LiveWorkPlay

21/07/2025

Big shout out to our current top fans! We've got our eye on you 🐝 💎 Kathryn Morris, Wendy MacEwan, Daniel Joseph Anderson, Marlene Burton, Jim Mullins, Robert Olsen, Alastair McAlastair, Steve Suttie, Jen Broad, Monica Gubersky, Jason Kershman, Doug Cooper, Shirley Lambert-McPhee, Viki Tandon

20/07/2025

Another world class Ottawa Bluesfest has come and gone, and as always, involvement by LiveWorkPlay members, staff, and volunteers was massive! These are some photos from Friday from the incredible show by headliners Green Day. On this night at the festival just like every other, some were there as fans, and some as part of the award-winning Bluesfest volunteer team, which boasts more than 2000 volunteers and about 30 different types of volunteer positions, everything from ticket scanning to the clean up crew. No matter who you are, it takes a village to figure out tickets, transit, meeting up, staying hydrated, getting out, and getting home. Whether attending as volunteers or fans, at the end of the night 25,000+ people have to make their way through a limited number of exits and streets, so thick with humanity that you can hardly move. Within the LiveWorkPlay community, we have everyone from novices to experts when it comes to Bluesfest, and we all worked together to make it happen. In a crowd of more than 25,000 people outside at night, it's not about coming up with a magic formula so that nobody ever gets separated or feels lost - it's about supporting each other by sharing experience, making plans that might need to change, using technology, and being thoughtful about each other so that this year's novices become next year's leaders!

18/07/2025

Community Living Ontario and Ontario Disability Employment Network (ODEN) have just released "Still Tangled in Red Tape, a 2025 Review of the Impact of Ontario’s Employment Services Transformation on Disability-Focused Service Providers and Job Seekers with Disabilities"

The full report is an easy read at less than 20 pages, including appendices, and features survey results presented in graph format, leading towards this conclusion:

"Disability employment service providers have been ringing the alarm about problems with Integrated Employment Services for going on three years now. Now that the SSM model has been implemented across the province, we need to face the fact that the model is not working for job seekers with disabilities and the organizations that support them."

READ THE FULL REPORT:https://communitylivingontario.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/FINAL_Still-Tangled-in-Red-Tape.pdf

A year after our first report, Tangled in Red Tape, the problems have only deepened.

Ontario’s Employment Services Transformation was meant to improve support but for people with disabilities and the agencies that serve them, it’s been a step backward.

In our new report, Still Tangled in Red Tape, four in five organizations report serious negative impacts, with 85% forced to cut time spent with job seekers.

🔗 Read the full report: https://bit.ly/StillTangledinRedTape

15/07/2025

After 11 years, not only does the link to the presentation still work (mostly) but we think the message could be delivered today and it would be totally relevant. That's good and bad of course - it's great to have a message with lasting relevance, but this also means that progress on accessibility and inclusion is unacceptably slow.

As the International Summit on Accessibility comes to a close today with continuing calls to move from "Intent to Action" on issues of access and inclusion for people with intellectual disabilities, LiveWorkPlay is proud to have made a contribution here in our home town. Mark Wafer and Joe Dale were involved in a number of sessions at the conference and really knocked it out of the park with respect to employment, and it was wonderful to see a local panel of LiveWorkPlay partners helping them out. Thank you to Vaughn McKinney of Parliament Cleaning Group, Andrew Bearss of Dow Honda, and Blair Organ of TD Canada Trust for their time and willingness to be in the spotlight. LiveWorkPlay co-leader Keenan Wellar also contributed to the conference in the "lightning round" of presentations best practices sessions, where he had a maximum of 8 minutes to make his point. How did he do you be the judge: http://www.slideshare.net/kwellar1/carleton-summitkeenannewwords

14/07/2025

Check it out, 14 years ago and our LiveWorkPlay co-leader Keenan Wellar and social media conference organizer Lara Wellman were talking with Derick Fage and his co-host about QR codes and other cool stuff - back in 2011 😉

Organizer Lara Wellman and guest speaker Keenan Wellar (co-leader of LiveWorkPlay) talk about the upcoming Social Capital Conference in Ottawa on July 23. Se...

11/07/2025

Chris is volunteering again this year, and I bet we'll see some familiar faces at the concerts too!

Lots of action at Bluesfest! Chris is volunteering as part of the Green Team and Grace and Paul are getting ready for the Offspring on the main stage!!! 🤘

10/07/2025

A classic summer photo! We look forward to sharing summer of 2025 photos in the weeks ahead. 🌞🐝

Putting the PLAY in LiveWorkPlay we ❤ inclusive teams and leagues!

09/07/2025

Big shout out to our top fans this week, including some newcomers! 🐝 Kathryn Morris, Wendy MacEwan, Daniel Joseph Anderson, Marlene Burton, Jim Mullins, Robert Olsen, Alastair McAlastair, Steve Suttie, Jen Broad, Monica Gubersky, Jason Kershman, Doug Cooper, Shirley Lambert-McPhee, Viki Tandon

08/07/2025

A spectacular memory of a well-executed surprise!

Pennie Styan is recognized as a legacy volunteer, Kayleigh Wong and Andrea Saldanha are celebrated as examples of outstanding modern era volunteers, Derick F...

05/07/2025

Who is going to Bluesfest this year? Who are you going to see?