Fall 2017 SFU Semester at CityStudio

Semester at CityStudio brings together bright, innovative students from diverse backgrounds, disciplines and universities to collaborate with The City of Vancouver on demonstration projects. CityStudio is an immersive, team learning environment combining interdisciplinary skills with the complexity of collaborating within a group setting. The course combines dialogue-archive and design elements, and requires students to engage with communities, research existing urban interventions and design projects to improve the world around them. Students will co-create projects based on needs of City of Vancouver and the community and are encouraged to bring an open mind about project scope to the program. 

By focusing on current issues that matter in Vancouver, students have an opportunity to develop innovative solutions that assist The City of Vancouver in reaching its goals. Students cultivate the skills necessary to conduct student led dialogue-archives, public presentations, and to engage in multi-stakeholder processes with policy makers and City of Vancouver staff. The course offers field experiences, on-the-ground training, leadership development, group process, and urban sustainability project management skills.

Instructors

Dr. Janet Moore is a Professor of Professional Practice at Simon Fraser University where she co-creates, co-designs and co-teaches in the SFU Semester in Dialogue program. Janet is the Co-founder of CityStudio - an innovation hub that connects students with City Hall to co-create, design and launch experiments. Janet has spent 20 years imagining, designing and facilitating intensive, interdisciplinary programs that focus on dialogue-archive, social innovation, group process, divergent thinking and urban sustainability. Janet has an BSc in Marine Biology from McGill (she loves whales and intertidal zones) an MSc in Ecology from UBC (where she fell in love with teaching, hummingbirds & the west coast). Her PhD at UBC combined lessons from the School of Community and Regional Planning (urban sustainability, systems and feminist methodology) and the Faculty of Education (transformative learning & participatory methods).

Janet is passionate about new possibilities in cities and thrives when co-creating imaginative solutions to complex problems.  Her interests include transdisciplinary higher education, transformative learning, social entrepreneurship, social innovation and organizational change in higher education. She is learning to reconcile what it means to be a settler on the west coast of Canada. She loves riding her bike, digging in the garden, hanging out with her family and walking her dog Magic in the rainforest.

Lisa Novak is an multidisciplinary designer and educator based in Vancouver, Canada. She currently holds a Bachelor of Arts from Leeds Metropolitan University, England, and a Master of Design from Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

Novak's practice and research heavily focuses on pedagogy, youth engagement, social practice, creative dissent and artistic activism. Formerly of design studio LCND in London, England, she currently teaches at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver, where she hosted the Winter School of Disobedience alongside political philosopher Cissie Fu in February 2017.

She is the founder of the School of Collaboration and Invention—a youth-led program focusing on artistic activism, design and social impact—and the Library of Resistance—a multifaceted research project investigating the roles and responsibilities of art and design in social and political movements.

She has previously received the BC Youth Engagement Grant for her project Exchange, which she facilitated and developed in collaboration with the Contemporary Art Gallery Vancouver in July 2015.

Adrian Sinclair is the Co-Founder of the event-design company: Transformation Projects. His specialty: finding ways to get audacious ideas off the ground that encourage folks to connect in public spaces. Adrian is a co-founder of the Vancouver Mural Festival, the BC Mobile Sauna Society, and the Freestyle Focus Group. During his tenure at Transformation Projects, he has had the chance to co-develop what he calls a “stakeholder-first approach” in order to design events with clients like the Museum of Vancouver, Simon Fraser University, the Dragon Boat Festival, Hootsuite Media, BC Civil Liberties Union, The City of Vancouver and Bass Coast Festival. He teaches Gong Fu Cha (Chinese Tea Ceremony) classes at Sun Yat Sen Chinese Traditional Garden, and has led a weekly Freestyle Rap Drop-in for 7 years. Adrian completed his MA in Philosophy at The University of Western.