2015

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 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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.