Building from the Ground Up through Entrepreneurial Approaches, Arts Organization Practices, and Community Development Methods with Limited Resources
The Digital Salvage project is inherently grassroots in nature—modeled intentionally after frameworks common within innovative technology startups, small arts and culture-driven organizations, and highly community-based development programs. Groups operating with limited financial, technical, and organizational resources consistently leverage creativity, adaptability, experiential learning, mentorship, and iterative design principles to achieve big outcomes. Borrowing strategically from these proven frameworks and practices, the following describes and details key activities and accompanying outcomes essential for successful implementation and meaningful youth learning and participation within the Digital Salvage initiative.
Initially, youth participants will engage directly in collaborative visioning workshops, co-led by experienced mentors and creative facilitators. Through these structured, yet highly participatory sessions, youth will delineate a clear shared vision for the chatbot project, explicitly identifying key support capabilities, target organizational outcomes, and technological functionalities. They will engage in interactive design-thinking sessions where human-centered approaches are emphasized, exploring deeply the respective needs, desires, pain-points, and barriers faced by northern arts organizations, creative entrepreneurs, and proposal writers engaging with institutions such as the Canada Council for the Arts. These workshops will not only clarify the project’s strategic direction but also offer youth essential learning around participatory planning, consensus-building, stakeholder communication, problem framing, empathy-based inquiry, and collaborative vision creation—vital attributes within technology startups and arts organizations alike.
Following vision clarification sessions, participants will undertake research-driven “user discovery” processes guided by Agile methodologies, a cornerstone of tech startups. They will actively map community and organizational needs through user interviews, online surveys, as well as open discussion forums—explicitly working to understand clearly how conversational AI can most effectively support proposal processes, streamline organizational administrative work, and aid youth and community stakeholders in everyday artistic and entrepreneurial activities. These activities provide practical learning opportunities in qualitative and quantitative research methods, data analysis, supportive stakeholder communication, documentation, and user-centered insight-gathering.
Once direction and needs are clearly mapped, youth participants will actively engage in rapid prototyping and iterative development processes, explicitly borrowing from Lean Startup method approaches. Here, “minimum viable product” (MVP) principles are deliberately employed, emphasizing creating small yet functional technological increments, seeking fast feedback, and engaging in constant adaptation and improvement cycles. Participants will collaboratively build chatbot conversation prototypes, user interfaces, proposal-flow sketches, and knowledge-base materials in defined, manageable “sprints.” These activities teach youth crucial skills in experiment design, entrepreneurship mindset, incremental and iterative work practices, resilience in facing critique or feedback, agile project management, and building digital prototypes—invaluable for gaining sustainable lifelong skills in technological innovation and design thinking.
Teams will further engage in structured usability and accessibility workshops. These collaborative working sessions explicitly involve creating practical assessment frameworks and structured test scenarios, thoroughly evaluating chatbot functionality, accessibility for diverse users, and conversational clarity. Through structured critique and collaborative refinement led by experienced mentors, youth learn assessment methodologies, accessibility standards (such as those following WCAG 2 guidelines and inclusive design principles), usability testing design, interpretation, clear technical documentation practices, and iterative refinement processes. These hands-on experiences provide practical knowledge in technological accessibility, user-centered refinement, quality assurance, and inclusive digital practices—crucial in technology products supporting diverse communities and arts organizations.
Concurrently, participants will formally and informally engage in paired mentorship activities, collaborating in supportive pairs or small groups combining members with different backgrounds or experiences (artists paired with aspiring technologists, technically-skilled youth matched with creative entrepreneurs, etc.). Through these pairing exercises, youth learn invaluable peer-to-peer skills, build personal confidence, resilience, communication processes, mentorship approaches, and leadership capacity, explicitly seeded within creative entrepreneurship and community engagement contexts.
Importantly, youth participants will initiate structured processes around marketing, communication, and organizational storytelling. Given limited resource contexts, effective organizational outreach and clear strategic communication substantially influence capacity-building success. Participants will define clear Digital Salvage branding, identity frameworks, social media strategies, press releases, promotional stories, impact-focused narratives and other creative content that positions the project uniquely within arts funding communities, partner organizations, and potential users. These activities build practical, long-lasting skills around narrative development, brand strategy, digital marketing fundamentals, strategic outreach approaches, impact measurement, and mobilizing strategic community partnerships—all competencies significantly beneficial to artists and entrepreneurs irrespective of their professional trajectories.
Participants will also undertake practical, step-by-step skill-building sessions related to grant-writing, funding proposal clarity, policy interpretation and communication within funding groups (i.e. Canada Council for the Arts, Manitoba Arts Council). Using Digital Salvage chatbot technology, youth will actively and interactively construct sample proposals, analyze organizational guidelines, articulate clear program or project outcomes, design cohesive narratives, and strengthen proposal structures aligned with the proven CO-STARS method. Guided by mentoring professionals and resources provided by institutions like MCAD and Canada Council programs, participants gain hands-on, experiential capacity building in skills explicitly required for sustainable careers and community-supported projects in the arts, technology innovation, and cultural entrepreneurship sectors.
Finally, scaling and sustainability planning sessions will engage youth with critical strategic thinking about how their work can sustain long-term community impact. Youth groups will collaboratively explore diverse revenue streams, public partnerships, community collaborations, tech subscriptions (Software-as-a-Service models), intellectual property implications, and ethical or policy considerations underpinning the project’s longevity. Engaging meaningfully with revenue modeling, budgeting practices, business ethics, long-term project sustainability, creative leadership, and strategic planning teaches essential entrepreneurial thinking and community-leadership capacities extending far beyond the immediate Digital Salvage project.
Conclusively, through carefully structured yet flexible activities—integrating technological innovation, artistic capability building, entrepreneurial methodologies, community engagement, mentorship, marketing and communication practices, and structured grant-preparation and assessment processes—Digital Salvage ensures that youth participants acquire robust, lasting, and foundational creative and technological skills. They gain meaningful personal and community resilience, entrepreneurship mindset, professional adaptability, leadership readiness, organizational understanding, and clear pathways to lasting community contributions and creative career success.
