Discover the pleasures and restraints of making in the outdoors, including location scouting, materials, observation and recording. Using simple drawing and/or painting techniques and materials, create studies of flora, fauna and landscapes that capture the changeability of natural environments.
DESIS is a network of design-led research labs based in universities around the world created to trigger and support social change towards sustainability. More information on the DESIS Lab can be found here.
Led by Emily Smith, Fibreshed Field School is an experiential mentorship program that will investigate ecologically sensitive and economically viable methods of local textile production. The program runs from September 2020 – December 2020. More information on the Fibreshed Field School can be found on their webpage as well as this story discussing their workshops in the Aboriginal Gathering Place.
Shifting Ground: Mapping Energy, Community and Geography in the North is a four-year SSHRC-supported interdisciplinary artistic project which emerges from the necessity to create new aesthetic expressions that reflect the landscapes, lived experiences, and future imaginaries of anthropogenic climate change in more inclusive terms. More information on Shifting Grounds can be found on their website.
Border Free Bees is a long-term public art initiative headed by Dr. Cameron Cartiere, Professor in the Faculty of Culture + Community at Emily Carr University of Art + Design and Nancy Holmes, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at The University of British Columbia, Okanagan, in collaboration with numerous strategic partners. The initiative’s mission is to raise awareness of the plight of wild pollinators, empower communities to actively engage in solutions for habitat loss, and transform under-utilized urban sites into aesthetically pleasing and scientifically viable pollinator pastures. More information on Border Free Bess can be found on their website and in this news story.
ECU Professor Cameron Cartiere and alum Geoffrey Campbell (BDes ’16), in collaboration with the Pollinator Partnership, launched a new citizen science app that aims to get the public engaged in tracking pollinators in their neighbourhoods.
MFA student Esteban Pérez's time-based performance work The Earth Project in which he 'steals' a piece of Canadian land to send back to his home country Ecuador.
Students learn about concepts of soundscape recording, acoustic ecology, interspecies communication, silence, noise, and music, meanwhile developing the technical know-how to produce their own podcasts.
During a class offered in summer 2019 in association with the David Suzuki Foundation and the University of Cape Town’s Future Water Institute, seven Emily Carr University students were given the opportunity to create short films exploring four key Metro Vancouver waterways. Working in collaboration with Indigenous knowledge keepers and local experts from stewardship organizations, students were informed by ancestral histories of local ecological sites and ecosystem-based perspectives to create new narratives aimed at envisioning sustainable, water-sensitive futures.
Using immersive media, Julie Andreyev and her research team are developing a VR prototype that will allow individuals to explore and interact with an old-growth tree to better understand and appreciate their importance.
An innovative joint research project by Joe Dahmen, Assistant Professor at UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture + Amber Frid-Jimenez, ECU Canada Research Chair in Design and Technology to use mushrooms in the construction of furniture.
Pocket Change is an opportunity to engage others in dialogues related to experience of gender, class, place and the environment through accessible and shareable design activities centering around pocket equity. These activities will explore the repair/reuse/redesign of pre-existing artifacts and materials as a sustainable practice, rather than relying on the consumption of new products. More information on Pocket Change can be found in this news story.
In partnership with the Vancouver Economic Commission and Emily Carr University, the Circular Food Innovation Lab will test solutions to help Vancouver businesses reduce their portion of an estimated $39 billion in lost revenue due to avoidable, unplanned food waste by the Canadian food industry.
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