Trail Signs for Newcomers in Elgin County & St. Thomas
Photo L to R: Dusty Underhill, General Manager, Catfish Creek Conservation Authority; Andrew Gunn, Consultant on the Estate of Donna Bushell; Denise Love and Fred Cahill, STEAM Education Centre; and Fanshawe College students Diego Contreras and Manuela Zuleta Jimenez.
With increasing numbers of newcomers moving into the London, St. Thomas & Elgin County area – and lots of tourists visiting, too – there is the opportunity to consider how to make everyone feel welcome as quickly as possible. The STEAM Centre and Catfish Creek Conservation Authority have taken an interesting approach, collaborating on a new project to introduce multilingual signs on local hiking trails! The first signs have been installed in Springwater Forest.
This initiative took shape through the ‘STEAM Community Studio’ program at the STEAM Centre in downtown St. Thomas. Essentially a platform for continuous innovation, the program invites members of the community to identify challenges to address locally, and then STEAM Centre staff assemble students and subject matter experts to come up with potential solutions. In this case, students from the Western University Impact Experience program looked at the issue along with students from the Public Relations - Corporate Communications program at Fanshawe College. Ultimately, the students determined that multilingual signs could be installed on hiking trails, focussing on the languages most common in the area and adding a QR code to offer access to websites with Google Translate functions. This allows visitors to access information on the specific trails in dozens of languages.
Students considered local demographics as well as the messaging and engagement tools that would help to build an inclusive and welcoming space. Staff at the St. Thomas Elgin Local Immigration Partnership were consulted to gather recommendations on how to connect best with likely user groups.
On November 8, 2022, two trail signs were revealed in Springwater Forest, which is managed by Catfish Creek Conservation Authority. The signs were designed by Fanshawe students Manuela Zuleta Jimenez and Diego Contreras, and made locally by McBain Signs. Please see the photos below. Additional installations are planned for the St. Thomas Elevated Park.
Trail sign at Springwater Forest designed by Manuela Zuleta Jimenez. The QR code takes visitors to the Catfish Creek Conservation Authority website, where the content can be translated into dozens of languages.
Sign designed by Diego Contreras for Springwater Forest.. Through the ‘STEAM Community Studio’ program at the STEAM Centre in St. Thomas, students consulted with staff at the St Thomas Elgin Local Immigration Partnership to identify which languages are spoken most commonly in the area. This formed the basis of what greetings and flags would be added on the sign. The QR code directs trail users to the Catfish Creek Conservation Authority website, where information about the trail is available in dozens of languages through the Google Translate function.
Funding for the STEAM Community Studio program has been provided by the Estate of Donna Vera Evans Bushell. Members of our team at young & free press have served as consultants on the Estate, which has given over $2.5M to a variety of projects in St. Thomas and Elgin County.
Details on the STEAM Community Studio can be found here.
More information on Catfish Creek Conservation Authority can be found here.
