Pooria Taheri and Taylor Boostma won an SFU Student-Community Engagement Competition Grand award in 2024 for their proposal to work in partnership with Vancouver Coastal Health, the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre, and with local artists, to offer inclusive accessible art workshops to address social isolation and build community in the downtown east side of Vancouver. Their project continues to grow, and we are very grateful for their willingness to share some reflections about how the project has gone so far.

Featuring rich programs of community-engaged education, arts-based engagement, and technological innovation, this year’s winners are addressing food security, migrant history, cultural connection, intergenerational knowledge-keeping, gender-based violence, access to education, the toxic drug crisis, climate grief and hope, reconciliation, and homelessness.

With transphobia growing in Canada, non-binary people in this country are asking for policies to protect them in sport, but they have been continuously left out of the conversations that should inform these policies. That’s where Martha Gumprich’s project comes in.