2018

The Binners’ Project is a Vancouver-based initiative dedicated to advocating for waste-pickers in the city. Am Johal interviews Binners’ Project staff members Davin Boutang and Anna Godefroy about their beginnings and evolution as an organization. They discuss their Universal Carts Initiative, the Coffee Cup Revolution and how the project has grown in its capacity to create opportunities for binners, destigmatizing the work they do in diverting waste from landfills.

"The way that I rationalize spending so much time in the theory world is because I think it helps train your intuition." Berlin-based artist Patricia Reed talks to Am Johal about the relationship between theory and practice in her work.

From 312 Main and the future of public infrastructure in Surrey, to his “mad socialist period” in Dave Barrett’s NDP government. Am Johal interviews former city planner, MLA, and cabinet minister Bob Williams about his long and storied history of government work and community development in BC.

“We don’t have time not to have women at the table.” Ellen is a former Vancouver city councillor and founder of Women Transforming Cities. She is interviewed by Jamie-Leigh Gonzales. They talk about the invisible labour of women, how women experience different social and environmental issues, the inclusion of women’s voices in governance, and how to make our cities women-friendly.

Read the transcript for episode two of Below the Radar, The flip side: Why vote ‘No’ to Proportional Representation? — with Bill Tieleman.

With a referendum on Proportional Representation looming, BC will decide whether or not to move to a new way of electing our provincial government — or stick with our current First Past the Post system. Our first ever guest is Maria Dobrinskaya, BC Director of the Broadbent Institute. Maria shares why she is advocating for BC residents to vote ‘Yes’ to PR when they mail in their ballots this month.

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.

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.