Faculty research promotion
Development of promotional material for recruitment purposes
Writing content for faculty, student and alumni profiles
Undergraduate and Graduate program promotion
Student Recruitment, graduate and undergraduate
Alumni Relations
Support for events in FCCS departments (promotions, logistics, planning)
Faculty wide event planning
FCCS websites updates and content creation
Social media content management
Winners of the 2026 Student Okanagan Film Festival. Left to right: Michael V. Smith, Astrida Neimanis (accepting on behalf of Clara Kleininger Wanik), Riley Palmer, Erin Scott, Ariel Leung, Ana Vallejo Pérez
A public screening for the annual Student Okanagan Film Festival was held on campus on April 27, 2026.
The festival showcases emerging student filmmakers from high schools and post-secondary institutions around the Okanagan Valley.
“This year’s program was very diverse. We saw a full range of genres and what really stood out were all the video poems, and we selected more video poems than any previous screening,” says Michael V. Smith, co-organizers and judges for the festival.
The 2026 festival Jury members were FCCS faculty members Dan Keyes, Michael V Smith, Myron Campbell, and Jacen Dennis, and the student reps were Gabriela Chan, Samantha Chen & Ana Vallejo Pérez.
“With such a diverse selection, we didn’t have clear categories for awards this year and instead, we chose to award the top 5 films, nominated and voted upon by the jury,” says Myron Campbell, co-organizer and judge. “In general, the quality was so high that we actually ended up with the longest program in the festival’s history, which is a great problem to have.”
Group shot of graduate student organizers and attendees
The FCCS Graduate Conference The Road Taken: Along The Way was held this past weekend on April 24th and April 25th, 2026. Organized by a team of graduate and undergraduate student representatives, this conference provided an opportunity for students to share their research with peers, faculty, and the community at large.
Please find a recap of the events below, from the Lead Organizer of the event, Sharmila Ghanekar:
The Road Taken: Along The Way began with opening remarks from the MA English Program Coordinator Michael Treschow. Our first panel began shortly after, titled “Alternative Paths to Survival, ” with presentations from Lianna Raisanen (MA English UBC Van) and Nida Firdaus (MA English UBC Ok). Their presentations touched on the different paths that diasporic communities take in search of survival – with Liana discussing the temporal and spatial multiplicities in diasporic life, and Nida examining counter publics in sex work communities through the film Gangubai Kathiawadi. We moved swiftly into our second panel, “Identity and Transformation,” with Ophelia Fraser analyzing Virgina Woolf’s Orlando as a modernist bildungsroman.
All presenters and attendees then convened in the Graduate Collegium for a lunch, catered by Naked Café, before returning (much less hungry) for an Indigenous Storytelling collective discussion with Anona Kampe. Anona Kampe is a knowledge keeper from the Penticton Indian Band. She shared with us an engaging, enlightening, and deeply moving telling of captikʷł, or traditional Indigenous Storytelling. She told us the story of “How Names Were Given,” after which we were each individually encouraged to share our personal responses to the story. Having this session as part of the conference called for our attention to our individual positionality while on the unceded, traditional, ancestral land of the Syilx peoples. This session was a fantastic way to frame our conference theme of The Road Taken: Along The Way as we question the paths, journeys and roads we find ourselves upon.
We then returned to our panel presentations, this time with an Honours Undergraduate Roundtable, “Contemporary Resistance and Revolution.” Presentations were given by English Honours students Nimrat Kaur Dhaliwal, and Charlotte Lucina Mejias Dowell. Examining both the revolutionary power of cringe, and the possibilities of turning the fascist gaze, these presentations inspired a thoughtful and interesting conversation.
Our final panel for our first day, “Nonhuman Animals and Political Ecology” had three fascinating presentations. Caio Shindo Souto, an MA IGS: Digital Arts and Humanities student, presented his 3D rendering of Kelowna in 2100 – as a visual reflection of the climate crisis. He offered a few key solutions to the receding lake, as well as some thoughts on the species that will be impacted by this local climate breakdown. Felisha Anderson, an MA IGS: Power Conflict and Ideas student, discussed the power of grieving the deemed ‘ungrievable’ in regards to road-killed animals. She examined the beauty that can be found in both life and death, while calling for multi-species justice. Oluwatoyin Fagbamila, an MA English student, examined D.H Lawrence’s poem “Snake,” to demonstrate the care within paying attention, and the power of disruptive encounters in shaping multi-species justice.
We returned on Day 2, well-rested and rejuvenated, for our Keynote presenter Joanna Cockerline. Joanna teaches English, Communications, and Creative Writing at UBCO. A CBC Literary Awards prizewinner and Pushcart Prize nominee, her novel Still, set in the unhoused and sex work communities of Kelowna, was longlisted for the 2025 Giller Prize and named to CBC’s Fall Reading List. She is currently at work on a new climate novel, and sequel to Still, entitled We Are All Here. Her Keynote presentation titled, “Envisioning New Roads (That Might Not be Roads At All)” was an inspiring mixture of passages from her upcoming novel, as well as critical theoretical interventions regarding multi-species justice, climate breakdown, and the value of multiple voices in constructing a story.
Our final panel for the conference, “Community, Life Paths, and Roads to Peace,” had four impassioned presentations. Chinedum Onyinyechi Agwu (MA English) examined the reverberating impacts on the Igbo community following the Nigeria-Igbo war. She argues that the classroom can be a powerful site for acknowledging unacknowledged stories, as well as inspiring historical education. Brenda Hebert (MA IGS: Indigenous Knowledges) began her presentation with a traditional welcome song, and then went on to discuss the power of knowledge and knowledge keeping in cultivating your own journey. Nils Donnelly (MFA Creative Writing) presented his creative piece “Flyboys: Tethered and Torn on a Wayward Road,” where he explores themes of addiction, survival and friendship. Sharmila Ghanekar (MA English) examined the figural Child in Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road, as a disruptive figure to heteropatriarchal narratives.
Following some closing remarks from Dr. Jodey Castricano, we split apart for the afternoon – going home to rest, eat and congratulate ourselves for making it down this road! We met again later that evening at Buffalo Rouge Brewing Co. for some celebratory drinks, appetizers and dinner to close off the event.
We are so unbelievable thankful for all those who presented or attended. Special thanks to Anona Kampe for inviting us into that collective space, and Joanna Cockerline for a thoughtful and remarkable Keynote. Thank you to those that provided funding, the English Department, FCCS, the Library and CoGS – your support was invaluable in making this event come to life. Thank you for all of the inspiring presentations, and fruitful conversations. We look forward to future Graduate conferences that can bring our academic community together! Below are a few photos taken during the presentations.
The FEELed research centre is celebrating its five-year anniversary later this month. Located at the Woodhaven Eco Culture Centre, this will be a day of celebration, community and sharing, as we look back on five years of questions, collaborations and contributions to thinking more deeply, joyfully and inclusively about environment and climate on syilx lands.
Dr. Astrida Neimanis, director of the FEELed Lab explains that it a creative research lab where researchers think about our human relationships to place, Land and the more-than-human world.
“We specifically ask how these relationships can foreground our own differences, through a feminist, anticolonial, antiracist, queer, and accessibility justice lens,” she says. “Our community includes students and university researchers, but also neighbours and other community members and groups. This includes the four-legged, winged, swimming, and photosynthesizing beings that live here!”
The five-year anniversary celebration will be held on Friday, March 27 with drop-in workshops from 9am to 4pm, followed by a keynote conversation from 4-6 pm between FEELed Lab Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Sue Reid and globally renown feminist and queer ecologies scholar Professor Catriona Sandilands (space is limited for the talk, registration is required).
We talked to Dr. Neimanis about the last five years and what to expect for this celebration.
What sorts of events have you run over the last 5 years?
We usually run about 30 different research events per year. These range from film screenings, to reading groups, to “Craft-a-strophe!” crafting workshops, to student-run study sessions, to visiting scholar or artist workshops. What unites them all is a common question: how can we humans, in all of our differences, learn to be in better relationship with the environments that support us?
Why is having this space important to you and your research?
A lab in the woods is a very different vibe than an office on campus! The FEELed Lab, located in the Bellevue Creek watershed in the unique and threatened forest ecology of Woodhaven on syilx lands, gives us a living lab for thinking about environmental relations. We don’t have to imagine these relations or responsibilities in the abstract: we can practice caring for and relating to what is right here.
What do you hope people will get out of this full day of events that celebrate the 5 years?
We want to celebrate the diversity and breadth of our work here! It is the accomplishment of so many people, that could only have been done as community. We want to remind everyone that research impact comes in many forms, and “measures of success” importantly include the quality of the relationships we are building. That’s the best indicator of sustainability, in its broadest sense. And research can also be playful, restful, nourishing and fun!
To better support student success and academic flexibility, we are updating the Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree requirements. These revisions create more opportunities for students to explore electives, pursue a minor, and engage in co-curricular and experiential learning.
Changes to the BA program will take effect in September 2026. The BA degree requires a minimum of 120 credits, including 21 credits across five foundational focus areas: communication, critical thinking, creativity, scientific literacy or numeracy, and Indigenous content. These areas build essential skills in clear expression, rigorous analysis, imaginative thinking, informed decision-making, and reflective engagement with diverse ways of knowing. Alongside these foundational requirements, students complete the courses for their chosen majors, minors and have the flexibility to explore a wide range of electives, allowing them to shape a degree that reflects their interests, strengths, and goals.
All current B.A. students who are not planning to graduate this academic year are eligible to move into the new degree requirements.
If you are interested in transitioning to the updated Bachelor of Arts degree requirements, we ask that you complete the short survey below. The survey helps us understand which students would like to move into the revised structure and allows our advising team to provide appropriate guidance.
View this recording of the information session held on March 12, 2026 about the changes to the requirements for the Bachelor of Arts degree at UBC Okanagan.
The Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies (FCCS) is pleased to invite submissions for the 2026 Graduate Conference, The Road Taken: Along the Way, taking place April 24–25, 2026 on the Okanagan (Syilx) campus.
Inspired by the thematic provocations of journeying, hope, survival, and transformation, this conference welcomes 10–15 minute papers or creative works that engage with questions of paths taken, imagined futures, agency, resilience, and the politics of “the road.” While rooted in the conceptual frame offered by Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, proposals are not limited to that text and may explore literary, artistic, theoretical, political, or lived contexts.
Separate document with your name, presentation title, preferred contact information, and a brief bio (max 75 words)
Eligibility
Submissions are welcome from students currently enrolled in:
MA in English (ENGL)
Master of Fine Arts (FCCS)
Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies (IGS) students supervised by FCCS faculty
English Honours Undergraduates
We encourage you to consider how the conference themes resonate within your scholarship, creative practice, or lived experience, and we look forward to reading your proposals.
BFA student Kyla Smith working in the sculpture studio
Kyla Smith always knew she wanted to be an artist.
“When I was actually a very little kid, I used to draw pictures and try and sell them to my family because I wanted to be an artist, even from a very young age.”
It was a push from a teaching assistant, an alumnus from the fine arts program, in her high school that confirmed her choice to come to UBC Okanagan.
“She talked about how amazing the BFA program at UBCO was for her. I’d been considering a few places for art school, but I love the Okanagan, so chose to apply here.”
Smith decided to pursue a minor in art history after learning that taking just two additional courses, beyond the eight already required for the BFA program, would earn her an extra credential with meaningful future job benefits.
“Coming from a public-school background where art history focused mainly on well-known European artists, the colour wheel, and basic techniques, we didn’t learn any of the foundation behind art or how art developed as a practice or across different cultures,” she notes.
Her first‑year studies, which traced artistic traditions from early origins through the Renaissance, offered a foundational perspective she had never encountered before. This exposure introduced her to diverse cultural practices and provided new points of entry into the study of art.
Smith says that she finds art history compelling because continued study opens pathways for deeper exploration and expanded research opportunities. And in the spring of 2025, Smith chose to sign up for a Go Global Seminar to take two art history courses in Rome.
“I was excited that this was being offered – it was art history, it was in Rome, and it felt like one of those foundational places where art really flourished.”
The course was two weeks, totally hands‑on, with lectures four days a week—one class in the morning and one in the afternoon—and then we had three‑day weekends to do homework or just explore.
The trip felt like being on a guided tour of the entire city, according to Smith. They visited museums, ruins, churches, saw villas, walked the old city walls, and visited all these incredible sites.
“I think it was way more enriching than if I’d gone alone with no idea what to do, because the coursework gave me all the background I needed to fully appreciate everything. We also had to take photos every day and write about them, which helped me reflect more and really brought together mindfulness, school, travel, and actually living in the city as part of the culture.”
Kyla Smith with fellow students at Tiber Island, Rome, on the Go Global Art History and Visual Culture Seminar, spring 2025
Since coming to school and moving out of her childhood home, Smith notes that a number of things have influenced her artwork, including non-studio courses such as art history. Now in the third year of the program, Smith has chosen to work mostly in abstract drawing and sculpture.
She has been exploring more textiles, and art history has actually been heavily influencing her art practice. “In one of my art history classes, we talked about feminist critiques and queer critiques of art history, and those have really made their way into my practice this year.”
Her latest project was an installation of sewn placemats that she created using different women’s faces in her life. Each placemat was set on a table, then covered with a plate.
Kyla Smith’s “Placements” installation
“I had never sewn before, so this was a real learning experience for me. Both in the creation of the work and the subject matter.”
One of the things Smith says she has been thinking about her place in the world and her place in her own family.
“I’ve been reflecting on the labour that I’ve had to do in that environment,” she says. “Using the placemats and then covering the faces felt like such a clear reflection of how women’s work at home often gets hidden or taken for granted.”
Since living on her own, Smith says she has been thinking a lot about her role in her family.
“It’s made me reflect a lot on how society sees my role and how I was brought up to be a caretaker.” Kyla is using those ideas of gender roles in her current artwork, thinking about art history and how that’s influencing her work, and dealing with these kinds of gender dynamics.
“When I started the program, we were told to make mistakes, to try new things and break out of our comfort zone.”
Over these past two years, she has doing exactly that – trying new things and pushing herself. “Even though every project is not perfect, it’s been a really great learning opportunity.”
After graduation, Smith plans to go into an education program to teach at the secondary school level. Outside of the BFA program, she is taking courses in biology, math and English to have a second teachable subject.
In addition to her studies, Smith is also an avid volunteer in her community. Working with high schoolers in West Kelowna, she teaches public speaking and runs art programs.
With two teachable subjects taking shape, supporting youth in her community, and making art, a teaching program is simply the next step toward the career she’s imagined since childhood.
A group of researchers at UBC Okanagan is reimagining classroom practices as culturally sustaining and moving beyond traditional notions of academic English writing towards a more inclusive, asset-based, and globally representative learning environment.
Plurality, Linguistic Justice, and Decolonization, focuses on creating a framework to help instructors support multilingual learners (domestic and international students who speak more than one language) in their classrooms by viewing linguistic diversity as an asset rather than a deficit. The project is facilitated by Drs Anita Chaudhuri (UBCO, FCCS), Jordan Stouck (UBCO, FCCS), Jing Li (UBCO, Engineering), and Steve Marshall (SFU, Education).
Chaudhuri, Stouck, Li, and Marshall all teach a variety of first-year English and communications courses, and recognize that multilingual learners write and perform differently, yet much of the conversation recognizing this remains at the policy level or within composition networks.
Chaudhuri explains that in Canada, research exists on plurilingualism, racio-linguistic practices, Indigenous worldviews, and social justice, but there is no established framework to guide classroom application. With this in mind, the team is working to develop the PRISM framework, integrating plurilingual, racio-linguistic, Indigenous, and social justice perspectives for multilingual learners (PRISM).
“At UBC, anti-racist agendas and EDI principles are present, but resources often overlook how students’ linguistic patterns shape their writing,” she adds. “Ultimately, the goal is to rethink standard academic English, making it more inclusive and dynamic, recognizing that language is tied to power and diversity enriches learning.”
Assessment practices in first-year writing courses often emphasize standardized structures like topic sentences and thesis statements. While these conventions remain useful, the PRISM framework encourages flexibility, so instead of one-size-fits-all assessments, instructors can consider multimodal approaches, such as allowing oral presentations for students who excel in speaking encouraging students to mix languages (e.g., code-meshing), show genre awareness, and use multiple forms of expression or technological modes when they compose texts.
“Feedback should move beyond the “red pen” to become an ongoing process, using verbal or interactive methods,” says Chaudhuri.
To get the project off the ground, the team hosted a public speaker series in May 2025 featuring fifteen scholars from across the country who work in writing studies, rhetoric, communication, and first-year academic writing. While they used different terms such as plurilingualism, linguistic justice, translanguaging, code-meshing, the shared idea was clear: multilingual students’ languages, cultures, and transnational experiences should be treated as assets, not deficits.
“We found that these concepts really challenge this traditional way of understanding what it means for multilingual students, to use their own language and dialects as part of their identity and part of their learning process,” says Li. “Building on these theoretical lenses, our project aims to create practical resources such as assignments, activities, and assessment tools for instructors to apply in their classrooms.”
Stouck notes that including student perspectives is essential. At the May speaker series, students acted as moderators and were asked to reflect on how the ideas resonated with their experience as university students.
“We want to get the viewpoints of students to understand if this approach it is valuable or useful for their learning at university, not just in theory but in practice,” she says. “It was really interesting to see how this material that we are trying to translate from research into classroom practice resonates with students.”
The PRISM Framework website will become a centralized resource housing recordings, materials, and an evolving framework. This toolkit aims to make linguistic justice principles accessible to instructors through practical strategies, assignments, and culturally responsive activities. Graduate and undergraduate research assistants, along with a web developer, are creating content and animations to ensure accessibility. By connecting scholars’ ideas with classroom application, the project seeks to empower educators to value multilingualism and identity in learning while incorporating students’ full language resources.
Inspired by the May speaker series, staff in the UBC Okanagan Library including Jess Lowry, Academic Communication Consultant at the Centre for Scholarly Communication; Jo Scofield, Student Learning Hub Coordinator; and Rina Garcia Chua, Academic Integrity Program Manager, have compiled a list of supports and resources available for students, researchers, and faculty who want to embrace plurilingualism in their own work and communities.
This project is made possible with funding from a SSHRC Connections Grant, UBC Hampton Research Endowment Fund, UBC StEAR funds, and supported by The Okanagan School of Engineering, the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies, and graduate and undergraduate students Naeem Nadaee (UBCO), Ru Yao (SFU), Harper Kerstens (UBCO), Marcus Hobkirk (UBCO), Eve Kasprzycka (UBCO) and Mark Lovesey (UBCO).
Detached art studio at the Woodhaven Eco Culture Centre
The Woodhaven Eco Culture Center is a unique setting for research, creative scholarship and community connections.
Woodhaven isn’t quite wilderness, and it’s not quite the city either. Tucked just off the Gordon Street bus route in Kelowna, it’s a space where the sounds of birds mix with the hum of traffic, and where pine trees grow alongside deer passing by, and neighbourhood homes. This “in-between” setting, neither fully urban nor remote, makes Woodhaven a unique place to explore our relationship with the natural world.
That’s part of what drew faculty and graduate students from UBC Okanagan’s Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies (FCCS) to the site. In 2010, Creative Writing professor Nancy Holmes and then Masters of Fine Arts student Lori Mairs launched a year-long eco art project, under the umbrella of the Eco Art Incubator, in the Woodhaven Nature Conservancy, working closely with students and community members. During the course of the project, over 100 local artists and students, including musicians, performers, writers, sculptors and other visual artists created multiple works of art in Woodhaven Nature Conservancy.
The work was created in the park and in response to the park. The artwork left minimal impact on the natural environment, leaving nothing in the park and similarly removing nothing from the park, explains Nancy Holmes.
The project was a success, and the Regional District of the Central Okanagan (RDCO), which supported the initiative, saw the potential for Woodhaven to become a destination park.
“FCCS took on the space to support arts and humanities-based research focused on the environment, the Okanagan landscape, and the idea of place, naming the site, The Woodhaven Eco Culture Centre,” Holmes says.
Since 2012, FCCS has managed the property, which has a large heritage home with two self-contained apartments, providing opportunities for graduate students from FCCS to live during the academic year, and a place for visiting artists and scholars to stay during the summer months. There is a small studio cabin and art studio on the property that is an ideal place to hold seminars, small retreats, art projects, events, and meetings. The site has become a hub for author readings, art events, and outdoor learning activities for local elementary schools.
The list of writers and artists is a who’s who of eco-art in Canada: Tim Lilburn, Don McKay, Russell Thornton, Troy Nickel, Marlene Creates, Teresa Posyniak, Chantal Bilodeau, Peter Morin, Nicola Harwood, Joan Crate, Karen Zalamea, to name but a few; graduate students have run events on the site—Beat Salad and the Woodshed Reading Series; the Indigenous Art Intensive has held numerous celebratory events, faculty and visiting scholars have run courses and workshops, hosted conferences such as Telling Stories: The Humanities in an Age of Planetary Agenda-Setting, book launches, and local organizations such as the Inspired Word Café have held events and festivals on the property.
In 2021, a formal artist-in-residence program was launched, inviting artist to spend dedicated time on their art practice living on the property using the studio cabin as a place to create their work. In 2024, a new 360 sq. ft. art studio was added to the property. Surrounded by mature fir and pine trees, the studio features 10-foot walls and large sliding glass doors to maximize natural light. It serves as a creative space for artists-in-residence, a venue for community gatherings, and a site for eco-cultural study.
The FEELed Lab research centre, located on the top floor of the main house, emerged during the pandemic as a space for graduate students and faculty to gather safely outdoors. What began as informal workshops evolved into a research initiative focused on building inclusive academic communities around environmental questions.
“The work explores what it means to be in good relationship with the land, particularly from settler, Indigenous, feminist, queer, and disability perspectives,” explains Astrida Neimanis, director of the FEELed Lab & Canada Research Chair in Feminist Environmental Humanities here at UBC Okanagan.
Rather than pursuing a large institutional lab, the idea of creating a community-based research space at Woodhaven just made sense to Dr. Neimanis.
“After my first visit to Woodhaven, the space immediately felt like the right fit, the sense of connection to the place was clear—it was quiet, natural, and welcoming,” she adds. “The upstairs suite had recently become available, and the timing aligned perfectly with my research focus on ecological relationships between people, places, and non-human life.”
Woodhaven’s informal, home-like atmosphere, makes it feel more like a community space than an institution. For many, it’s a place where they feel welcome and comfortable in ways they might not on campus. Over more than a decade, the Woodhaven Eco Culture Centre has become a vital space for creativity, research, and community engagement, grounded in a commitment to place, relationship, and inclusive environmental inquiry.
These spaces offer more than creative opportunities, they foster collaboration and innovation. The outdoor space, art studio, small cabin and studio apartment are available for rentals to UBC collaborators; students and employees. Alongside the summer artist-in-residence program, the FEELed Lab is starting an Arts and Science Residency, which will be piloted in March 2026, bringing artists and scientists together, creating new ways to connect research, creativity, and community at Woodhaven.
Woodhaven Art Studio Build
This time-lapse captures the entire process of building the detached art studio at the Woodhaven Eco Culture Centre, from demolition on October 16, 2023, to completion on February 29, 2024. Watch as the site transforms through groundbreaking, framing, roofing, and siding.
This project was overseen by FCCS Technical Director Philip Wyness and Property Manager Frances Brouse, and built by Quadro Industries’ Ryan and Adam Sawatzky, the 360 sq. ft. studio features 10-foot walls and large sliding glass doors to maximize natural light.
Dr. Megan Smith welcomes guests to the SCI_ART symposium at UBC Okanagan, October 7, 2025
Creative practice and scientific research can unite to address pressing challenges. Disciplines like art and science, which are often seen as separate, can thrive when brought together, this convergence fosters innovation, discovery, and collaborative problem-solving.
In October 2025, the SCI_ART symposium was held at UBCO Okanagan to create space for showcasing and discussing these intersections through deep conversations, moderated panels, and networking opportunities that connect universities, governments, artists, scientists, and the public. The program brought together artists, scientists, and thinkers to explore how creative practice can illuminate urgent issues of our time.
The event welcomed international artists from across the European Union, pairing them with local researchers and artists to engage in conversations around pressing global issues such as climate change, server infrastructures, coral reef rejuvenation, and broader ecological transformations. These discussions are not only timely but deeply rooted in the realities of our changing world.
SCI_ART Kelowna included international artists Felix Lenz (Austria), Borut Jerman (Slovenia), WhiteFeather Hunter (Canada), Ruby Singh (Canada), Swamp_Matter (Eva Garibaldi Netherlands / Ana Laura Richter Slovenia), Teresa Almeida (Portugal), Fiona McDonald (Ireland), Przemysław Jasielski (Poland), along with artists from UBC Okanagan including John Desnoyers-Stewart, Astrida Neimanis, Gao Yujie, and Megan Smith.
Felix Lenz’s keynote on the ecology of images set the stage, examining how power and perception shape our planetary future. In his performative lecture, Lenz interweaves research, screenings, and live elements around his latest essay film Brute Force. Culminating over five years of artistic investigation, the project critically examines how scientific knowledge production, digital infrastructures, and ecological systems are entangled.
SCI_ART was conceived of by Simon Pribac, Trade Commissioner for the Embassy of the Republic of Slovenia in Ottawa. The idea emerged from Pribac’s previous engagement in both science diplomacy and the cultural sector. In the EU there has been a lot of emphasis on interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity in the last years, especially in the convergence of art and science, he explains.
“When I started my position in Ottawa, a conversation on art and science initiatives with my German colleague led to the first event organized in collaboration between our two embassies—Slovenian and German—and local partner SAW Gallery,” Pribac says.
Denmark and Austria soon joined, and the project quickly grew into a 10+ country initiative involving international academic, cultural, scientific, and institutional stakeholders, revealing the immense potential when creativity and critical thinking meet to inspire innovation and empathy.
The Critical Futures Studio/Lab at UBC Okanagan became a natural host for SCI_ART, as the lab’s mission and curiosity about interdisciplinary collaboration resonated with the symposium’s objectives.
Megan Smith, director of the Critical Futures Studio/Lab at UBC Okanagan says that hosting SCI_ART in the Okanagan is a privilege, and the symposium aligns perfectly with the goal of fostering partnerships across Canada, the EU, and beyond.
“It provides a platform for gritty, necessary dialogue on critical global challenges, encouraging us to rethink creativity and the role of art in envisioning new futures and pathways for change,” she says.
“The great innovation happening at UBCO, combined with the fact that artists and scholars are travelling from around the world, highlights the global scope of creativity and collaboration in this field,” says Dr. Suzie Currie, UBCO Vice Principal and Associate Vice-President, Research and Innovation. “It was exciting to host an event that brings together such diverse artists and academics.”
Pribac says that the openness and forward-looking approach of the UBCO partners, particularly Dr. Megan Smith and the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies, alongside the initiatives developed under the Critical Future Studio/Lab, were essential to SCI_ART’s success.
“Discovering Dr. Smith’s “All the Stars We Cannot See” sparked our first conversation, which quickly evolved into a collaboration and laid the groundwork for bringing SCI_ART to UBC Okanagan, a natural host with its interdisciplinary focus and vibrant regional ecosystem,” he adds.
Smith adds, “UBC Okanagan offers an ideal setting for such an event, situated in a hub of active and applied research. Bringing SCI_ART here to the Okanagan strengthens the region’s role as a hub for interdisciplinary research and creative experimentation.”
Pribac notes that after the first edition in Ottawa three years ago, the positive feedback from both the academic and cultural communities encouraged us to make SCI_ART a recurring initiative, and the UBCO edition has reaffirmed that decision.
“The broader vision is for SCI_ART to continue evolving into a recurring international platform that connects partners across Canada and beyond,” he adds.
Organizers are already exploring follow-up collaborations between participating artists, researchers, and institutions, with the goal of developing joint projects inspired by the initiative.
“It’s inspiring to see how artists, researchers, and institutions connect through SCI_ART as a platform for meaningful knowledge exchange and collaboration.” Looking ahead, Pribac and Smith would like to establish commitments to creative exchange among participants in the form of — new projects, research partnerships, and initiatives that grow organically from these encounters.
Each year, the Outdoor Banner Exhibition Program showcases 13 original works by UBCO students, staff, faculty and alumni. The banners are installed in the springtime on the light standards at the Rotary Commons—the greenspace between the Kelowna Art Gallery and the Rotary Centre for the Arts—and the Art Walk pathway between the Rotary Centre for the Arts and the Downtown Library. This project is made possible with the partnership and funding from the City of Kelowna.
The Outdoor Banner Exhibition program provides a unique and engaging way to showcase emerging artists work in the community. Since launching in 2020, the banner project has showcased the work of 65 students, faculty and alumni.
Have your artwork printed on a banner to be installed in the Artwalk downtown Kelowna (between the RCA and KAG). Banners will be installed in April or May (weather dependent) and up for the full year until they are replaced.
Banners will be printed to 26”wide x 48” high, in colour. (note, your work does not have to be this size, we will size to fit). The artist’s name and Creative Studies department logo will be added to the lower right corner, visible to viewers.
FCCS alumni, staff, faculty and students in the BFA, BMS, BA with a major in an FCCS program, MFA, MA, or IGS in an FCCS theme, are all eligible to apply.
