Updates

On behalf of SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement, we wanted to take the time to say that we have been overwhelmed and deeply touched by the voices of love, solidarity and support that have been shared since the announcement of the closure of our office on January 22, 2025 by SFU.

Can podcasting act as a new kind of scholarly form? What are the characteristics that make a podcast scholarly, and what is the potential of scholarly podcasting beyond knowledge mobilization and public scholarship? These are the questions that the Below the Radar Academic Advisory Board approached at the scholarly podcasting teach-in this past October—the first public convention of the advisory board since their inception.

Between October 30th to November 10th this year, the 21st annual Heart of the City festival animated the Downtown Eastside with over a hundred community-oriented events under the theme Threads of Connection.

The release of States of Injury — with Wendy Brown marks Below the Radar’s 250th episode—a major milestone since the podcast’s inception in 2018.

On June 22, the cast and crew of Project Limelight’s production of East Side Story were greeted with applause as a full house welcomed the young performers back to the Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre stage.

Our Below the Radar podcast mini-series See How We Run! looked at local arts collectives and organizations, highlighting conversations about creation, spacemaking, accessibility, and self-determination within the framework of Vancouver’s cityscape.

With details of our 5-year anniversary celebration event to come, let’s take a sneak peek of the upcoming season.

Since September 2022, we’ve held 42 events and workshops, released 33 episodes, and engaged more than 25,000 podcast listeners. During that time, working diligently behind the scenes—editing podcast audio, and supporting communications and events programming—was our interim Programs Assistant Samantha Walters, who we are pleased to announce has now moved into a continuing role in the office.

On June 29, 2023, 200 people turned out for the world premiere screening of Smokey Devil: Underworld Street Reporter, a feature length documentary by Nathaniel Canuel, co-hosted by SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement.

On our latest spring season of the podcast, we had the chance to sit down with five SCA artist-scholars for some exciting discussions on their artistic practices and latest research. Whether you're looking to hear more about arts education and the local arts ecology, or just seeking some artistic inspiration, we hope you join us in diving back into these episodes.

Released every spring, Voices of the Street (VOTS) is a compendium of writing by Megaphone community members, a space for exploration of creative expression through language.

Our spring season of Below the Radar has consisted of seventeen conversations with community builders, artists, and academics about dynamic research initiatives, new projects, and engaging stories.

As we approach our 5th year of Below the Radar, we’re pleased to share that our podcast has surpassed 100,000 listens!

Research Assistant Sena Cleave reflects on how they translated the skills they acquired as a student at SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts (SCA) to their work at SFU VOCE.

We are delighted to welcome Julia Aoki as Program Manager at SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement!

The 2023 Spring season has already kicked off with four episodes that explore varying topics from racial justice, community building, colonialism, and regional storytelling.

In Below the Radar’s The Climate Imaginary series we touched on disinformation, links between the arts and climate activism, and the challenges in making real environmental change.

SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement was honoured to support four events at the Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival, featuring activists, performance artists, and a comic journalist, telling their stories and illuminating directions for positive change.

A podcast that maps accessible, sustainable and equitable transportation in urban spaces.

SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement (SFU VOCE) and Megaphone are delighted to present the completed Voices of the Street podcast — a Below the Radar original series created by Megaphone storytellers. Inspired by writings and themes from the 2021 Voices of the Street literary anthology, this series was thoughtfully curated and hosted by Megaphone Speakers Bureau participants: Jules Chapman, Angel Gates, Nicolas Leech-Crier and Yvonne Mark.

As we step into 2022 with anticipation for the new engagement opportunities this year will bring, we are excited to introduce Steve Tornes, who has recently stepped into the role of interim Community Engagement Coordinator for SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement.

We are delighted to welcome our newest co-op student Alex Masse, who has been diligently working behind the scenes with us at SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement (SFU VOCE) since January.

Women, Work, More is a Below the Radar series highlighting the experiences of women across varying life-stages and social intersections.

In our latest series on the Below the Radar podcast, we chatted with five leaders of the climate justice movement: Khelsilem, Anjali Appadurai, Eugene Kung, Marc Lee, and Grand Chief Stewart Phillip. They each talked about their personal experiences as activists and how we can work towards mitigating climate change and addressing systemic inequality.

On November 14th, 2017 Itrath Syed, a PhD Candidate at the School of Communications at SFU gave a lecture on Gendered Islamophobia and Muslim Women’s Resistance. Following the talk, Itrath was in conversation with Samaah Jaffer of SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement.

Bringing together cultural traditions from across the world, the unique collaboration between Tzo’kam and Sawagi Taiko performed at SFU’s Vancouver campus for the third time as a part of the Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival. The theme of this year’s festival was Honouring the Women of the Downtown Eastside.

Super Cool Tuesdays has been connecting artists and members of the DTES as a drop-in speaker series for over five years. With over 50 artists involved to date and a weekly attendance ranging from 10-25 community members (most of them regulars), folks meet up to discuss, learn about, and make art.

Former UN rapporteur Miloon Kothari visited Vancouver this summer to receive an honorary doctorate from Simon Fraser University. This trip marked his return to Vancouver for the first time since visiting as UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing 10 years ago to report on Vancouver’s housing situation.

On May 18, the Salish Singing and Drumming Workshop series of Spring 2017 came to a close. The monthly workshops are led each Spring and Fall by award-winning composer, producer, and traditional Lil’wat singer, Russell Wallace.

Simon Fraser University hosted the C²UExpo 2017 from May 1 to 5 — a conference featuring collaborations and relationships between academic and community parnters. The Community and Cultural Mash-Up reception was a special event on the evening of May 3 for C²UExpo participants, featuring some of SFU’s cultural and community partners.

Human trafficking and human rights violations of migrant workers in the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) states of the Middle East is a growing concern. In parts of the Gulf, migrant workers make up over 90 per cent of the population. On Tuesday January 31, SFU alumna Laya Behbahani will discuss how the abuse of migrant workers in the Gulf constitutes human trafficking, and how the issue needs to be examined with the intention of prevention.

SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement is pleased to be supporting three free film screenings at SFU in partnership with DOXA Documentary Film Festival during this year’s PuSH International Performing Arts Festival.

An adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Bah! Humbug! revives the classic holiday tale about giving, sincerity, redemption and forgiveness, set in modern-day Vancouver.

The conversation acknowledged that we are at a pivotal moment in Canadian history, and recognized the opportunity to find a new way forward, together. All community members were invited to join in this national movement towards reconciliation for Indigenous peoples and all Canadians.

February 11, 2016, marked the first session of our Woodward’s Community Singers 2016 Workshops. The workshops take place every Thursday from 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM in the Sky Room of the PHS Community Services Residences at the Woodward’s complex.

On Thursday March, 17, the Design Studio for Social Intervention (DS4SI) hosted a workshop on social emergencies — the different forms they take, how they may be identified, and how to productivity respond with a social intervention.

On the first four Wednesdays of March, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement, SFU’s Indigenous Research Institute, and SFU’s Office for Aboriginal Peoples co-presented a speaker series on Aboriginal issues, featuring engaging lectures and panel discussions. The entire series was filmed and can be accessed through our online video gallery.

Watch the magic unfold on the Fei & Milton Wong Experimental Theatre stage as Project Limelight mounts its production for #FAIRYTALE.

Join us as we commemorate 22 years of rebuilding and progress since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. On June 28, 2016, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement, Embrace Rwanda, and Building Bridges with Rwanda present Remembering Rwanda: 22 Years Later.

Ghoulish lanterns lit the way to the Powell Street Festival Society‘s annual collaborative performance event, Spatial Poetics XV. The event saw its 15th anniversary this year, bringing together a diverse mix of Japanese-Canadian artists under the theme of ghost stories.

This week, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement said goodbye to one of the most instrumental and valued members of our team. Program assistant Andrea Creamer spoke to communications assistant Melissa Roach and community engagement specialist Samaah Jaffer in reflection on her experience over the past five years.

For a Muse of Fire brought humour and heart to SFU Woodward’s last week. Staged on July 18, the story takes place on the number 20 bus, inspired by lived experiences of community members of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and a little bit of Shakespeare.

Libby Davies comes to SFU Woodward’s this Wednesday, Sept 21 for Libby Davies: Reflections of a Life in Politics. The former MP will be in conversation with Am Johal and Jackie wong as they delve into her four decades of experience in politics.

This summer, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement partnered with the S.U.C.C.E.S.S. Moving Ahead Program (MAP) to deliver a series of photography workshops to young Syrian children who recently arrived in Vancouver as refugees.

How does the city orchestrate a set of quiet, everyday choreographies? How are dance artists refiguring these mobile arrangements? How does the project of choreography — of directing bodies — resonate with broader ethical concerns about moving and being moved?

This year marks the 13th Annual Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival! SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement is thrilled to welcome the festival back into our space for a variety of different events.

Community organizer and urban studies lecturer Matt Hern launched his new book, What a City Is For: Remaking the Politics of Displacement on October 21.

Canada’s largest festival of zines and underground culture is coming to Vancouver this Saturday, November 5. Canzine West 2016 is open to the public from 1:00-7:00 pm at the SFU Woodward’s campus (149 W Hastings). This long-running festival first opened in Toronto in 1995 and has been a huge outlet of underground culture ever since.

A compilation of works from the students of the Fall 2016 session of Community Journalism 101.

Award-winning graphic journalist Joe Sacco was at SFU on November 2, 2016, for an engaging evening in conversation with Chris Brayshaw from Pulp Fiction Books, filmmaker Sobhi Al-Zobaidi, Broken Pencil editor Alison Lang, and Roxanne Panchasi from SFU’s History Department.

Super Cool Tuesdays wrapped up for the Fall a few weeks ago. We were lucky to have welcomed a great selection of artists during this past session, and to have partnered with community organizations such as Heart of the City Festival (HOTC) and Hives for Humanities.

On Monday, November 16, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement celebrated its 5th anniversary with an evening that highlighted a few of its programs and partnerships that have been developed over the years.

On November 9th, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement hosted an event featuring the work of Lief Hall — and the audience was not disappointed. An artist, musician, performer and visual production designer, Lief Hall is an amazing critical thinker who was able to reveal and discuss various ideas about gender identity and mythology through her storytelling and electronic music performance.

On Friday November 13, we hosted a screening of Edward Curtis’ In the Land of the Head Hunters, the first feature film made in B.C. and the oldest surviving feature made in Canada.

SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement was pleased to welcome back Heart of the City Festival to our space for four exciting events.

SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement and the Vancouver City Planning Commission hosted a panel discussion on the issue of “Social Inequality in the City.”

On Thursday October 15, 2015 SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement hosted a panel in partnership with Surrey Urban Mission, Collingwood Neighbourhood House, the City of Vancouver, and the Transit Working Group titled, “Triple A Transit: Affordable, Available and Accessible.”

Canzine West: the Giant Zine Fair is a comic book and zines fair presented in partnership with the Broken Pencil Magazine and the SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. This annual event gives an opportunity to over a hundred various vendors from Vancouver (and other cities in Canada) to showcase their work and receive recognition and comments from the public.

Seema Jethalal, managing director of Daniels Spectrum, a community cultural hub in Toronto’s Regent Park neighbourhood, visited our office on Friday, October 2. Jethalal graduated from McGill with a major in cultural studies and minors in international development, world religions, and music, after which she pursued a graduate degree in media production at Ryerson.

AMES is a registered charity (est. 1996) based in British Columbia, Canada dedicated to using the media arts to support youth-led community development, encourage peer-based expression and education and promote social change.

“If you’re thinking of serving food or donating food to anyone in need, don’t serve it if you wouldn’t feed it to your child or grandparent.”

Women Transforming Cities International Society is a non profit, volunteer run organization dedicated to making cities work for women and girls.

The singer Willie Thrasher, the youngest of 21 children, is of Inuvialuk heritage, where he spent his early years hunting caribou and kayaking for whales.

Dr. Ignace and Chief Ignace presented on April 14 at 7PM as a part of the Lecture Series on Aboriginal Issues.

Whether we grew up in a small town or a big city, each of us remembers characteristics that define the places we call home.

A ongoing project, Community Journalism 101 is a five-week course organized in partnership with Megaphone Magazine with instructors Alex Samur and Jackie Wong. The course runs twice yearly. As of Spring 2014, an advanced level, Community Journalism 201, has been added to the program.

Kelty has studied flamenco dance, singing, and percussion for 10 years with Al Mozaico Flamenco Dance Academy in Vancouver, traveling to New Mexico and Spain to immerse in the art form. She started Barrio Flamenco in 2010 to bring two loves together: flamenco and the Downtown Eastside.

Rob McMahon received his PhD in 2013 from the School of Communication at SFU, where his dissertation received the Dean of Graduate Studies Convocation Medal. He is now working as a postdoctoral fellow with the First Nations Innovation Project at the University of New Brunswick.

On Michelle Flowers’ 35th birthday she received a bundle of letters from her younger sister Angelique. This was no humdrum correspondence; rather they were birthday wishes full of charm and wit. The letters expressed Angelique’s love of nature, art and literature, and most of all her unique and joyful personality, despite suffering from a painful disease since her mid-teens.

Anke Kessler received her M.SC. in economics from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and her Ph.D. from the University of Bonn, Germany. Before joining the department of Economics at SFU in 2003, she was an assistant professor at the University of Bonn. Prof. Kessler’s main research interests are political institutions and structure of government, fiscal federalism, and development economics.

Motivated to give back, sisters Maureen Webb and Donalda Weaver founded Project Limelight to supportthe East Vancouver community where they were raised.

Alyha is a fourth year sociology and labour studies student with a deep interest in capitalist critiques, social movements, climate, and human rights. During her co-op placement, Alyha has been creating engaging communications materials, assisting with the upcoming launch of our new website, and curating her own mini series for the Below the Radar podcast.

Visual arts students on the SFU VOCE team reflect on making art for a distanced audience and how gallery experiences will continue to change as we slowly emerge from the pandemic.

As The Power of Disability podcast series comes to a close, we are looking back on the series, recounting its beginnings, and encapsulating the insights of each guest. Host Al Etmanski spoke with six guests with disabilities who have been key forces of change — in arts, activism, policy change, and many other sites of social transformation and innovation.

For emerging researchers, the process of publishing in an academic journal is “a bit of black box,” says SFU Geography professor and Minor Revisions host Eugene McCann. SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement got a chance to speak with McCann about his experience hosting Minor Revisions, the intentions driving the podcast, and how he hopes these conversations will make the publishing process more approachable.

It’s our pleasure to introduce an important member of our team who is hard at work behind the scenes of Below the Radar, Kathy Feng.

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only been devastating to our communities, it has laid bare so many of the inequities that have been ongoing within our institutions and communities.

As this complicated and tumultuous year comes to a close, there is much to reflect upon. While our public programming has been limited to the virtual world for the time being, we look forward to welcoming our communities back to in-person programming in Fall 2021.

Reflecting on a podcast milestone during crisis times. Two years and 86 episodes later, Below the Radar is going strong with 25,000+ listens. SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement launched this podcast with the aim of connecting with our community in a new way.

Whose city is it anyway? Who does it embrace, who does it marginalize, and who does it push away from legibility? Whose bodies matter and whose don’t? Is the ‘Right to the City’ just words on a page?

Jackie Obungah, our office’s Summer 2020 Co-op Communications Specialist, guest hosted an episode of Below the Radar featuring a conversation with Aida Mwanzia.

Black Youth Organizers on Mutual Aid and Community Responses to COVID-19

We are excited to welcome our new co-op student Jackie Obungah to the SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement team!

The beginning of July 2020 marks the end of Rachel Wong’s time in our Office. Rachel began as a Communication co-op student 13 months ago and eventually became a permanent employee.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed most aspects of life. Here at SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement, we continue to explore some of these changes.

From everyone here at SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement, we’d like to celebrate Indigenous History Month. We want to highlight some of the Indigenous thinkers, academics, and artists we’ve had the opportunity to work with this year through both our podcast Below the Radar and our public programming.

What can COVID-19 teach us about health inequities that are present in our society? Our latest installment of Below the Radar Pandemic Conversations explores the current situation of COVID-19 and what previous pandemics can teach us about what is happening globally. Am Johal sits down with Meaghan Thumath, a clinical scientist at the Centre for Gender and Sexual Health Equity and clinical associate professor at UBC’s School of Nursing.

What is it like to work on the front lines of a major pandemic? On our latest Below the Radar Pandemic Conversations episode, we meet Dr. Kevin Patterson, an ICU physician who works in critical care in Nanaimo. Dr. Patterson is also a writer and novelist.

What impact will COVID-19 have on geopolitics and climate change? That is the question that Paul Rogers answers on the latest installment of Below the Radar Conversations.

We were thrilled to host Dr. Andrew Petter, president of SFU, on the latest episode of our Below the Radar podcast. Petter came into the role of president in 2010, and 10 years later, he is ready to move on to the next chapter of his life.

In the wake of COVID-19, we all need to adapt and learn new ways of doing things. This has been a particularly challenging time for a number of community organizations whose focus is to help those in need. Whether you are looking for some support during this time or want to find ways to help organizations with their work, here are some ways to help.

We currently find ourselves in a time of social distancing and staying at home. While a lot of our public events have been postponed or cancelled for now, we still want to find a way to engage the community and mobilize knowledge.

The Dallas Smythe Memorial Lecture has honoured critical scholars in the field of political economy of communications since 1993. Organized by SFU’s School of Communication, the lecture brings together faculty, students, and the broader community to honour the work and research of Dallas Smythe, who taught at SFU from 1976 until he passed away in 1992.

For the fifth consecutive year, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement hosted the Jim Green Memorial Lecture in honour of Jim Green (May 25, 1943 – February 28, 2012), who was a city councillor, a community activist, and a formidable advocate for — and developer of — social housing in the Downtown Eastside.

Our podcast Below the Radar has officially hit over 10,000 listens! In just over one year, we have accumulated thousands of listens over our collection of episodes. We have and continue to amplify ideas that are flying below the radar, and share them across the globe.

Our office is excited to partner with Yarrow Intergenerational Society for Justice on the launch of Speak My Language, a project that features 5 radio documentaries created by teams of youth and Chinese seniors.

At the 5th annual One Book One SFU event, authors Esi Edugyan and Omar El Akkad sat down to discuss Edugyan’s newest novel Washington Black. This year’s event took place on January 30th in the Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema at the Goldcorp Centre for the Arts. In partnership with SFU Library and Pulpfiction Books, our office was proud to facilitate this conversation between these two renowned authors.

On January 30, 2020, SFU celebrated the opening of it’s ninth location at 312 Main. SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement had the opportunity to spend a lot of time in the space already, sharing space with the different community organizations in the building and recording our podcast, Below the Radar, in our office. Now, we’re excited to be joined by our SFU colleagues from SFU Public Square, SFU Lifelong Learning, and SFU’s Community-Engaged Research Initiative (CERi) at 312 Main. We look forward to many more years of community engagement with this neighbourhood and the folks that live and work in it.

Our live recording with UBC professor and author Glen Coulthard is now available! Click here to listen to the episode in full. Read below for more information on this special episode of our podcast Below the Radar.

2019 was a busy year for SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. We hosted a number of diverse events and welcomed back many long-time community partners for other events. As we wind down 2019, we wanted to highlight some exciting events that we were a part of this past year.

Our longtime community partner Karen Jamieson Dance has returned with the Carnegie Dance Troupe to present their work in progress performance Recollect. This year’s collaborative performance was lead by Julie Lebel, a choreographer with a wide breadth of experience with community engaged dance.

One year ago today, we released the very first episode of Below the Radar. It was 2018, and at that moment in time, BC was in the middle of an electoral referendum. Our very first episode was an interview with Maria Dobrinskaya of the Broadbent Institute on this topic.

On September 25, 2019, we had the opportunity to co-host “Decolonizing the City: The Future of Indigenous Planning in Vancouver” with the Planning Institute of BC South Coast Chapter and Vancouver City Planning Commission. This was a presentation and panel discussion that proved to be a very important topic for our community, and we are thrilled at the support and interest for this event.

Visual artist and photographer Anne Marie Slater shared her recent 2019 Artist Residency with the Victoria Square Project {Artist Rick Lowe (USA) Documenta 14 in collaboration with Artist, Maria Papadimitriou (GR)} in Athens, Greece in a workshop at SFU Woodward’s entitled Intersections, Athens. The workshop highlighted the place based context of social practice that considers people and context.

It’s that time of year again! Back for their 16th year, Heart of the City Festival will fill the Downtown Eastside with song, drama, visual art, film, workshops, and so much more. With over 100 events at over 40 venues throughout the Downtown Eastside, the 12 days between Wednesday, October 30 and Sunday, November 10 are sure to inspire and delight you. Many of these events are free or by suggested donation.

We are partnering again with Reel Causes for their upcoming event #Indigeneity, which will showcase Indigenous films that address pressing contemporary Indigenous issues here in Canada and around the world.

The new school year brings both new and returning faces to our university campus. As students and professors prepare for the start of their studies, we here at SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement are preparing for a fall packed with public programming.

Teresa Wong has always been on the search for happiness. For some, happiness comes from success, wealth, or fancy trips to foreign places. And while Wong agrees that those things could make her happy, she’s opted to seek happiness in her daily life. Wong achieves this happiness through stepping out, learning new things, helping other people, and “upgrading [herself]”.

This past March, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement hosted a free community screening of the documentary, What is Democracy?. Co-presented with the National Film Board of Canada and Reel Causes, the screening took place at the Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema at the SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, and was followed by a conversation with the director, Astra Taylor.

On June 7, we hosted Calcutta-born author and activist Siddharth Dube for a conversation about his latest book, An Indefinite Sentence: A Personal History of Outlawed Love and Sex. This talk took place in the Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre and was presented in partnership with SFU’s Institute for the Humanities and Indian Summer Festival.

At the seventh annual Jim Green Memorial Lecture, community planner Nathan Edelson explored the future of urban planning and how to encourage community engagement in policy-making processes.

SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement partnered with Hives for Humanity to support the development of Research 101, a community-based project that produced resources for ethical research in the Downtown Eastside (DTES), including a resource card on informed consent and a manifesto for ethical research.

This spring, SFU hosted United Nations representative Rita Izsák-Ndiaye, a human rights expert from Hungary. She has worked with the UN as the former Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, and currently lives in Senegal and serves as the Special Rapporteur on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

This Thursday, we’re excited to be hosting SFU Geography professor Geoff Mann who will be speaking about his new book In the Long Run, We Are All Dead: Keynesianism, Political Economy and Revolution — a groundbreaking debunking of moderate attempts to resolve financial crises. As a preview to the book launch, we had the opportunity to ask Mann about some of the themes of the book and his stand out title.

In June 2018, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement hosted the orientation workshop for the Restoring Right Relationship Collective. Read the following Q&A with the collective’s director, Christine Spinder, to find out more about the project.

A group of harm reduction workers and frontline responders from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES) has come together to create a striking piece of performance art, expressing the realities of our current overdose crisis, and the hope to work through it.

Tonya Surman, a social entrepreneur who has built multiple world-changing projects which put people and the planet first, was invited to speak at the sixth annual Jim Green Memorial Lecture on Wednesday, March 7th at the SFU Goldcorp Centre fort the Arts. For the past six years, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement has supported and organized the annual Jim Green Memorial Lecture with the help of various partners. This year’s event was co-sponsored by SFU Public Square, SFU RADIUS, and LEDlab.

On a grey Vancouver day, the community engagement team met with co-facilitators Jackie Wong and Stefania Seccia for Pie Happy Hour at Acme Cafe to talk about one of the Office’s longest-running programs, Community Journalism 101.

We sat down to talk with the brilliant minds behind the New(to)Town Collective. Their goal? To provide accessible, experimental workshops (Training Jams) and to cross-pollinate amongst communities in and out of Vancouver. A few of its founders — Anjela Magpantay, Davey Calderon, and Avyen von Waldenburg — told us about the work they do in the community, how they came to be, and where they plan to go.

In partnership with the Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival, social activist and community organizer Kenny Bailey conducted a workshop on how we can imagine creative ways of solving social problems — presenting the Social Emergency Response Center as one of those solutions.

Germaine Tremmel visited SFU on October 29, 2017 to present on the Importance of Cultural Identity for Women and the Rise of Women Warriors. A grandmother who worked to initiate the movement at Standing Rock to oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline, Tremmel is a lawyer and activist seeking to protect the rights and freedoms of Indigenous peoples. Her presentation focused on recognizing the importance of women within our communities, emphasizing the power women have within themselves.

Surrey has been a rapidly-expanding ‘up-and-comer’ in Metro Vancouver for quite some time — and former city planner Bob Williams claims the future of our province lies south of the Fraser.