 nations. So my name is Joni Taylor and I'm the coordinator of student recruitment. I would like to say a special hello to our viewers at home, as they're in one of those cameras up there somewhere. So hi everyone, we don't see you but hello, we're glad you're here. So I just wanted to welcome you all here tonight and congratulate you on your successful applications. We understand that you probably have some questions before accepting your offers and so we set up this event so that you could hopefully get some of those questions answered. So I'm not alone, we have a wonderful team of Emily Carr community with us tonight, so I'd like to introduce some of those to you. First of all, we have some students with us. So I have Stephanie Broder here. If you want to stand up and give a wave, if you're comfortable with that. Stephanie is a fourth year illustration major. We have Sarah Cravelli. Where are you Sarah? Oh, maybe she's outside. Maybe I should wait the students to the end. Are they outside still? Okay, okay. I'm going to save them to the end. They might be outside. So let's go to our Aboriginal gathering place. We have Michelle Sound. Here's Michelle and with her assisting her is Zoe Siri. Zoe is a fourth year visual arts student and she's graduating. Congratulations. From records and registration, academic and academic advising, we have Denise Cordray. Oh, maybe she's outside too. Oh, you know what? Denise and Cherise are upstairs. I'll introduce you when they come back down. Our academic advisors, we have Danielle, just you. Okay, so this is Danielle Zandvlit. Let's see. And now from our admissions team, we have Kevin Bird. Kevin is our executive director, student services and registrar. Sitting next to him is Kurt Stravro. Kurt is the executive assistant to the executive director, student services, registrar. Okay, we have April Joy Milne. Okay, you can definitely wave harder than that. There we go. There's April Joy Milne. April Joy is the exchange and international programs advisor. Otilia Spantulescu is the international student advisor. Yvonne Hachkowski, over there in the doorway, is our admissions advisor. Laura Evley is Laura's still outside. Laura was the one at the welcoming you at the table out there. She's still outside. She's our admissions assistant. And then our housing assistant, Robin, was unable to make it tonight. But we will have some housing information for you at the admissions table in the booths later. Okay, let's see. We have Jeff Malek from the career and professional areas in the doorway from our career and professional development office. And then from our counseling accessibility and wellness office, we have Joanne Elliott. There's Joanne. She is our student resource coordinator. Johnny Lu is a registered clinical counselor here at Emily Carr. I'd also like to introduce, yes, there she is, introduce you to, from our academic affairs office is Dr. Sissy Fu. Sissy is the Dean of Faculty of Culture and Community. And joining her are two of our faculty. We have right here, Deon Akiati. She is an assistant dean, a decolonial methodologies, Foundation Faculty of Culture and Community. Martin Rose, I did see you. There he is. Martin Rose is another associate professor, animation and foundation programs. And then from our financial aid and awards offices, Sarah. There we go. There's Sarah McLaren over there in the corner beside Sissy. She is a financial aid and awards advisor. And I guess Cherise is still upstairs. Okay. So thank you all for, yes. Oh, sorry. I'm sorry, Avalon. So we have Avalon Mott here. Avalon Mott is the director of, sorry, I do have you down here. Sorry. There's Avalon. She is the director of recruitment, admissions and international development. Is there anyone else I missed? I'm sorry about that. I don't know how I missed that. Yes. Oh, good. Here we go. Okay. So we have a couple more of our students here. So this is Janani Ramesh. Janani is a third year interaction design major. And then Lemmon, did I, I didn't introduce you yet. So, okay. So we have from the student's union office, Lemmon Reimer, chairperson and representative for the Faculty of Culture and Community. Correct. Okay. Good. Nick, I missed you. Nick Mann is a foundation student. And Nick is just completing his foundation year and is going into visual arts in the fall. And here's Denise Cordray. Denise is the, okay. Now I have to go to my notes again for this one. Denise is the director of records, registration and advising. Thanks, Denise. And Cherise. Oh, there she is. Okay. Cherise Snuck in. So she's up at the top there. Those of you at home won't be able to see her, but trust us, she's there. Cherise Brine is the, I'm going to have to look up your title here. Sorry. There we go. Perfect. She knows it best. Okay. So the associate registrar awards and advising. Okay. Anyone else I missed? Okay. We're good. All right. So what we're going to do now without further ado, I'd like to welcome to our stage Dr. Sissy Fu, who will tell you a little bit about our foundation's program. It's always good to hear energy and actually for any call or response. This is the kind of way in which an Emily Carr University of Art and Design Education would actually get you prospective students, incoming students and of course the family who support and learn alongside and with you as you go through your four year journey here at Emily Carr. Why is it important to actually have a response to every call? Because every response is also a call for something else. What some of our faculty this year and foundation in the first year program has been faced with are students who are well informed, engaged politically, socially wanting to make a change into the world, but overwhelmed with the kind of news that we hear every day, the devastation of the climate, the way in which human beings treat each other. They come into a studio classroom, into a critical studies classroom and ask a very, very relevant question, what can I do? And beyond that, why does what I do, what I make and what I care about actually matter? This is how. Can we read this? What does it say? I will not make any more boring art. This is a piece that is actually delegated through prompts of an American, nor US American conceptual artist in the 1970s, somebody by the name of John Baldazzari. He's a conceptual artist, wants to change the rules of what it means to be an art maker. Through writing, a type of way in which we practice certain rules. Think of grammar, think of syntax, punctuation, the ways that we need to capitalize certain things, et cetera. How do we actually, in the confines of art making, within an educational institution, actually bend those rules? What you see here is actually a prompt, an instruction that was sent to students at Nova Scotia in order to enact a piece together on the wall of a university. The rule is, the instruction is, please write, I will not make any more boring art. Add infinitum, add nauseam on a wall. And this is what the students did, exactly what was asked. And this is actually a print that the artist didn't ask for that was made of this collective, continuous, durational endeavor. This is an interesting case that I like to bring up because what is it that an art and design education does, that on the one hand attunes us to the ways in which we need to learn through instruction. But how do we break free from these instructions as well and start making our own rules? Or start pushing the boundaries of what is meaningful for each and every single one of you so that you start developing your own practice in a contextual situation which you understand the history, the theory, and the cultural context of why it is important to make, not just things, but also to make things happen and also to make things happen together. And that's why there are studios and classrooms, ecologies of practices where you are going to meet your best enemy and your best friends, the people that you can talk to into the wee hours of the morning about something that matters to both of you. Or work silently next to each other collaborating on projects because you appreciate each other's background, experience, and affinities. So how do we change the rules? The foundation year, so year one of your education at Emily Carr, is housed in the faculty of culture and community. And therefore as Dean, I have the privilege of standing here speaking with you for a few minutes about what that means. You might ask what does a faculty of culture and community do? It seems like it's everything. Whereas if we're talking about a faculty of art or a faculty of design and dynamic media, it's quite clear these are practices that could be isolated, that could be recognized right away as a type of practice that leads to a particular career. A certain set of skills and expectations that you might already know from things, artifacts, systems that we already see in the world. So you go to architecture school because you want to go into the profession of an architect. The faculty of culture and community, what I'd like to think of it as, is the creation of cultures of co-mutiny. We might know the word mutiny from Pirates of the Caribbean. Right. When a set of sailors come together and decide to overthrow the leadership of the first mate, the captain, how it's interesting is that on the one hand we're thinking about mutiny as mutation, as change, but really if we go back to the Latin root of mutiny, it really just means movement. What does it mean to move together? Move together to change systems, change the way that we can think out of problems, think outside of the box, address issues that seem way too big for one person or a small group of experts to be able to solve. When we look at the resonance of social movements around the world, and that includes artistic movements, the ways in which the patterns of how we understand see and frame the world moves, this is at the root of art and design education. But it's not just one way. There are multiple ways, through multiple traditions, multiple historical context, the appreciation of cultures and their appreciation of difference and an understanding that it's always political, not in a scary governmental bureaucratic way. Not necessarily at any rate, but rather that as we stand up and express ourselves, when we find our voice and speak it in different ways, whether through painting, through animation, through sculpture, through printmaking, these are the different cultures that we afford at Emily Carr. I'd like to introduce a project that exemplifies this kind of cultures of community, if you will. This is a project that a few students who are wanting to address waste management on campus and also waste making, if you will. As an ecological sustainability intervention actually came together and with a faculty supervisor decided to make an exhibition of it. This is an exhibition that took place this past February and June called Let's Talk About Waste. Three students from three different majors, so I believe it's interaction design, sculpture and critical and cultural practices came together and started doing an institutional audit, if you will, in partnership with our cafeteria to really address the ways in which we create waste on campus. Those of us who have been listening to the news would have heard on CBC quite recently a lot of conversation about how much waste Canada as a country actually produces and how we also as a country tend to ship out these waste to parts of the world that we don't feel as close a responsibility for, but that these other countries are resisting the ways in which we are delegating that labor and also the kind of devastation that comes with it. So this is a very socially engaged piece that happened on campus where students, staff, faculty came together to address an issue that is local but also with global residents. There are artworks using the waste so that has been discarded in the cafeteria in the first instance made into abstract pieces of art. There are ways in which students are returning to the idea of how not to create waste paper cups etc by having a mug wall and making it a part of an exhibition. There are initiatives around the university and this is one from communication design where recycled paper is actually bound in a different way and for another lease of life and the very colorful and dynamic ways in which this stationary project actually allows for professional development for students to be sure, but also ways in which we can engage in equipment and technologies within the university. So how does this all come together in foundation year? This is what the curriculum looks like in year one at Emily Carr. In the first semester and the second semester there is an academic core that gives us a shared basis of visual culture, material culture, with art history, design history, media history as well as histories of the land, indigenization and the ways in which decolonizing knowledge and education is at the very, very core of what art and design can do. So the way that we are then starting to practice asking questions become important and his starts a journey of what an undergraduate research-led practice might become. Alongside that what we have interdisciplinary core studio in the first semester to acclimatize all of us from 2D to 3D to 4D practices and each course is led by a subject expert that will have their own practice in a particular area but this teaching team is built in order to be able to speak from two-dimensional to three-dimensional to time-based works. This is in order then to allow us to have a more informed idea of which core studio we would want to enter into in the second semester where there's a choice between visual arts, design and media. In the first semester there's also a very unique course that only Emily Carr offers called creative processes. Everything is a creative process at Emily Carr but how do we actually understand the value of that? How do we take the time to really appreciate what imagination and creativity can do? And it might not surprise us that failure is a part of it. A part of any learning experience that at the point when we don't fear failure and we see it as a way in which we could return to the same concept, make a variation and try again is exactly what artistic and design early practice allows us to do and it gives us a kind of transferable skill that builds reflection and resilience as we encounter complexities in the world. And finally in the second semester students also get a chance to try your hands at something more specific, perhaps more technical. So these are courses that range from drawing for those of us who want to continue to hone that to access to the ceramic studio for different kinds of firings and introduction to printmaking, animation, illustration, etc. What supports our foundation program is also a foundation forum where every week during lunchtime there will be a meeting of the entire foundation class of 350 of you. It will be packed. Our foundation program coordinator will have set up a series of interesting interventions if you will. So from the way in which you are introduced to what is understood as the art scene in Vancouver and also the margins of it and the ways in which say community engagement actually seep into the way that we think about professional art making. And the invitation of alumna and alumni to speak about their experiences after they graduate, etc. So that students in the foundation year already start getting idea of what one's career could look like. So these shapings and conversations and workshops actually make sure that there is core activity that all of us are experiencing at the same time and also for peer-to-peer understandings to take place. There is also the foundation show. This happens every April, usually sometime in the middle of it. And what you would see upstairs right now are what would look like very, very blank walls. That's because the foundation show has just been de-installed to make space for the coming of the grad show which happens at the end of the fourth year. This is a specific kind of programming at Emily Carr such that the raw energy and curiosity of first years are juxtaposed with the way in which we become educated, possibly disciplined, but hopefully disciplined in a way that also meets with critical introspection and some manner of resistance in years two, three, and four. And supporting all of this are two very, very crucial spaces in foundation. You would get a tour of our foundation area on one floor, two floors up from here, which is where the foundation program office is. That is the welcoming hub where there's a lounge and our program officers actually answer questions, make sure that information is conveyed. The ways in which some of the challenges of moving from a secondary school system into a post-secondary school system, as well as the ways in which some of us might be entering into first year of Emily Carr through plenty of work experience. So this is a program office that allows for that translation to take place. And alongside that is the foundation shop where most foundation studio activities take place. And I hope you get a chance to take a look at the equipment that we have there and start imagining what you can do in there. Also a quick word about our degree programs. This is something that you may already be familiar with at Emily Carr. We offer three degree streams, a bachelor in fine arts with certain major trajectories, bachelor's in design and a bachelor in media arts. We also offer three minors that sit across different majors, if you will. One in art and text and other in curatorial practices and one in social practice and community engagement. And these are decisions that are usually made after some experience in one's major and one starts declaring one's minor or intention for a minor in year three. So this happens usually in elective spaces within each degree and our advising office as well as our faculty mentors would be able to chat through the different options, trajectories as they move and shift and grow. Speaking of social practice, this is a photograph taken from the grad show last year. This is a student in industrial design who built a mechanism that then became a bit of a community movement at Emily Carr. Students wanting to speak to the sourcing of the ingredients for food served on campus as well as the ways in which this cost of living is quite high in Vancouver. So how do students actually afford to eat healthily? So the social practice kitchen was born and I'm very glad that we are able to retain the structure built by our student Joey and which has been gifted to the university to continue this movement entirely student-led. This is a photograph from our first multi-lingual week this academic year at the end of January where it started with a dumpling making workshop. The premise is that food is something that builds community, brings people together and through that bringing together of differences we're able to converse in a way that perhaps we wouldn't be able to in a classroom when we are being assessed and evaluated perhaps for the specificity of our argument and the ways in which we're able to manifest our understanding. But that tactile way of doing things and making things together is not dissimilar from what happens in a studio. How do we take it outside of a studio context, make it accessible and feed each other not just with food but with ideas, with story and different types of cultural interactions. So right back to cultures of community moving together if you will. These are some photographs from the installation period of our grad show last year so the white walls will soon be full of here mostly two-dimensional work but a certain interaction, media as well as performative celebrations also happen. This is a group of our animation students I believe, yes and the premise of culture and community as a whole of the university as well as the faculty itself as the start of your university experience is very much premised on this kind of togetherness where we celebrate and support each other's failures and successes as we journey into a world that we can reimagine together and create together as we enter and leave Emily Carr. Thank you. Thank you Sissy. So we're now going to welcome up our panel members if you guys want to make your way up this way. We are going to now have panels so I so that you guys can ask questions and I know Sissy's presentation always opens it up for loss of interest and loss of questions so what we're going to do is I'm going to just introduce each of them to you by the way of asking a question to each of them and then once we do that then we'll open it up for the general for you guys to ask questions. Jeff and Laura you were going to do the handheld mics. Perfect come on up to grab them if you want. So our first panel member here is Dion Akiati. Dion is the assistant dean colonial methodologies foundation faculty of culture and community. Dion has both teaching and art practices and has exhibited widely at galleries and film festivals across Canada and internationally. So Dion can you explain how your art practice informs your teaching practice and vice versa? Sure so what I have here is this picture of a work that is up right now in the streets of Vancouver non-Saharan commute which is a project I was asked to do by the contemporary art gallery to wrap a bus to find a design trap a bus and I think this piece is a good example of the way I think through work. One of the things that I'm really interested in is the history of images and how images have basically been a way that we learn about the world and to really study images and to critique them copy them reinvent them and kind of think about how they impact how we relate to each other and how we understand each other. And so in this in this piece that's what I've done I've looked through some archival images particularly representations of my home country Indonesia and tried to rethink the problematic aspects of it. How that impacts my teaching is a lot of what I teach is in printmaking which is about how images are copied and transferred and how images exist in the multiple and thinking about why is it that we want to make something that exists in more than one so why do you make a silk screen and have a hundred posters like what does a poster do that a drawing can't do? What is a print that is in a newspaper how can that work differently than a painting on a wall? So I really think about how things circulate into the world. Another aspect that I bring from my practice to my teaching is just really thinking through materials. I really love to draw I love to spend a lot of time with my work to really think through how the materials work and what meaning the material itself brings and so that's something I do in my studio and that's something that I hope also happens in the studio classes that I work in. So in my own work I look again at kind of at history at images at how images function and then in the classroom as people develop their own images and kind of think through how they want to navigate the world through images I invite a lot of conversation about well what does this picture mean to you? Why are you using this color? What does this color and this image in combination together on top of a piece of wood mean when it may be on top piece of paper it might mean something different? So to really start to analyze and break down all these different aspects of the work. Thank you. Thank you Dan. We will be an as I mentioned earlier an opportunity to ask questions so if something's been tweaked in you now make sure that you write it down and you can ask the question after. Okay our second panelist is Lemon Rimer. Lemon works in Emily Carr's students union as chairperson and representative for the faculty of culture and community. They recently completed their bachelor of design with a major in interaction design. So Lemon can you tell us a bit about the support role of the students union? Of course. Also do we have the image or is it the background? It is a really nice bus. I've seen it around and it's awesome. Okay so you're asking me about the support role of the students union? Please yeah. Wonderful so hi everyone welcome. I am a member of the students union as a student and also an elected representative of the students union. Someone who the students of this school specifically the members of culture and community elected to help me represent them and make decisions about how they interact with the school. As a students union student body we exist as a organization separate from the school that exists within it. Our role is primarily member advocacy and support. A lot of that means that we do community building. We hold events like free life drawing every week. We help support community food events. We provide support to all of the clubs. We help students carry out projects they'd like to do around the school and we currently help support the social practice kitchen you saw mentioned in sissy's talk. We also do trauma informed yoga and help mediate between the students in the school. Stephanie is actually not here as a member of the students union but is also an ex-member of the students union. We oftentimes see that our members both who are members of the students body and also people who step up to be members of the board tend to be very involved across the school and get a lot of really amazing things done. I don't think anything else to say about us. That's great good thank you appreciate that. Yeah okay next I would like to ask Janani Ramesh. Janani is a third year interaction design major who originated from are you originally applied from China if I'm not mistaken right yeah okay so is also an international student then and Janani can you tell us about your experience as an international student. Hi everyone so as Joanie was saying I applied from China. I used to live in India in the Netherlands and then China and I'm finally here in Vancouver and it's great. So applying from there it was very difficult because I had to look into housing insurance bank stuff and being thrown into Vancouver all alone knowing no one here it was really challenging. I mean I did my first tax return like two years ago and now I work for a tax company which is weird as well so it's been really exciting living in Vancouver especially but also being thrown into Emily Carr all alone I think foundation year really helps you build connections. It was hard for me to make solid friends in first year but definitely talk to everyone you can because everyone wants to go into different majors and it's so great knowing those people and illustration or painting when you're stuck in design for the next three years of your life. So yeah I think Emily Carr really helps you come into Vancouver and not just the school we have great housing options we have counseling and a lot of events and activities that'll help you make the friends you need to make. Thanks Janani and this piece up here is this is one that you've your most recent piece? Yeah so I made this in second year I'm going into fourth year now and sorry but basically I'm an interaction design so I look into services, help design, coding, programming, things like that and this particular piece it's an Arduino piece so it's a self-programmed watering system for plants so when I go on holidays my plants can basically monitor how much water they need and water themselves without me having to be there so that's the kind of cool stuff we do. Great idea thanks Janani. Okay so and Danielle Zandvliet. Danielle on the end there is one of our academic advisors who's been advising students at Emily Carr for 10 years now. Danielle's also interested in a variety of fiber arts thus this beautiful image of a project she's working on now. Danielle can you tell us about the services and support the academic advisors offer students? Hi yes we try to help you students just basically navigate university whether that's understanding your degree requirements understanding how to use the registration system how to access painting classes as a design student and how to get any sort of help you might need whether it's academic mental health or financial yeah all those sort of things. We also can help you like maybe there's something you would like to study here but you don't know how to where to look or what subject that might be if that course even exists or how to do it we can help you try and figure that out and what kind of good for also like if you have a question you don't know where to get the answer or who? They're great they're wonderful thank you Danielle. Stephanie so Stephanie Broder I mentioned earlier as a fourth year illustration major Stephanie's just completed her bachelor degree in fine arts and will be convocating next weekend congratulations. Thank you I literally can't believe I'm here. Stephanie can you speak a little about your student experiences now that you're on the now that you're graduating? Absolutely do you want to put my image up on the screen because that's directly connected to my plans. So I spent my graduation year working on a long form narrative project which culminated in this last semester that I wrote about 20,000 pages of my novel and illustrated it and created a book which will be in the grad show next week. So that is where I'm going I want to go into books particularly comics a warrior and adult writing and this was just such a perfect place to experiment with it because I got a chance to play in creative writing as well as illustration and my print media courses that I took on the side just really fostered that love of text and art together as well as how to actually make the physical object of a book so you know just having that diverse experience was so valuable to go into this field and actually now I'm part of the curatorial committee for the grad show so those blank walls that Sissy kept referencing were like haunting me as she was saying and I was like I know we're working on it so we're going to be installing that next week and opening night for the show is on Friday I really encourage you to come I went to the grad show as a student every year that I was at Emily Carr and every single year it just provided immense inspiration for me to see the work that's being produced here to see what your soon-to-be classmates are I guess the alumni from your school what are they producing what's available you know what options are out there and how much learning actually happens here like the difference between the work that I put in my portfolio which I will not put on the screen versus what I'm doing now is night and day and the grad show is where you can see that magic happen oh wonderful thank you thank you Stephanie okay nick so nick man is just completing his first year and we'll be entering visual arts in the fall nick can you tell us a little bit about your experience as a foundation student yeah hi everybody I was on the other side of this about a year ago I was sitting somewhere around there yeah my experience in foundation was absolutely not what I expected but in the best possible way I think I've grown my own personal practice quite a bit I came in as a painter and you can see these are two of the last pieces that I did for my my core visual arts studio but I also ended up getting to explore a lot of different areas including sculpture and most recently ceramics with the electives in that you'll take in second semester and I really fell in love with it I came in I remember the day that I was here I went on a tour and I saw the ceramic studio I'm like oh that's cool but I'll never touch any clay it has real boring and now I'm like in love with mugs and glazes so you never know what what you're gonna go into it where you're gonna be taken going back to what sissy was talking about earlier I think the best part about Emily Carr that I've experienced so far is really the community and the culture and the family that you make here um at least for my experience I feel like I have been part of a movement that I wasn't part of before I feel like I'm part of a family that I wasn't part of before and I'm part of something that feels important to me um and to the other people in it so yeah it's been it's been pretty good great thanks thank you nick for sharing that okay so now we'd love to open it up to any of you who have any questions at all for it could be a general question or it could be um for uh specific um we'll just keep in mind that we'll give you the mic so that our viewers at home we haven't forgotten you guys so that our viewers at home can um hear the question as well any second now someone's hand is gonna pop up there's a question over there I'm curious to know about the transition from foundation year to the next year how you pick your major or your specific genre is it up to you or are you guided or do you get a say or are you just sort of thrown into what you do well at I can speak so I just recently did this uh in March um my understanding is there's certain majors um and certain degrees that are a little bit more limited in space um I'm in the visual arts major which I was told I don't know how accurate this information is but basically every time I ask somebody they're like don't worry you're gonna get into visual arts no problem so if you're if you're out there and you're wanting to get into visual arts don't worry about it you're all good um there's some from my understanding there are some majors such as industrial design and animation and I believe illustration is getting pretty hard to get into now as well just because there's a lot of interest in there but limited spots um so then it's she's GPA yeah um by the GPA of your first year um I don't know if anybody else has more information on yeah yeah I three choices sorry I should have said that into a mic instead of just like shouting it at him but you get your three top choices so you know my first choice was illustration I got in fortunately but my second choice was animation which is a lot of overlap in terms of areas of study and character design and drawing and storyboarding so yeah it's about thinking strategically about if you happen to not get your first choice what's something that can meet some of those same goals for you also additionally I hear a lot of especially stirrings among foundation students being worried that they might not get into their specific major it has been noted that some majors are harder than others to get into every year this changes a little bit so there's not like the major for the kids who have high GPAs because every year people want different things and some years for some reason everyone wants to go into drawing and some years everyone wants to go into industrial design and some years um illustration is everyone's like top pick like the cream of the crop and that will just shift a bit so try not to worry about it that much I don't know anyone who like didn't get into a major they didn't they didn't well they who got into a major they didn't want and really hated what happened everyone will get into something you want and if not you can always take crossover courses too so not something to worry about throughout the year as well at foundation forum they will have a series of talks about each major faculty from each of those majors will come to speak to the each area to help you well before you you have to make the decision and um and so ultimately it is up to you which one you want to apply for and although there's all the talk about all the GPA to get into the limited program majority of people get what they want not end up in anything like who are guaranteed to get in I feel like you know you're gonna go to foundation and then have to reapply to enter into just does that make sense am I making sense we don't have an undeclared category yeah so I'm coming at this as a mature student I spent well I'm 43 years old and I know I want to do industrial design how like I don't want to do anything else basically I want to learn other aspects of art and design but my goal is industrial design so how do I how am I guaranteed that I'm gonna study industrial design here because that's really the only reason I'm here I am a mature student as well I actually have a degree already from UBC so welcome you will not feel out of place here um there's no guarantee but don't worry about it like Lemon made this comment already that I don't know anybody who didn't get their choice and who suffered for it you also will not be the oldest student in industrial design we have quite a few mature students a lot of people realize later in life especially at the midpoint in their career that actually art or design is the space they um really need to thrive in my major specifically we have a lot of people who especially come from uh science specifically biology and the age range of my major goes anywhere from like new students coming in at 19 to people who are almost in their 30s at this point and that's very pervasive and I would say we have a younger like a younger age cap on my major I say age cap we don't not let in people over certain age okay well that's good sorry because I'm over 30 um we don't disagree but yeah like just coming in as an adult and you know like I'm not gonna lie the price of living in Vancouver is extremely high that's what probably scares me more than tuition is the cost of living in Vancouver I'm from the Okanagan but to consider rents and everything as an adult you know like I'm not you know gonna live in a dorm or uh you know I've I've grown beyond those years so I guess it's a big investment for myself to come down here for a year and take a bunch and you know like you say there's no care like there's you're pretty much guaranteed but you're not guaranteed I guess I'm just trying to really decipher that in my decision making on whether or not I come here I think yeah if I may just speak a little bit to um how the curriculum also unfolds in the first year um um as Sissy pointed out there's the um interdisciplinary course studio in the fall and then the kind of um uh discipline specific course studio in the spring and with the interdisciplinary course studio it's taught by a range of practitioners so we do have industrial designers teaching in that course we have communication designers we have animators we have visual artists um filmmakers sound designers um and so one of the things that would um uh be I think useful for somebody who already knows specifically what they want is to research the faculty once the faculty have been um when you do the registration to see what their area of focus is and then even though in the first year you are um going to be exposed to a whole wide range of experiences and materials and methods um each of us teaches that course with our particular kind of inflection to it um and so um I think one thing that um I often hear from students who are really um kind of focused already in the um as they enter is that well when do I get take this class and actually it's all all those disciplines are already present in the first year it's kind of looking through where the faculty are and um what particular inflection um that you want your courses to be um so within that you'll learn the 2d and the 3d and the time-based work um but it might be a discourse that um is more design inflected or discourse that's more performance inflected for instance depending on the faculty that you work with uh your best way of guaranteeing is to keep your GPA as high as possible um I'm just wondering about the majors if you're really really interested in something like the social practice one and all your artwork kind of relates to it is there possible to just kind of explore it at an early time in your education I would say that in um in most of the studio classes in foundation year there's um there's certainly some technical goals that we're trying to prepare everybody with like how to use how to use the shop how to access the facilities how to work with material but within almost each project there's an openness towards how you approach the assignment so um within a foundation even within a like something that seems like a say a drawing class there's no reason why a project could not involve the social or involve kind of community practice in some way uh similarly in creative process um the the way the faculty teach it um there's some faculty that are really invested in community engagement uh in those classes there are some that are very performative and again there's um with almost everything that one does in an art and design context is kind of trying to figure out your own inflection onto what the assignment is and how to make how to meet the learning goals while still kind of exploring the ideas philosophies and theories that you're interested in we'll also ask specifically about social practice okay as sissy mentioned we have a minor called social practice and community engagement I have this minor it's very popular within my program um and I took it and I find that it really augments my work whether I'm doing like a time-based um would say like more participatory work or whether I'm doing like an app design like I still can find ways to put social practice into that we don't have a social practice major but you can take a social practice minor and it really weaves its way into everything you do and I find that a lot of the time people who take a space minor as we call it produce some very very interesting work that permeates beautifully into their majors I have a question about the registration aspect of the foundation year uh typically I've heard especially with my older two when they go to register for classes in their first year there there seems to be a little bit of a race in terms of getting the proper scheduling are are the foundational year the students preset or is there a pre-schedule for them so that they're not trying to miss out on a particular class or is it all set up there is not a single package to register in you students do have to select one of each of the three required classes uh but typically not everyone wants the exact same thing yes it does seem like a race and a bit of a panic but there um every there's definitely enough classes for everybody I will say as somebody that was just registering um while yeah there's going to be space for everybody um depending on how fast your internet is and if you want to get up right when it um when the clock ticks over you may or may not get the times that you want um I got classes that I didn't want the times alone but then I ended up meeting new friends in there um so you will get into like all the classes that you need to be in it's just um if it's with the section of the professor that you want or the time that you want um it really it's kind of that's kind of like shooting a fish in a barrel there so thank you Nick I'm wondering whether um and for everybody across the ether um this is to see again I just want to um speak to that question about uh interest that fall outside of a major that is already defined um as you would have heard Danielle and Nick and everybody on the panel mentioned there are majors um that have fewer seats but sometimes it's less about the seats um more about the structure of the program itself and therefore the way in which the university is able to offer um more sections or not so in the case uh students are already interested in social practice um with or without community engagement um I should mention that there are studio courses um on community projects this is kind of an exciting space and it starts in year two mainly because first year students get a sense of the different practices that could take place and therefore how you engage in community how you think about the social will always be through the practice that you have already experienced in order to grow in that practice blend different practices etc so addressing your question directly um there are courses there are majors that allow for more flexibility as Nick mentioned visual arts it's not so much that it's easy to get in it has a lot of flexibility so whether Nick wants to pursue painting and ceramics at the same time or painting ceramics and social practice at the same time that is a major that allows for that breath um and I mentioned also the critical and cultural practices major which is a sliver of the BFA that is for students who also want to integrate say writing practices and at Emily Carr writing is recognized as a critical and creative practice we don't make that distinction so if you want to um think of um your practice through words um and the way that writing co sits alongside drawing or scripting in space as choreography right um these are the different ways in which you choose the courses um in accordance sometimes um with the advice and the mentorship um of our academic advisors and um of our faculty then you really chart your own path and I should also mention for those of us who haven't made up our minds as to exactly what it is that we wish to pursue at Emily Carr there is also flexibility um for to allow for um movement from one major to the other depending on the requirements of each major so um if you are undecided yet and you are interdisciplinary in nature in the way that you think you might want to choose a more flexible degree I'll just um sorry I was just gonna say we only have time for one more question now so is any is there one more question or right there great Jeff are you able to or Laura run for it let's see who gets there first thank you um I think as a parent and I was here for the open house that you did before and so one of the things that I noticed on the tour that I thought was really good was the emphasis on like on the supportive kind of environment and I've heard that from the students which is really you know helpful and so I'm just wondering like I thought it was great that you introduced there's a counselor on site so I'm just curious like as a as a counselor and what what have you seen is one of the like some of the major challenges for the students in foundation year like as a as a parent and as a member of a family what what also can we do you know to support um our children in that um great question because I think as a parent you do worry and students adjusting to a new environment so a lot of times we do hear loneliness or feeling the stress of being competitive it is a supportive environment at the same time people want to create and be very engaged in the community so there's that pressure to perform so in that sense we do experience students with anxiety or people who feel I think when they talk about resiliency building that resiliency and you know learning about failure and how to actually circumvent it and become a different person evolving that's where I see personally in my sessions working with the students okay well thank you very much for this all of you we are going to have booths afterwards I'll tell you where that's going to be so if there's any other questions that you have for um any of the other staff or faculty that are here you can ask them uh then one on one as well thank you so much all so now I would like to properly introduce you and welcome to the stage um Avalon Mott Avalon is our director of recruitment admissions and international development hello everybody uh thank you Joanie for the introduction and to all the faculty staff and students who have helped to make this such a wonderful evening for those of you who I've had the pleasure of meeting before it is great to see you here again on campus and for those of you who I've yet to meet welcome I look forward to speaking with you further and hello to everyone joining us virtually from around the world for those of you who haven't uh quite clued in yet we are live streaming this event um so students who we have accepted from countries all over the world are able to join us this evening so we've talked tonight a lot about the year ahead but what I'd like to invite you to do is to take a moment close your eyes and imagine yourself in four years at the opening of your degree exhibition and open your eyes now much like the foundation show the degree exhibition which we have named this show is in recognition of yourselves as accomplished artists designers and media practitioners use artistic skill and conceptual rigor to challenge and explore the world of art design and media the show spans all four floors of our campus and provides an opportunity for all graduating students to showcase a work that reflects the culmination of exploration play and creative development that took place as part of their degree at Emily Carr the show has become a yearly highlight for the creative industries in Vancouver as provides an opportunity for interactions with an elite group of emerging creative professionals our graduating class but is it also a space for celebration celebration of community friendships life experiences and creative development you'll notice today as people have mentioned that most of the walls in our campus are bare or in transition but they are charged with anticipation of this year's show which will begin install on Monday and I would invite you back next Friday evening from 5 to 10 p.m. for the opening of the show 2019 today you are here because we think that you will thrive with us you will be able to explore yourselves as creatives in ways that you can't even imagine yet we believe that we are the right fit for you and we want you to join our Emily Carr community not just as undergraduate students but as alumni this is a lifelong club many of us today here as staff and faculty our Emily Carr alumni myself included and we would be happy to talk to you about our experiences I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we cannot wait to see what you create for the show 2023 as you graduate from Emily Carr University of Art and Design and what I'd like to share with you now in closing is a demo reel from all of our graduating animation 2D animation 3D and film and screen art majors so you can get a taste for some of the type of work that's created here at Emily Carr okay so that's us finished one more thing oftentimes when we finish this your question is what's next what what's my next step so in order to accept your offer and become a student you just need to pay your deposit this is a non-refundable payment and the deadline of course is May 1st 2019 this link right here if you want to either take a photo of that or write it down this is a link that gives you all of the steps on how to do so okay and that's it so we're now going to offer you one of two things or both if you're interested we're going to be offering tours of the first second and third floors of the university the fourth floor is right now being spit polished and cleaned up for the grad show so it might you might get wet if you go up there so we're going to just do the first three floors so if you're interested in taking part of in a tour we're going to ask you to exit through the doors here and just go straight up the stairs Kurt is right here and Jeff is right here they're both going to be setting you up in tours and so if that's what you're interested in then the other thing we're going to be doing is we have booths upstairs and I'd mentioned that earlier where many of our faculty and staff are attending these booths and that's going to be again out this door up the stairs and just to your left there will be staff up there directing you to where the Renny Hall is and there will be all the booths set up there okay these will be opened until about 645 so you're welcome to go up there and speak with some of our faculty and staff okay thanks again very much for coming so those of you who are interested in tours again up the stairs