How are things Out Your Way? Here’s one way CBC gets to find out

How are things out your way? We want to know. 

CBC’s Out Your Way project is a long-standing partnership with libraries across Alberta. It’s a natural fit, since libraries are homes for learning, connection and dialogue.

We go where we’re invited, and shape what we do to fit the community.

It normally starts with a roundtable discussion with local community leaders and CBC journalists, because Out Your Way is about face-to-face conversations.

From local successes and challenges, to the respectful but difficult conversations necessary in our modern society, it’s a chance for us at the CBC to listen to our audience. We want to learn from Albertans everywhere about the local stories that matter to them, as well as the perspectives and values we need to better reflect on the CBC — the viewpoints of small towns, villages, and folks from farms and ranches.

By chatting face-to-face, we learn what issues to cover and what stories our audience wants to hear. We're better able to tell those local stories, with local voices, to the rest of the province and when possible, the country — on radio, online and on our video platforms. You can find links to some of those stories at the bottom of this page.

It’s also about being part of the community. We’ve been invited back after our community conversations for events like Bassano's Small Town Smoke Down, the Grimshaw Pond Hockey tournament, and the Frog Lake First Nations Powwow. We’ve even returned to deliver a writing workshop and publish First Person stories from small town Alberta.

We’ve been as far east as Irving and Lloydminster; as far north as Fort McMurray. We’ve been to Brooks, Olds, Slave Lake, Hinton, Frog Lake, Diamond Valley and a dozen more. The smallest communities to have us out were Delia — population under 200 — and Newbrook, with just 63 residents.

Out Your Way isn’t just about Alberta’s smaller communities. It’s a way of going out into communities everywhere. 

In Calgary, we’ve been hosting small pop-up conversations in library branch lobbies. We’ve talked about schools, who you’re thinking of on Remembrance Day, and what you want the municipal election to focus on. We have a lot more coming up.

We invite people to write their thoughts on Post-It notes to share with their neighbours. And, if they’re willing, to do a short interview with us, so we can share what people actually think on an issue in the news. It's a gut check, if you will.

Because that’s what news and public libraries are really about: having big, insightful conversations across the divides of time, space and difference.

OK. That’s a bit philosophical. 

What does this mean for you? It means we’d also love to come out your way.