In November of 2022, 17 year old Maddie Ghatavi nervously stood by the doors to the Smithers Town Offices to welcome participants to the first ever Smithers Talks event.

Smithers Talks is the local way to hold tough conversations in a safe space, a program which began in Germany in 2018 called Germany Talks. The Smithers version was spear-headed by Maddie Ghatavi after she saw a Ted Talk about My Country Talks and thought that it would be an interesting social experiment to connect people in the Bulkley Valley.

After a few months of preparing for the event by workshopping the questions for the registration form, and encouraging people to register, participants were matched up with their political opposite via the form. Many people chose to meet their political match at a centralized event at town hall, which is where the event took place.

The following link is the documentary Maddie made for CICK News. It is clips of interviews she held with participants after they had just completed their own conversations.