Citizen Spotlights are blog-type written feature stories about Métis citizens in your community. There are two types of spotlights:

Work/Achievement Showcase Spotlight

New Citizen Welcome Spotlight

What you’ll need for your Spotlight

Interview information

• You can ask the person you’re spotlighting questions in an interview (in-person, by phone or online), or you can send them questions by email – whatever works best for you and the person you’re spotlighting. 
• We’ve suggested some interview questions below. Feel free to rephrase them, omit them, and/or ask your own questions.

Image/s

• You can feature as many images as you choose in the piece, but you will need at least one photo of either the person you are spotlighting or their work. 
• Images should be a minimum of 1000 pixels wide or high and not too low resolution; if you can see the pixels in the image, then the resolution is too low.
• Feel free to ask the person you are spotlighting if they have images you can include in the piece. You do not need to take the photos yourself.
• You can also use free stock imagery, here are a couple of sources for stock that is license-free and you can use without attribution:
  • Pixabay
  • Pexels
  • Unsplash  

Tips:

• If you’re not sending the interviewee your questions via email, consider recording the interview so you don’t have to worry about capturing notes – it frees you up to really listen and allows for a more natural conversation. When recording for your own purposes, get permission from the person you’re interviewing; let them know that the recording won’t be broadcast anywhere, it’s simply for personal reference.
• Jot down any memorable or meaningful short lines or phrases your interviewee used while they’re top of mind.  These might be 8-15 words that you’ll use in your pull quote. E.g., “Walked uphill in my father’s pyjamas”

Preparing your Citizen Spotlight

Writing & Structure

There is no standard structure or length for Citizen Spotlights – these pieces can take a variety of formats and run as long or as short as you choose. For example, if you’re not keen on creative writing and you’d like to create a brief piece, you might want to consider creating your profile as a straight Q&A piece and select only 1-3 of your best questions and answers. 

Here are a couple of examples of how you might choose to structure your Citizen Spotlight:

A Q&A piece with questions and answers without any additional context featuring multiple images of the person and/or their work:Artist Jason Baerg, CBC Arts Artist Tannis Nielsen, Muskrat Magazine

A very short introduction to their background from the third-person perspective with one or two insightful quotes featured and a single photo of them (scroll down to the profiled volunteers):Eight New Community Builders, United Way

A fuller piece written from the third person perspective incorporating longer, direct quotes and multiple photos:Bestselling Author, Jesse Thistle, Carleton Newsroom Wellness Champion, Breanna Miller, First Nations Health Authority

Tips

Work with the tools you have. You don’t need to get fancy, your cell phone will work just fine for taking photos or recording the interview. If you’d like to do the interview online by video, consider getting a free Zoom sign-up and recording the interview there. No one is judging your skill level. When writing, maintain a natural tone and language – your primary audience is always other community citizens. Use the language and tone that you would use when speaking to citizens in person. Aim for clarity and accuracy. If you’re using a direct quote, you can omit ers and ums, but make sure everything else in the quote is a true reflection of what your interviewee said. When in doubt, check with your interviewee. Proofread your Citizen Spotlight before you prepare to submit it. A few tools that may come in handy:

• Check spelling through the online Canadian Oxford dictionary  
• Check your text for grammar and punctuation errors with Grammarly’s free grammar checker (note: this will provide U.S. spelling, not Canadian)

Submitting your Citizen Spotlight

Once published, your Citizen Spotlight will be formatted somewhat like the graphic up top. 

Note: the first pull quote and photo used will be the “cover” of your story – this is what people will see in the main Citizen Spotlight section on the Community Life page.

To submit your Citizen Spotlight, pop the following into an email and send it to council@tyrmc.org:

• Any images you would like to include. If you have multiple photos that should appear in a specific sequence, label them accordingly e.g., SuzanneSmith1,  SuzanneSmith2 
• A Word document or link to a Google document with all text for the spotlight piece including the following:
  • The name of the story along with the first and last name of the person you’re spotlighting e.g., 
    • Title: “Cooking with Coolio” 
    • First name: Artis 
    • Last name: Ivey
  • Pull quotes should be in larger text so we know which text to feature (e.g. if your body text is 11 pt, pull quotes could be in 18 pt). By default, the first pull quote will be the “cover” quote featured with your spotlight article; if you’d like an alternate pull quote featured, please indicate it (e.g., highlight the one you’d like featured and make a note)
  • If you’d like a specific image to appear before a specific paragraph, please indicate it in the text (e.g., (insert Suzanne Smith 3)
  • Include any tags that may be relevant to your spotlight feature and the community they self-identify with e.g., Youth, 2SLGBTQ+, Women
  • Make sure any links you want to include are embedded in the text e.g., Cookin’ with Coolio

Want a downloadable version of this template? Download it here.