Engagement

Through a variety of initiatives aimed at introducing prospective students to FCAT’s programs and areas of study, we partner with school districts and other organizations to offer summer courses and workshops where youth can explore new ideas and gain new skills.

CEED Community Podcast

FCAT collaborated with the non-profit CEED community society to help them develop a community podcast. We provided equipment (temporarily) and hired an FCAT graduate student to provide training in podcasting foundations, including story generation, script writing, interviewing practices, audio recording and editing, and distribution which enabled toe CEED volunteers to continue independently producing the podcast after conclusion of the pilot period. The student contract was six months.

CEED Society determined the content of the podcast episodes. They selected the volunteers, identified the stories, led the interviews and hosted the episodes. With FCAT support, CEED released three podcast episodes. The CEED Society successfully launched their podcast CEED Pod in Spring 2021, and they have released another 8 episodes in the last two years.

Ethos Lab

FCAT has collaborated with Ethos Lab, a non-profit incubator for black youth, and hired a Black grad student from SIAT to develop and facilitate workshops on virtual reality for the Ethos youth. FCAT extended the contract twice to allow the SIAT student to participate in spring break programming.

Summer Courses with School Districts

FCAT has collaborated with the Burnaby and Surrey school districts on several summer courses over the past three years. FCAT hires SFU undergrad or grad students to help support the course and mentor the enrolled students. FCAT has also provided classroom and computer lab space at SFU Burnaby and Surrey for the students to attend class on campus. The students have also had access to select equipment, including cameras, lighting, mics and mix tables. 

Course topics have included:

• Filmmaking, Grade 10-12
• Documentary and Women in Computing Science, Grade 10-12
• Storytelling and Cinema for Grade 5-7
• Film Academy, Grade 9-12

Dual Credit Courses

FCAT is in discussion with Surrey School District to offer a course of IAT 102: Graphic Design in the evening at SFU Surrey which will be reserved for a cohort of Surrey high school students selected by Surrey School District. The high school students will get high school credit and university credit for the course. In addition, The school district will pay the tuition for the course and be reimbursed by the Ministry of Education. There will be no other costs for the students to attend the course.

Interactive Workshop Series

FCAT has offered two different extracurricular workshop series to Burnaby and Surrey students:

• Visual Art Club: FCAT hired an SFU Visual Arts student to develop and host weekly arts sessions for at-risk elementary school students. The workshop series ran from October-December and again from February - May and involved seven elementary schools.
• Digital Media Art Club: FCAT hired two FCAT students to develop and host weekly workshops for at-risk high school students. The series include up to six 90 minute workshops that are held remotely or at SFU Surrey and involved two high schools.

Individual Workshops

FCAT hired students to offer one-off presentations or workshops for high school and elementary school classes. Topics included careers in FCAT disciplines, digital literacy, and graphic design

Undergraduate Student Conference 

The FCAT Undergraduate Conference (UGC) is a celebration and exploration of the diverse range of student work produced within our faculty. Students from each of our schools and programs have the opportunity to showcase performances, papers, installations, and displays. Students, faculty, staff and industry members to come together, share knowledge and build meaningful connections. The UGC is also an opportunity for community members including local high school students and FCAT alumni to learn more about our programs and the work of our students. Click here to watch all of our 2021 presentations or see a few of them below.

School of Communication: Grace Mavko

School of Interactive Arts & Technology: Hana Barazandeh

School for the Cotemporary Arts: Sarah U

Documentary filmmaking class a first for Burnaby school district summer school-Burnabynow (April 4, 2022)