First Impressions Community Exchange is a structured process that reveals the first impression a community conveys to outsiders, including tourists, potential investors and retirees. It offers a fresh perspective on the community’s appearance, services and infrastructure and helps communities learn about their strengths and shortcomings.

Volunteer “visiting teams” from two exchange communities do unannounced, incognito visits, record their observations, and give constructive feedback to their exchange community. The knowledge gained through a First Impressions Community Exchange can be the basis for positive community action, focused on downtown revitalization, tourism development, investment attraction, quality service improvement, or broader community strategic planning efforts.

Originally developed in Wisconsin, the First Impressions model has been successfully implemented in hundreds of communities in the U.S. over the past 15 years. Building on this success, the Ontario government has produced a First Impressions Community Exchange resource kit for rural communities. In 2005, over 20 Ontario communities undertook First Impressions exchanges.

THE VISIT

Each visiting team is made up of 5-6 community residents with a mix of backgrounds, occupations, ages, etc. It is important to have a diverse group of volunteers who can assume different roles and assess the exchange community from a variety of perspectives.

The team travels together to the exchange community, which may be 2–3 hours away. They spend several hours gathering information individually or in pairs, then return to their own community. The visit may include an overnight stay to assess the community’s night life and accommodation services.

The team then prepares a report and presents it to the exchange community. The exchange community reciprocates with a similar visit and report-back.

THE BENEFITS

Like most communities, you want to provide a positive first impression to visitors. Each visitor might be a tourist, a potential resident, a potential business investor, or someone shopping in your community; all are important contributors to local economic health and growth. Everything and everyone in your community can have an impact on the visitor; the first impression they make can be positive, or it could be the last impression they make.

A FRESH PERSPECTIVE

As a resident, it may be difficult to assess your own community objectively, because you are too familiar with it. You may overlook positive attributes that might attract someone to your community, as well as attributes that may seem unattractive or problematic for someone new to the community.

Having an assessment done by first-time visitors will give you valuable and objective information about local services and facilities. It may also be easier for an outsider to provide constructive feedback to your community members about customer service, or the appearance of their sites.

First Impressions Community Exchange is beneficial to communities that are developing a vision and plan for the future, because it offers a fresh perspective on their community – an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses through a new set of eyes, from a first-time visitor. Your community can then use the recommendations from the exchange community’s report to develop action plans to build on local strengths, and address local weaknesses.

THE RESULTS FROM OUR VISITORS

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