Activate, a five-day gathering this August, brought together more than 60 activists, non-profit leaders, media makers, fundraisers, campaigners, and political leaders.
The idea behind it is simple: progressive work is urgent and inspiring, but it can also be exhausting and isolating. Too often, people working toward similar goals are campaigning in silos, solving the same problems separately, and rarely getting the time or space to learn deeply from one another.
Activate exists to interrupt that pattern.
For five days at Hollyhock, leaders step out of the daily churn to share what is actually working, sharpen practical skills, challenge one another’s thinking, and build relationships across movements. The conversations span climate, labour, affordability, migrant and queer justice, fundraising, digital strategy, communications, organizing, and political campaigning.
“Activate is about bringing together people who are working every single day toward human rights, justice, climate, more-than-human rights, and giving them a space to learn from one another, to share their challenges, to develop their skills, to rest, and most importantly, to develop a network of people who support each other day to day and year-round.”
— Laurel Dault, Hollyhock Director of Impact
For returning participant Juhi Sohani, one of the most powerful things about Activate is what happens when people who might otherwise work in separate movements have the opportunity to think together.
She described Activate as an annual “political reset”: a place to reconnect with purpose while having the strategic and tactical conversations that can make everyone’s efforts go further. Just as importantly, participants don’t have to leave their differences at the door. The gathering creates space for people with different approaches and perspectives to challenge one another while recognizing the futures they are collectively working toward.
The impact also extends well beyond five days on Cortes Island. Juhi has watched relationships formed at Activate grow into collaborations that are now shaping movement-building conversations across Canada.
That relationship-building is something longtime fundraiser Harvey McKinnon also sees as fundamental to the experience.
“People build relationships — in many cases, friends for life — people you can call to ask for advice, to call on for support. That’s kind of magical.”
Harvey also pointed to the unusual combination of practical skill-sharing, empathy, and sustained time together. Unlike a conference where participants attend a session and then scatter, Activate creates the conditions for conversations to continue over meals, walks, workshops, and evenings together.
That combination matters. Movements need good strategies, stronger fundraising, better communications, and new digital tools. But they also need people who can sustain the work, learn across differences, retain hard-won knowledge, and build the trust required to collaborate.
As Juhi put it, without spaces like this, people can burn out or become entrenched in familiar ways of working. The cost isn’t only personal. Movements lose talented people, relationships, institutional memory, and opportunities to win meaningful change.
Activate offers another possibility: build skills, share what works, rest, challenge one another, and remember why the work matters in the first place.
Local journalist Roy Hales of Cortes Currents joined Activate this year and has been documenting some of the people, ideas, and conversations that emerged from the gathering. Rather than squeezing it all into one broadcast, he’s been publishing a series
A few highlights from Roy’s articles so far:
- Interview with Emily Lowan, BC Green Party Leader
- What Harvey McKinnon brought to Activate
- Why the poorest aren’t voting for climate action. An interview with Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage
- Hollyhock: How Activate has touched their lives, Interview with Laurel Dault
Photos: Roy Hayles
