s neighbours have been so inspired by his parties that they’ve thrown festivities of their own, including a movie night, corn roast, pancake breakfast and chili cook-off.

“Sure, I organized the block parties, but the other events were put on by fellow neighbours. People said, ‘We should do a chili cook-off,’ so we picked a day and put fliers in everybody’s mailbox,” he says. “It just demonstrates how easy it is to do. It’s been great to see. For the chili cook-off in March, we had 50 people out in the cold and snow, eating chili.”

His goal is to show others the events are not hard to do. The benefits and the community they build are long-lasting, he says.

Experts also emphasize the health and wellness benefits of building ties with people living nearby. Psychologist Susan Pinker, whose book The Village Effect: Why Face-to-Face Contact Matters was published in 2014, says social bonds are some of the strongest predictors of a long, healthy life.

In other words, when we communicate with people face-to-face, it could help make us more resilient to stress factors in the long run.

For Pincott, it’s the diversity of his block that inspires him. Knowing neighbours beyond their names and addresses has helped foster a stronger and more personal community.

“There are people on this block from seven different countries and there are at least eight different languages spoken,” he says. “My neighbour on one side is a rooming house and on the other side, it’s people who’ve lived in their house for 20 years and they’re immigrants from Romania. We have affordable housing, group homes and an apartment building — all on this one block.”

Pincott says he’s been able to cobble together small grants through both the West Broadway Community Organization as well as the West Broadway Biz to supplement costs.

Recent Statistics Canada data confirm there is a positive relationship between life satisfaction and people’s feelings of belonging to their community. Data collected from April to June 2022 show 53 per cent of people 15 years and older say they trust many or most of their neighbours.

This same group also reported a stronger sense of belonging to their local community, higher life satisfaction and a better sense of meaning and purpose compared with those who reported not trusting as many neighbours.

The data echoes what a growing body of research is finding — well-being is often higher among people who have regular contact with their neighbours. Even saying hello can have an impact on how secure and happy we feel about where we live.

“(These parties) have been so much fun. It was so nice sitting on the street and enjoying being outside with everyone,” says Amanda Palson, who moved to Spence Street from North Kildonan with her husband in 2017. She lives a few houses over from Pincott.

When she and her husband were buying a house, she had one thing in mind.

“I said, ‘We’re buying something downtown where we can easily walk places.’ I always wanted to live downtown because I like the idea of a walkable city,” she says. “Growing up in North Kildonan, you couldn’t meet anyone walking anywhere. It was like ‘Let’s meet for coffee. Wait, first I have to figure out how I’m going to get there and how long it’s going to take me.’”

Palson supported Pincott’s idea for the block party and even helped gather signatures from the neighbours — they needed most people on the block to be on board in order to obtain a permit to close the street.

“Everyone who I talked to loved the idea,” she says.

In order to have a healthy community, you have to interact and engage with one another, Palson says.

“Small gestures go a long way for people in a community. So why not have a block party where we can have a fun atmosphere, get to know one another and have that icebreaker? Because no one’s going to tell you their problems just out of the blue — you have to build that relationship first,” she says.

Research from the University of Missouri-Columbia shows a correlation between neighbourhood relationships and health. Taking into account factors such as someone’s level of education, income and age, people who said “their neighbours can be trusted” reported better-than-average health, the 2011 study found.

And block parties are an easy way to build those connections.

“Everyone knows everyone by name and you’re just excited to check in with how people are doing and what’s going on in people’s lives,” Palson says. “It’s been especially great for the kids because they can run up and down the street.”

Palson isn’t going anywhere anytime soon — she and her family plan on living in West Broadway long-term. As for what’s in the works, Palson says the community hopes to eventually plan a winter event where the kids can get involved in a snow-fort-building competition.

The pandemic forced us to connect in new ways and perhaps, sometimes, at the expense of personal connections. So how do we help build that community back up? We start on our own street, Pincott says.

“We can make the entire city better one block at a time and it starts on your very own street. Make the community you want to see.”

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Twitter: @SabrinaCsays