Laura Scrivener, seasoned market manager and current student at Trent University, did her placement work with marketcityTO from May to July 2025. In this blog post, she shares her placement experience and reflects on the valuable work she did to lay the groundwork for marketcityTO's Public Markets Training Program. 

I was honoured and delighted when I was approached by members of the marketcityTO team to do some work for them last winter. I had worked with marketcityTO before in my capacity as a farmers’ market manager and have been keenly aware and supportive of their mission. As I am also a university student (studying sustainable agriculture at Trent University), it seemed like a great opportunity to support an organization doing excellent work and get some school credit at the same time. marketcityTO enlisted my support in researching and developing market manager training modules to help professionalize the sector and the delivery of markets. This presented an interesting challenge because, though there is a lot of good information out there for farmers’ market managers, there is a real lack of trainings available for other kinds of market managers. 

As someone who was managing a market at the time, I understood first hand the ad hoc nature of manager trainings. Many markets are also constrained by a limited operating budget and are thus unable to support their managers with professional development courses. This is a real problem as market managers are expected to wear many hats and come into the role with many fully formed skills (often at a wage that is not indicative of the level of skill market managers are expected to operate with). Many well-run markets rely on competent and involved boards to fill in the gaps in a manager’s knowledge, but some markets operate more as small businesses and may not have the benefit of a knowledgeable board. 

I was very curious to find out what I didn’t know as well. For example, I hadn’t considered what it might be like to manage a vintage market and how that might differ from a farmers’ market. I was also curious to learn about how markets operate in different regulatory contexts and how they are supported by governments and communities. Some provinces have somewhat stringent certification processes for farmers’ markets (the market context I am most familiar with) and they provide a standardized training for them. 

marketcityTO is aware that there are trainings available for farmers’ market managers, but what about the rest? Artisan markets, flea markets and vintage markets all perform important functions in the community and their managers would benefit from additional training and support. There also isn’t a Toronto-specific training for market managers, helping them navigate city-specific red tape they may encounter. 

From the getgo, marketcityTO envisioned these market manager trainings as an opportunity to create new linkages in the market community via opportunities for formal and informal mentorship, knowledge sharing and simply the function of coming together with a group of people every week to talk about the common challenges they face. 

So how did I get to contribute? My role started out as being pretty research heavy. I was familiar with the manager manual from my own organization but I was curious to know what else was out there. As I found in the course of my research, in some provinces and states, the government is very involved in the training and certifying of farmers’ market managers (again, similar trainings and regulations seemed to be absent for other kinds of markets). I paid particular attention to repeating themes in training manuals, and things that I think would have benefitted me as a new market manager. Looking at the training for Alberta farmers’ markets for instance, it was immediately apparent where my own training could have been improved upon (Food Safety Handler Training, greater familiarity with the laws and regulations impacting the products in my market, and First Aid were all things missing from my training). It was also interesting to learn about establishing a market since the market I managed was already established. I looked specifically at training manuals from other provinces and a couple of states with robust farmers’ market associations with market manager certifications.

In addition to reviewing market manager training modules, I conducted some qualitative interviews with three market founders and a vintage market manager to get their reflections on founding a market and managing a market. These conversations were wide-ranging and revealing. Many of our city’s farmers’ markets emerged at around the same time when a cultural awareness about sustainable food was growing. The insights about the vintage market were also interesting because I was totally unfamiliar with this kind of market. There were some common themes in all of these conversations including: popular support and political support (via city councillors) is enormously helpful, there is a lot of unpaid labour, and the ad hoc nature of markets means that there usually isn’t a solid succession plan (and this is an ongoing problem in markets). 

After reviewing several trainings and speaking to several market founders I felt ready to propose some training modules and begin working on their outlines. Our proposed training modules were crafted with last year’s market manager survey in mind. We had direct feedback from market managers in Toronto about what they wanted to know more about, so those items became a priority. They were also informed by things market founders identified as their own blindspots (succession for example). marketcityTO also had goals in mind. For example, they would like to have more data from market managers about their markets. As such, I developed a module about data collection and data storytelling (which is something the market I worked for does particularly well). 

As a team we worked over our proposed modules and came up with ten that would help market managers create organized, safe markets that feel inclusive and fun to attend. Before my co-op ended I fleshed out the outlines of these proposed modules, with the understanding that other market managers and the marketcityTO team would take these up and make them their own, I just wanted to get them started. Finally, as I alluded to above, I developed a training module on data collection, processing and storytelling, using data my own market had collected as examples and highlighting the stories my market was trying to tell about itself to sponsors and the community at large. 

The work that marketcityTO is doing here is crucial to having vibrant, inclusive well-run markets that offer a host of benefits to diverse communities across Tsi Tkaronto. It is my sincere hope that marketcityTO can secure the funding required to offer this program fully and broadly. There is space for more markets in our city, but they need to be thoughtfully run. It is our hope that this training program will support new and experienced market managers alike as they create, expand and plan out their markets.