CityStudio Vancouver

CityStudio Vancouver is an innovation hub based in Vancouver, British Columbia where post-secondary students, city staff, faculty and community members work together to create experimental projects designed to make Vancouver more sustainable, liveable and joyful.

Its mission is to innovate and experiment with the ways cities are co-created, while teaching students the skills needed to succeed in today’s economy and inspire action in the community and government. Projects are sourced directly from city staff and matched with a course at one of CityStudio's six partner universities and colleges. Students work with City staff to design projects as part of their course, which are then piloted in the community before being presented at HUBBUB. HUBBUB is CityStudio's end-of-term showcase held twice a year at Vancouver City Hall for students to showcase their work to city staff and elected officials.

As of summer 2018, CityStudio has worked with 100 city staff members (200 total engagements), 127 faculty members and instructors (275 total engagements) and 4,937 students from 7 universities, contributing 550 projects and 118,984 hours of training, research and action for collaborative city building supporting the Greenest City Action Plan, Healthy City Strategy and Mayor's Engaged City Task Force.

Partnerships

CityStudio is a collaboration between founding partners, City of Vancouver and Simon Fraser University, and the University of British Columbia, Langara College, British Columbia Institute of Technology, Emily Carr University of Art and Design and the Native Education College. It has also worked with Vancouver Community College.

History

In 2010, the City of Vancouver set the goal of becoming the greenest city in the world by 2020^[1]. In July, the City of Vancouver launched the "Talk Green To Us" initiative - where citizens suggested ideas and voted on them. In October 2010, the city held the Greenest City Idea Slam - where the top four voted ideas were presented to the Mayor and a panel including Councillor Andrea Reimer; Deputy City Manager Sadhu Johnston, Arran Stephens, President of Nature's Path Foods; Tamara Vrooman, Chief Executive Officer of Vancity; Janet Austin, Chief Executive Officer of YWCA Vancouver; Matt O'Grady, Editor of BC Business Magazine; Greenest City Action Team member Cheeying Ho, Executive Director of the Whistler Centre for Sustainability; Paula V. Murillo of Latincouver; and Emily Jubenvill of the Vancouver Public Space Network.

CityStudio Vancouver was selected by the Mayor to move forward as a pilot program. Four months later, the Presidents and Vice Presidents involved in the Campus-City Collaboration (C3 - BCIT, ECUAD, Langara, SFU, UBC, VCC)^[2] met with the Mayor and approved CityStudio as a project of the City of Vancouver to engage staff, community members and students in collaborative city building.

Courses

CityStudio hosts several intensive part-time and full-time studio courses at 1800 Spyglass Place, working closely with instructors to design the course and support the projects. It also coordinates a network of campus courses at its partner universities and colleges in the Lower Mainland.

The CityStudio Network

CityStudio also shares its model of city-campus collaboration with municipalities around the world. The CityStudio Network currently consists of CityStudio Victoria and CityStudio Abbotsford in British Columbia; CityStudio Brantford and CityStudio Waterloo in Ontario; CityStudio Corner Brook in Newfoundland; and, CityStudio Bendigo and CityStudio Logan in Australia. There are also a number of CityStudio-inspired innovation hubs including CityLab in Hamilton, Ontario.

References

External links

• Official website
• https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/how-to-make-the-city-a-classroom-and-free-the-students/article17091496/