Foreword
At the heart of our Expression and Connection Community of Practice is a philosophy that puts the individual over the process. We’ve worked hard to create a space where ideas are built, challenged, and refined. An environment open to the freedom to explore, experiment, and even fail. We have learned psychological safety is key; our best work doesn't exist when we keep each person inside a job description box. We grow when we share 'half-baked' ideas with the group, allowing everyone to lean into a collective brainstorm. We encourage each other to sit in that healthy tension, because that is exactly where innovation sparks. We are each other's loudest cheerleaders, committed to the belief that mutual trust, mentorship, and a mindful recognition of the human being behind the work will always result in outstanding work.
Carly Sallows-Harrie
Expression & Connection Lead, Marketing & Communications Manager
Contributions to a Team Dynamic
There is a specific kind of energy on the second floor of the Narratives office when a project starts to click. A rhythmic song of Slack pings, the hum of computers trying to process Photoshop files, the smell of coffee after another Parlour run, a steady murmur of a team deep in its creative flow state. This past year, that energy resonated more than usual, as the industry recognized several of our recent projects with a series of Gold and Platinum honours.
Our recent accolades are less about the trophies on the shelf and more about the seamless chemistry of the people behind them. With the Expression and Connection (fondly referred to internally as the ExCon team) Community of Practice, we’ve never been much for silos. Through cross-functional collaboration, our motion designer sits in on strategy sessions, our designers are the first to weigh in on a manuscript, our videographer offers algorithm insights. We believe that this integrated design process ensures that the person who writes the first word is just as invested as the person who finalizes the last frame.
The dynamic our Community of Practice holds is a beautiful mix of high-level design thinking and non-linear creative energy. There’s zero ego when it comes to feedback and collaboration, where we 'roast’ and refine our work in equal measure. That level of trust is exactly what allows us to push boundaries in our respective creative fields that other teams might be too afraid to touch.
From Left to Right: Carly Sallows-Harrie, Feabie Medina, Hannah Cole, Fiona David, and Brandon Klein. Not Pictured: Jensen Budd.
A Multi-Disciplinary Machine
At Narratives, the ExCon team operates on a simple premise: the best work happens in the intersections. With this agile creative strategy, we don’t view a project as a static set of deliverables, but as a living conversation between our internal experts and the communities we serve. This past year, that mindset was validated by a sweep of honours, from a MarCom Platinum Award to the Signature Awards' Publications, Motion Graphics, and Judges’ Favourite designations.
This multi-disciplinary approach is our safeguard against the "assembly line" mentality. By involving the full team in the earliest strategy sessions, we ensure that a project's creative soul is developed from the very beginning. For our clients, this translates to a truly collaborative partnership. One where the final outcome and the original idea aren't competing interests, but a unified force driving the project towards something truly meaningful.
Our Community of Practice thrives when we peel back the sterile veneer of corporate personas to show up as our most authentic selves. Commodity is the bane of creativity; treating collaboration like a system of interchangeable parts only disregards the hands that shape the craft. Instead, we prioritize empathy over ego, valuing each person’s unique capacity and lived experience. It’s a mindful recognition that, above all else, there is a human beneath the work.
Beyond the Brief
Our work on the Kaatagoging Book Set is a prime example of how our co-design team functions within community-led design projects. On paper, it was a publication project; in reality, it was an exercise in deep, ego-less collaboration. Our designers don't just "beautify" pages from a distance. They work in a continuous loop with our clients and knowledge keepers, ensuring that cultural competency remains at the forefront of the visual language and honours the lived experiences shared by Survivors. By sitting with Survivors to absorb the weight of the history at St. Mary’s Indian Residential School, the team ensured the final product wasn't just a book, but a culturally resonant piece of history.
This same unity allows us to take standard topics and find the hidden, resonant angles that others might miss. Our Self-Care Reels Series was born from this exact dynamic. Instead of following the standard tropes of wellness content, our team dug into a niche, authentic storytelling visual approach and aligned our content with our internal values, which our staff have addressed in past journal entries. This allowed the message to reach a much broader audience while showcasing the diverse storytelling approaches that we amplify at Narratives.
We operate on the belief that our best work is born from a rich weave of different backgrounds and unique histories. As creatives, we strive to embrace the varied ideas and directions that spark within our group. By honouring the individual threads of our Community of Practice, we build a culture of lasting resiliency. This helps ensure that every project we touch is created with diverse perspective and authentic care.
As the dust settles on our 2025-2026 award season, the trophies have found their place on the shelf, but the energy on the second floor remains unchanged. While these honours serve as a proud 'pulse check' from our peers, we know they aren't the fuel that keeps our computers humming or the coffee brewing. Our true motivation remains exactly where it started: in the freedom to experiment, the healthy tension of a shared idea, and the meaningful stories we are entrusted to tell. Long after the award ceremonies are over, it is the resonance of our values-driven work, the connections made, the workplace culture of trust and mentorship, and the humanity of the team behind it that continue to drive us into our next flow state.