Courtesy of Innovation Works
Most Londoners agree that the city has some issues. Among them, poverty, infrastructure, and safety in the downtown core. City Studio London is a new project, backed by the Core Area Action Plan, that aims to have students work with city staff to solve some of the issues. The program was first pioneered in Vancouver, where it met impressive success, with over 780 completed projects involving more than 5 thousand students. City Studio is designed to foster innovation and civic engagement.
Mischa Schlemmer is the manager of City Studio London. She has worked closely with the City of London and educational institutions in the area to bring the program to life.
“What our work is, is to match real City Hall projects with post secondary courses. So in this first year, we’re matching 21 post secondary courses across all five campuses in London with real City Hall projects and those projects are being carried out inside the existing curriculum,” said Schlemmer.
City Studio operates by working with universities in order to work classes into the curriculum that allow students to work with city planners and innovators in the city. According to Schlemmer, things are going well.
“In September, we launched 10 classes, seven of which will be finishing in December when we’ll be hosting our first Hubbub event. And that is a project showcase at City Hall where students’ work is shown.”
Plans go even further than that, though. Schlemmer also says that plans for even more immersive experiences are in the works.
“Hopefully in the future we’re looking to develop also what Vancouver has,w is a studio semester course, which is like a semester abroad but really a semester downtown, where the students are fully immersed in the projects full time for the entire semester. So we’re working to develop that among the partners now,” says Schlemmer.
Mischa Schlemmer, City Studio London Manager
City Studio London plans to use the success of the Vancouver program to kickstart their own success, using it as a model for future projects.
“A choice was made to bring this model of City Studio to London and one of the huge advantages is that with Vancouver having now had several years of experience and real evidence based metrics of their success, we’re able to really kind of leapfrog off of that success and join them.”
City Studio London has a number of projects planned for the next year. Courses currently available include Knowledge Translation and Management, Presentation Graphics, and Quantitative Research Methods at Fanshawe, and Social Science in the Community and Cities: Resilience and Sustainability at Western University.
