A new design course uses the Emily Carr University campus as a case study for lessons on wayfinding design, with an emphasis on Indigenous histories and ways of knowing.

Called ‘Rereading Place,’ the course curriculum was developed and led by LatinX designer and ECU faculty member Pat Vera, with the support of Nuu-chah-nulth, Gitxsan and Kwakwaka’wakw designer, artist and associate director of aboriginal programs Connie Watts, as well as the participation of Indigenous cultural advisors, including Anishinaabe/Ashkenazi Métis (Ojibway-Jewish/Métis) artist and ECU faculty member Mimi Gellman and Squamish artist and educator Splash, also known as Aaron Nelson-Moody.

During Splash’s time with the class, he responded to each student’s question with a story — an Indigenous storytelling approach that Pat says gradually deepened the class’s understanding of land, history and place.

“We started by wanting to know a little bit more about how we relate to this place in British Columbia,” Pat tells me. “But we learned way more about what it means to be human; what it means to be a witness; what it means to be a part of our community. We learned about what a Potlatch is and how we can apply it in order to see things differently.”

Emily Carr University of Art + Design announced today that Carleen Thomas has been named as the university’s next Chancellor. She will be the first Indigenous person to hold this position at ECU.

Ms. Thomas is currently the Special Projects Manager for the Treaty, Lands and Resources department at the Tsleil-Waututh Nation. Prior to this position, she served eight two-year terms as an elected council member for the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, in which she held the Community Development portfolio covering health and education. “We are delighted to welcome Carleen Thomas as our next Chancellor,” said Dr. Gillian Siddall, ECU’s President and Vice-Chancellor. “Carleen has demonstrated extraordinary leadership through her decades of service to the Tsleil-Waututh Nation. We’re grateful to have someone with her knowledge and expertise join Emily Carr University, especially as we work to decolonize and Indigenize our campus and meaningfully engage with the host nations on whose land we work and study.”

The Class of 2021 had an unprecedented final year, defined by the COVID-19 pandemic. While they were unable to gather in person with their peers, our students continued to develop their creative practices through hybrid and online learning. In addition to a small on-campus exhibition limited to graduating students and their families, their exceptional graduation work can be viewed at The Show 2021, an online interactive platform showcasing their diverse and stunning talents.

Forty-three graduation awards and honourable mentions were bestowed on these students for their remarkable achievements by our esteemed judges. In total, 30 students received awards valued at $26,090 based on their works in the show, their GPAs, or a combination of the two.

For much of history, the practice of design has been preoccupied with making lives better for the Western, modern white male, Louise St. Pierre tells me via video call.

Your clothes and shoes, your apartment, your city, your coffee mug, the headphones you plug into your ears, and, of course, the device you’re using to read this now. Someone designed all of it, she says. And for most of the world, those objects and items may have been designed for someone who looks nothing like them. This holds no less true for the non-human world.

Given the overwhelming influence design has on the world and our experience of it, what if changing how designers think is one of the keys to healing a broken relationship between human beings and the rest of the planet?

Sound grandiose? Maybe. But as Louise and Zach Camozzi, a Health Design Lab and DESIS Lab researcher, fellow designer and ECU faculty member, explain, this work of changing design occurs in exceedingly subtle ways.

In fact, as students learn in Louise’s third-year ‘Design with More Than Humans’ courseand Zach’s second-year ‘INDD Core Studio-Design for Biodiversity’ course, it starts by attempting to look at the world through the eyes of another being.

From Stuff to Sustainability

“If designers start to design for nature, with nature in mind as a priority emphasis, then automatically, without even really knowing it or seeing it, we’re disconnecting from the priorities of modernity and industry,” Louise says.

Full article by Perrin Grauer: https://www.ecuad.ca/news/2021/designing-with-more-than-humans-fosters-social-change-environmental-justice

June 21 is National Indigenous Peoples Day in Canada. Since 1996, it has been an annual occasion for celebration and community gathering for Indigenous people across the country.

The past few weeks have been exceptionally difficult for the Indigenous community, as we mourn the children found at former residential schools in Kamloops, BC and Brandon, Manitoba. But as Billy-Ray Belcourt writes, “Joy is art is an ethics of resistance.” Standing with the Indigenous community in grief is important, but so too is celebrating their resilience and delight.

To that end, here are a few ways to mark this occasion:

• Register for the Indigenous History Forum: Truth-Telling at the Museum of Vancouver, a free two-day event hosted by the Pacific Association of First Nations Women. The forum is open to the public and features the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, as well as presentations from the Haida, Algonquin, Haudenosaunee, Métis, and Inuit people. A wonderful opportunity to learn more about Indigenous history.
• Learn more about whose territory you are on, and what language is spoken by that Nation. The First Peoples’ Cultural Council has created an interactive map to help you learn more about the 204 First Nations in BC, which has the most linguistic diversity of any region in Canada.

Full article by Perrin Grauer: https://www.ecuad.ca/news/2021/celebrate-national-indigenous-peoples-day