COMMUNITY CONVERSATIONS FOR MENTAL WELLNESS
The OPEN SPACE Event Series, brought to you by Okanagan Lifestyle and Third Space Charity, is more than a series of events, it’s a movement shaped by our local community, designed to strengthen mental wellness through honest connection.
After a full year of gatherings in 2024, it’s clear: there’s a deep and growing hunger for shared vulnerability, real conversations, and compassionate support. OPEN SPACE offers just that; a space where no façade is required. Come as you are.
The OPEN SPACE Event Series, co-hosted by Okanagan Lifestyle and Third Space Charity, is built up of tri-annually community-driven gatherings designed to support mental wellness through honest conversation, shared experience, and meaningful connection.
What began as a small series of conversations in 2024, has grown into something deeper, a space people return to when they’re craving realness, reflection, and reminder that they’re not alone.
In 2026, OPEN SPACE continues with a grounded, intentional focus on what supports us in being mentally well and how we can better support one another as individuals and as a community.
Each gathering blends professional insight, lived experience, and collective reflection, creating a space that feels both supportive and empowering.
EXPERT PANELS
Each OPEN SPACE event features a thoughtfully curated panel of local counsellors, mental health professionals, and community advocates. These conversations are rooted in both clinical knowledge and real human experience, offering practical tools, shared stories, and honest insight into navigating mental wellness in everyday life.
Rather than rigid presentations, panels are designed to feel approachable and conversational, meeting people where they are and offering perspectives that resonate long after the evening ends.
ANONYMOUS AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT
OPEN SPACE is not a lecture, it’s a dialogue.
Using an anonymous engagement platform, attendees are invited to submit questions, reflections, or thoughts in real time. This creates space for deeper honesty, vulnerability, and curiosity, without pressure or expectation to speak publicly.
Whether you choose to participate anonymously, share aloud, or simply listen and absorb, your presence is enough. This is a space where every way of showing up is valid.
COMMUNITY CONNECTION
In a world full of isolated screens and surface-level conversations, OPEN SPACE brings people together in person. It’s a reminder that community care starts with being in the same room listening, learning, and supporting one another.
THE IMPACT
All OPEN SPACE events raise funds for Third Space Charity’s pay-what-you-can counselling program, helping ensure that local young adults can access mental health support regardless of financial barriers.
To date, OPEN SPACE has welcomed over 600 guests and raised more than $82,000 to support pay-what-you-can counselling in our region. This is community care in action. Every event fuels direct support and programming through Third Space Charity.
By gathering together, we’re not only supporting our own wellbeing, we’re actively contributing to a mentally healthier Okanagan.
EVENTS
Each gathering explores a fresh theme focused on mental wellness and human connection:
February 12 – Relationships
April 16 – Parenting
September 24 – Grief, Loss, and Recovery (GET YOUR FREE TICKET)
This fire season has taken more than land + homes. Our neighbors have been loading photo albums into cars at midnight. Our kids are asking questions we do not have clean answers for. Somewhere underneath the smoke, you may be carrying something too: grief for what's gone, fear for what's next, exhaustion from holding it together in front of people who need you to.
This is the conversation the season is asking of us, we're consciously cultivating it.
We're gathering, not to fix the loss, not to explain it away, but to sit in it together. What does grief look like when the loss is still unfolding? How do we keep living, keep parenting, keep showing up, when the ground itself feels unstable? What do we owe each other in a season like this one?
Whether you've lost something this fire season or simply feel the weight of watching your neighbors lose theirs, this room is for you. Come exactly as you are: tired, unsure, still standing.
This is connection + conversation we long to have together. We look forward to being together.
Beyond that, there are no expectations. Come exactly as you are. Listen, reflect, participate, or simply be present. Your presence is enough, and you belong here!
