How can community-university partnerships reinvent the city and the classroom?

Since its launch in 2011, CityStudio Vancouver has engaged more than 3,000 students, 100 faculty members on six campuses and 60 city hall staff, in projects that are helping to enrich neighbourhoods and make the city more livable and sustainable.

This innovation hub is located inside Vancouver’s City Hall, and provides university and college students with opportunities to co-create, design and launch projects that deal with real-world issues, such as clean water, safe transportation and local food.

Duane Elverum, one of its co-founders and co-directors, says that so far, CityStudio participants have accumulated more than 75,000 hours of skills training, project work and public sector innovation, and it’s making a difference.

“This is the most exciting thing I have ever worked on in my life,” he says. “We feel there is global need occurring –– with new experiments in education in engaging young people, and in building our cities. I keep thinking how our cities need help, and that the future of the planet lies in our cities.”

Elverum and fellow director and co-founder, Janet Moore, are coming to Concordia on Thursday April 16, to share their experiences with CityStudio, as part of the Future of the University and the Future of Learning speaker series.

The talk takes place at 6 p.m. in Room EV-2.260 in the Computer Science, Engineering and Visual Arts Integrated Complex (EV). The event is presented by the Office of Community Engagement.

We spoke with Elverum in advance of the presentation, “How can community-university partnerships re-invent the city and the classroom?”

Tell us about where the CityStudio idea came from.

Duane Elverum: Over the 10 years that Janet and I have been teaching together, we started to hear from students, with increasing frequency, that they wanted to put their education to use, to learn how make a living and to help the planet. They weren’t learning this in the classrooms, and it became clear that students were turning to counselling or other means of dealing with these issues. It was evident we needed to do something different.

That is when we started to develop the idea of a CityStudio — getting students out of the classroom and into the city to work on addressing these problems, and in return they would receive training and earn credits.

Around this time, the city’s mayor launched a plan to have Vancouver become the greenest city by 2020. This included a unique online engagement platform, where they accepted ideas from Vancouver citizens.

With six universities and colleges and some 100,000 undergraduate students as a large talent pool, it seemed inevitable that they could be involved in solving some of these problems under the greenest city framework, which had very ambitious targets to achieve. So, the idea for CityStudio came from the citizens of Vancouver, and was one of the top four ideas submitted out of nearly 800.

What’s the relationship between CityStudio and Vancouver universities?

DE: Janet and I originally proposed that CityStudio could focus its support on the city’s green plan implementation, and the six institutions — three universities and three colleges — agreed in principle to support this pilot project.

Under our framework, students co-create a project with city staff that supports a need related to key existing policies, whether it is related to the healthy city strategy, the engaged city strategy or greening strategy.

Students have to mobilize resources and obtain sponsorship. For us to take on a project, students must land the project on a real site, and that site must be linked to a community steward, who helps frame the problem and agrees to support the project after the course is over.

What has been the uptake by students to participate in CityStudio?

DE: Students self-select and apply to the CityStudio program. They want to make a difference in the world and are seeking skills and opportunity. It is true that they think they are ready to take on this work, but learn very quickly how complex it is to get a project off the ground. We learn together and so far we have done 156 projects.

Even though universities have co-op programs or internships, students see CityStudio as a vehicle to be collaborative city builders, within the studio or in class. Students tend to report having an experience of deeper engagement — a place to put their energies and interests and be mentored and supported.

Can you give us an example of how CityStudio is making a difference in the community?

DE: One example is the Food Share project. As part of our methodology of dialogue and design, we ask students to wear different hats, which includes being an observer — learning about and understanding the world around them.

When students started to observe, as part of the design process, they saw that many major corridors or streets had produce vendors, as well as a community centre or school. One of these centres and schools has after-school food programs for young people.

Our students discovered that Canadians throw away 30 per cent of our food for a variety of reasons — minor bruises and so on. The students asked the vendors if they could set aside the organic food they were going to throw out. In a single afternoon, 40 pounds of fresh produce was collected.

The fruit was then used by the young people in the after-school programs, who designed recipes using this produce. This engaged the vendors in the community, as well as the students who came away learning how to eat better. Plus, this saved a lot of fruit from heading to the landfill. The strength about this model is that it is scalable to every corridor, where there are produce vendors and schools or community centres.
 

Register online for the presentation, “How can community-university partnerships reinvent the city and the classroom?”  on April 16 in Room EV-2.260, 1515 St. Catherine St. W.  6 p.m. to 8 p.m.