Every Stories of Place gathering is framed by two walls.

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The Community Wall opens the event.
When you register, you're invited to offer a word or two on that gathering's theme. For our first gathering, that's simply a greeting in your own language. The answers go up on screen together as the programme begins, so the room sees itself before a single story is read.

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The Belonging Wall closes the event.

On the way out, you're invited to finish one sentence, anonymously, on a card. In October the sentence is "The smallest welcome I ever received that I still remember is…" The cards go up on the wall as they come in, so people leaving can read what their neighbours wrote.

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Afterwards, we gather every card and keep them. Each gathering adds a new prompt and a new set of answers. Over five gatherings the collection grows into something no single evening could produce: a record, in hundreds of voices and many languages, of what welcome, home, opportunity, relation and voice actually mean to people in the Fraser Valley.

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Read together, those answers show that belonging is rarely one big thing. It is built from small, specific acts: a greeting, a door held open, being really listened to. That matters, because communities where people feel they belong are the ones that thrive. Neighbours look out for each other, newcomers put down roots, and more people take part in shaping the place they live. When we know, in people's own words, what makes them feel they belong, everyone from neighbours to organizations and institutions has something concrete to build on. We'll share the collection back with the community as the series goes on, so the words people leave behind become part of the conversation that follows.

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Why walls? Because belonging isn't only something we hear about from a stage. Each of us carries a piece of it, and it becomes visible when those pieces sit side by side. The walls give everyone in the room a voice, in any language or script and always by choice, so the stories told on stage can meet the stories held in the seats.

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As the series moves through Welcome, Home, Opportunity, Relation and Voice, the walls will grow into a shared record of what belonging means in the Fraser Valley, written by the people who live it.