 Hope, Hope, Che, Wei, Ai, Cha, Hope, Hope, Che, Wei, Ai, Cha. These are our hands to welcome songs afternoon to the celebration of this great ceremony that we're going to have today. Big welcome from the Squammer's Slave with Tooth and the Muscoing People and the Stullo and Emily Carr University. Oh, see ya! Madam President, members of the Board of Governors and Senate, faculty, honored guests, graduands, and friends, I am Jeff Plant, Chancellor of Emily Carr University of Art and Design. It's my pleasure and privilege to welcome you to Convocation. Thank you for joining us today to celebrate the achievements of the Class of 2021 and welcome to our virtual ceremony. I would like to begin our celebration by respectfully acknowledging that this ceremony is taking place on the traditional and unceded territories of the Musquean, Squamish, and Slave with Tooth peoples. I am honored today to confer degrees to the Class of 2021, both undergraduate and graduate students. Congratulations to each and every one of you for reaching this milestone. Today, in addition to the presentation of our graduate and undergraduate degrees, honorary doctorates of letters will be conferred upon Nessie Wilde and Eve Tuck. We will also present the Emily Award to distinguished alumna, Leiland. But before we begin, I want to say thanks to the families, both genetic and chosen, of all our graduates. Maybe you didn't expect to have part of your home turned into an art studio, or maybe the challenge was not being able to visit from across provinces or countries and having to send your love from afar. Whatever the circumstances, we thank you for your support and your forbearance, particularly in the past year. Thanks also to every single Emily Carr faculty and staff member. You may not always think this way, but you're world leaders in what you do. And over the past year, especially you have hit every curveball throwing you right out of the park. You have created outstanding online courses, developed new electronic resources, and ensured that our physical facilities were as safe as possible. Thank you for your fortitude and your innovation. Thanks as well to our donors and partners who helped make enriched, working environments, student awards, and new research opportunities possible. We're grateful that you have chosen our university for your charitable giving. To our new graduates, my guess is that when you chose to come to Emily Carr, you had an expectation of how your university experience would go and what you would achieve in your final year. When everything went sideways a year ago, it threw a wrench into your plans and ideas and fundamentally disrupted every aspect of your graduating year. To your credit, you chose to persevere, adapt, and innovate. Adversity revealed your resilience. You didn't give up. You supported each other and you found ways to connect across the distance. And that makes completing your degree requirements and graduating today all the more precious and meaningful. Again, my heartfelt congratulations and my very best wishes for all the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. As some of you may know, my term as chancellor comes to an end shortly. I want to express my deep gratitude to everyone I have worked with in this role since I was appointed in 2015. You are a dedicated, resourceful, inventive, inspiring, remarkable people, all of you. It has been one of the great privileges of my life to serve this remarkable institution. Conferring degrees upon graduates is one of a chancellor's most rewarding jobs and so I am pleased to declare the May 2021 convocation assembled for the granting of degrees open. I would like to now call upon the president and vice chancellor of our university, Dr. Gillian Siddle, who will deliver the presidential address. Thank you, Mr. Chancellor. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Convocation 2021. I'm Gillian Siddle, president and vice chancellor of Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Thank you to Hulakden for that wonderful procession to open our ceremony. I'm thrilled to congratulate each and every one of this year's graduating students on the completion of your degree in one of the most challenging environments in memory. I'm grateful to you for joining us virtually from all over the world, along with your family and friends. Today, in addition to the presentation of our graduate and undergraduate degrees, honorary doctorates will be conferred upon Nettie Wilde and Eve Tuck. We will also present the Emily Award to our distinguished alumna, Lai Wan. Graduates, I am so proud of each of you and of what you have achieved. When I think of all the hard work, resilience, and determination you have demonstrated in this last year especially, I find myself deeply impressed and very moved. Your final year of university was like no other in history, defined by a pandemic and worldwide protests against racial injustice. You have persevered through some incredibly challenging circumstances, and I hope you take a moment to acknowledge your own incredible strength and your collective impact on the world. At a time in your life when getting together is fundamental, you have kept a safe distance to protect each other. When gathering in studio has been the norm, you stayed apart and worked from bedrooms and kitchens. And you have used our online learning platforms and resources as springboards for your creativity and innovation and produced some truly remarkable work. The perseverance and optimism that got you here today will serve you well in the years to come. At some time in the future when you hit a speed bump or life throws an unexpected twist at you, you won't falter. You will have the strength and confidence to do the important work I know you are all going to do. We are all grateful that most of the dark days are behind us, that a brighter post-pandemic future lies ahead. That future will need people like you. People who can create, design, adapt and build. People who can foster inclusive and equitable communities, challenge injustice and act on their beliefs. People who can work hard to solve some of the most pressing problems facing our world. So let's celebrate you and all you have accomplished, your achievements of the past and your dreams for the future. Again my heartfelt congratulations and best wishes to every one of you. I'm pleased now to introduce the Honorable Ann Kang, Minister of Advanced Education and Skills Training, who has provided a message to our exceptional graduates. Hello everyone, I'm Ann Kang and it's my privilege to be serving British Columbians as a new minister of advanced education and skills training. I'm sending you greetings from the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Slavittus. I'm so happy to congratulate each one of you on reaching the incredible milestone of graduation from Emily Carr University of Art and Design, especially during an equally incredible and challenging year. You are now graduates of a top ranked art and design university in the whole of Canada with a history of making British Columbia proud since 1925 and that's almost a century. You're also unique creators who bring in solutions by applying both sides of your brain for design as well as technical solutions to the most complex problems we face in today's times. The decisions, the choices that you make both big and small will decide the future of our province. I look at you and I see a generation of change makers. I am eager to know the difference that you will make in our province, especially now with the help of the skills and knowledge you've acquired through the course of your education. I appreciate how you push the envelope on social justice and anti-racist work and fully embrace and promote that social change is driven through art and design. Your generation is truly special and it is going to leave a rich legacy behind for all British Columbians to cherish. You are now a part of an alumni group with opportunities open to you all over our province, country and the world. You have the knowledge and skill set to bring about the changes required for us to strengthen our province. After years of hard work, sleepless nights and endless dedication, you should be so proud of what you've accomplished and so eager to put it into practice. May you use your skills acquired at Emily Carr to give back to your communities and help us build a better BC. As a former elementary teacher, lifelong learner and a woman of color, empowering people through education is a value close to my heart and that is why I am so happy to see the progress you've made this far and I encourage you to keep going strong. I am incredibly touched at how despite significant challenging year, you have all dug deep and as Premier Dawn Horgan says, to do our level best to make it through and you've made it through. COVID has been devastating in so many ways but there is a light at the end of the tunnel and your creative path forward will be the stepping stones that will make and rebuild the best of BC. Thank you for your dedication and resilience in these challenging times and know that we're behind you every step of the way and wishing you every success. Congratulations once again and good luck to each and every one of you. Thank you Dr. Siddle and thank you Minister Tang. Emily Carr's honorary degrees are the highest awards conferred by this university. They are a celebration of commitment, dedication and service and they recognize individuals who are distinguished by their significant contributions and sustained creative and philanthropic achievements. The honorary degrees will now be conferred. Dr. Joanne Siddle will present our first honorary degree candidate, Nettie Berry Canada Wild. Nettie Berry Canada Wild digs deep. With every project she moves past the surface of important issues to explore the complexities, nuances and contradictions of lives lived. Nettie's first feature film was a rustling of leaves inside the Philippine Revolution which chronicles the three points of a political triangle, the legal left, the illegal armed revolution with whom she spent eight remarkable months and the enemy that threatens them both, the armed reactionary right. In 1991 Nettie and producer Betsy Carson created Canada Wild Productions. Together they developed a unique form of independent distribution combining community forums with theatrical screenings and in tandem with national and international broadcasts. Nettie's first Canada Wild film was her response to the ochre crisis. Blockade took her camera to northern B.C. where Gitzen and Witsoit and hereditary chiefs and white settlers fought over the biggest land claims case in Canadian history. In 1998 she directed a place called Chiapas, an engrossing exploration of the Zapatista indigenous uprising in Mexico. It is also a personal journey through fear, hope and illusion. FIX, the story of an addicted city, brought Nettie's lens back to Vancouver. Michael and Dache described FIX this way. As a political act FIX is an urgent and just and heartbreaking film. As a work of art it expands the known limits of human nature with remarkable portraits. Nettie quickly followed FIX with Bevel Up, drugs, users and outreach nursing. Bevel Up focuses on the B.C. Centre for Disease Control's extraordinary street nurse team working on the streets of the downtown East Side. Now well established as one of Canada's leading filmmakers, Nettie started to explore new forms of documentary storytelling. Her 2016 feature film Connalina, Our Land Beautiful is a great example of just that. Returning to the changing landscape of the North, Nettie seeks cinematic poetry in every subject in front of her lens from minors to tall-ten elders to the land itself. In 2017 Nettie directed the Canada Wild Crew to create Uninterrupted, a cinematic spectacle using digital mapping to project images of the sockeye salmon migration across Vancouver's Canby Street Bridge. The international arts magazine Wallpaper called Uninterrupted one of the top public installations in the world for 2017. Nettie is currently in production working in both virtual reality and augmented reality. Nettie's films have won over 45 international and national honors including the Berlin International Film Festival's People's Choice Award in the Forum of New Cinema, the 2016 Hot Doc's Best Documentary Award, two genies for Best Canadian Feature Documentary, the National Film Board's Prix de Public and the International Documentary Association's Award for Best Feature Documentary. Emily Carr University of Art and Design is pleased to present Nettie Wilde with an honorary doctorate of letters for her creativity, her excellence in filmmaking and her insistence that we understand the depth, humanity and nuance of complex issues, a pressing need in our modern world. Mr Chancellor, on behalf of the Senate of this University, I now ask that you confer upon Nettie Barry Canada Wilde the degree Doctor of Letters Honoris Causa. Nettie Barry Canada Wilde, by virtue of the authority vested in me and in the Senate of this University, I hereby admit you to the degree of Doctor of Letters Honoris Causa. I'm grateful that Nettie can be here today to join us and invite her to share her address with you. What an honor to address you, the next generation of artists as you head out into a strange and changing world. I think we have our work cut out for us, you and I, because I believe in these controversial times that rhetoric, that polarized debate is growing more and more deafening. We're not listening to each other, and I believe that's where art and artists, you and me, come in. The bigger the controversy, the bigger role art has to play. Why? Because I think that art can cut through the rhetoric of our times and embrace complexity. Instead of clobbering people over the head with dogma, we can tickle our audiences with visual poetry, knowing that the best poetry embraces darkness as well as light. So how do we get there? We take risks. The Hopes have a saying, repeatedly throughout life you have to leap into the unknown, and then on the way down, you build your wings. Let me tweak that saying a bit. Repeatedly myself and my crew have to jump into that unknown, and together we build those wings. Because teetering up on that cliff edge with me is my longtime colleague Betsy Carson, cinematographer Kirk Tupas, editor Michael Brockington, producer Ray Hall, and all the other filmmakers and artists who have helped me build my wings. I've learned that that very spooky state of not knowing turns out to be an essential part of the creative process. It allows the story and form of my films and installations to emerge as we go. You learn lessons that you'd never dream of. Filming a girl a war in the Philippines, that was a leap. But my time in the jungles of the Philippines or Chiapas or the downtown East Side taught me a very profound lesson in life and in art. To embrace the contradictions, not to avoid them. Those spiky truths lead to a much more interesting story and image. I've learned to push the form as well as content, to move more into the abstract. For me, that's meant framing the familiar in an unfamiliar way. Why? Because if we can surprise ourselves as filmmakers and as visual artists, we stand a chance of surprising our audiences. I've moved from filming revolutions to making fish swim across a bridge. But that doesn't mean I get to avoid controversy. There's nothing more hotly debated in BC than salmon and what to do with them. But rather than filming the issues, I sensed my job with our installation was to capture the wonder of the fish. That if we intrigued our audiences with cinematic poetry, with light, color, movement, maybe we could reach people who never even thought about fish except to eat them. Seeing is believing. I can't bring you to the bridge. But I can bring the bridge to you in a simulation of what uninterrupted looked like. This sequence falls four minutes into the production. You're under the canby bridge and looking up. The sockeye are beginning their long migration up river. And so are you. In these COVID times, instead of bringing uninterrupted back to the bridge as we planned, we're moving the production into virtual reality and discovering how to make our fish swim in 3D. It's just another leap. Remember that hope he's saying you have to repeatedly jump off that cliff, not just once. It's terrifying. It's thrilling. Keep making those leaps into the unknown. Keep building your wings. Thank you, Dr. Wilde and congratulations. President Siddle, will you please present the second honorary degree candidate, Eve Tuck. Dr. Eve Tuck is changing the nature of social science research. As the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Methodologies with Youth and Community since 2017, Eve works to identify and challenge harmful practices and replace them with ones that are participatory, collaborative and inclusive. Tuck is Unangak and is an enrolled member of the Alliot community at St. Paul Island, Alaska. She received a PhD in Urban Education from the City University of New York in 2008. Eve is currently Associate Professor of Critical Race and Indigenous Studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies and Education, or OISI, at the University of Toronto. There, she supervises a team of graduate students, teaches courses and publishes regularly. Eve is keenly interested in the lived impacts of education and social policies on urban Indigenous students. She focuses on Indigenous methodologies, principles and ways of knowing with the aim of developing new best practices for collaborative research. Alongside Kay Wayne Yang, Eve is an editor of the book series Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education. She is also the author of Who Decides, Who Becomes a Teacher and Toward What Justice. In 2017, Eve established the Takaronto Circle Lab at the Ontario Institute for Studies and Education. This is a base for arts and materials-based research, participatory research with youth, visual and auditory research, and when it's permitted again, community gatherings. The lab includes vibrant and open spaces for art making, as well as student workspaces, a sound booth and audio and video editing suites. Eve's recent research has included the Making Sense of Movements project, which seeks to understand how social movements such as I Don't Know More and Black Lives Matter are affecting the post-secondary decision-making of Indigenous and Black youth. Using photography as the primary research medium, students age 14 to 19 are exploring their identities, identifying their social concerns and demonstrating their priorities for the future. Among many awards and honours, Eve has received the Ford Foundation Diversity Postdoctoral Fellowship from Cornell University and the Early Career Award from the American Educational Research Association. Emily Carr University of Art and Design is pleased to present Eve Tuck with an Honorary Doctorate of Letters for meaningful contributions to social science research and for charting a path for greater reconciliation within the field of education in Canada. Mr. Chancellor, on behalf of the Senate of this University, I now ask that you confer upon Eve Tuck the degree Doctor of Letters Honoris Causa. Eve Tuck, by virtue of the authority vested in me and in the Senate of this University, I hereby admit you to the degree Doctor of Letters Honoris Causa. Greetings. My name is Eve Tuck and I am making this recording in my closet office in Toronto, which is the homelands of Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee people. My family is Ananga from St. Paul Island in Alaska and I have lived with my family here in Toronto since 2015. Thank you so much for this amazing honor. Thank you to everybody who was involved in this decision. I was really surprised and had to do a little bit of investigation about what an honorary doctorate even is, so I am so grateful. I do want to take this time to express my congratulations to all of the graduates this year. Congratulations to you for finishing your degree in such a complicated and really strained and strange time. Congratulations to your families, to your loved ones, and to everybody who has supported you in this journey. If we were together, maybe we would have a chance to meet at a reception. Maybe we would meet over a glass of lemonade. When I imagine myself being there, I imagine that maybe we would have a chance to talk about what you've been studying and what you hope to do next. One of my favorite conversations is to think about our theories of change. How do we believe that change happens in the world? Lots of times our theories of change are somewhat assumed. We do things without really thinking about what this means for our beliefs about knowledge, our beliefs about who knows things and how expertise is created in collectives, and how knowledge is best shared. I love to talk about theories of change. I love to talk about how we spend our time as brief, as long, and as full as it might be. My hope for you is that your theories of change are not assumed, that your theories of change don't locate all of the agency outside of yourselves, outside of your communities. And instead, you're able to think about how we make change without appealing to somebody outside who is more powerful or more agentic than us, that we can look at the ways that we make change in ways that are consistent with our beliefs about knowledge and knowing about relationality and about what's possible. Thank you so much again for this significant honor. I'll remember it for the rest of my life. Best wishes to all of the graduates. Congratulations Dr. Tuck. We will now present the Emily Award. This annual award recognizes outstanding achievements by members of the alumni community whose creative pursuits in the arts, media, and design have brought honor to the university. President Sittle, will you please present the Emily Award? Mr. Chancellor, this year the Emily Award is presented to LIWON. LIWON is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, educator, and cultural activist with an explorer's heart. Regardless of the medium she chooses, LIWON is always seeking greater understanding and new truths in her work. LIWON came to Canada with her family in 1977 and she graduated from Emily Carr in 1983. She received an MFA from Simon Fraser University in 1999. She founded the Orr Gallery in 1983, was chair of the Grant Gallery Board of Directors from 2010 to 2014, and currently teaches in the MFA program at Goddard College in Washington State. The range of LIWON's work is considerable, as are her areas of expertise. She has created both large-scale and small-scale public works. Fountain, the source or origin of anything, was a 30-foot-tall photographic mural occupying the side of the CBC Radio-Canada building in downtown Vancouver. Wander, toward a lightness of being, used icons and haikus to encourage playful exploration at the 22nd Street Skytrain Station bus exchange. Barnacle City, the movie, screened on two large LED ad billboards at the corner of Robson and Granville streets in downtown Vancouver. Throughout her career, LIWON's work has been shown frequently in solo and group exhibitions, and she has written and edited several arts and community publications. Her recent book of poems, entitled Tender, is a thought-provoking collection spanning 30 years of activism and community building in a gendered and racialized environment. LIWON's work bears a keen awareness of the impact of colonization, and she strives to work in solidarity with Indigenous people. Her work attunes to the local, the site-specific, the materially resourceful. In a 2013 installation at the Burnaby Art Gallery, LIWON presented Kiosk, a project that engaged with Burnaby elders using the question, what advice would you like to give to the world? People visiting Kiosk could receive this advice, along with a bundle of sage for burning and cleansing. LIWON has received numerous awards and honors, including eight Canada Council for the Arts Awards and the 2008 Vancouver Queer Media Artist Award. She is a sought-after juror, curator, speaker, and contributor to symposia conferences and anthologies. Emily Carr University of Art and Design is pleased to present alumna LIWON with this year's Emily Award. I'm pleased to introduce LIWON and invite her to address our graduates. I am honored and humbled to be before you today to receive the Emily Award. From these unceded territories, lands, and waters of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Slewa Tooth people, I acknowledge I am an uninvited visitor here, someone who gained refuge in 1977 when my family was leaving the war in apartheid Rhodesia. To have found refuge here means I am responsible to reciprocate to my Indigenous hosts, to advocate for Indigenous autonomy and resources. And in my work since the late 1980s, I have been committed to find ways to put this into practice. I am thankful for this generous recognition from Emily Carr University of my practice and as an alumna. When my high school education was ending, all I knew was I wanted a life as an artist. I did not know what that looked like. I had no models. I happened to be somewhere in a public place. I forget where. And on a bench I found a small booklet. I picked it up and found it was about the Vancouver School of Art. I saw this as a sign and took it to my high school counselor and surprisingly, he did not know anything about it. The Vancouver School of Art, which then became the Emily Carr College of Art and Design, was exactly what I needed. Today we are at a crossroads. The last year has been challenging and transformative. What is this virus of COVID-19 asking of us? What is it we are having to learn? Renowned writer, Arindati Rai, asks us to see this time as a portal to a new world. As artists, we are trained to be immersed in imagining new temporal and spatial possibilities. We are practiced in making our imaginations manifest into the physical world. We are being asked in this moment to imagine a new world of new possibilities, one where we are agile and compassionate to the many parallel worlds who live sympathically with and within us while we build kinships. The abundance of your imagination, bringing to life new ways of being in the world, one of social justice with true democratic process and community empowerment are the creative models we need today. So be safe and be well with lightness and abundance. And I thank you with humble gratitude. Thank you, Laiwan. Now I'm pleased to introduce our Vice President, Academic and Provost, Dr. Patricia Kelly. Dr. Kelly will introduce the graduate student speaker. Thank you, Dr. Siddal, and congratulations to Laiwan, Dr. Tuck, and Dr. Wilde. I'm honored to introduce the 2021 graduate student speaker, Melina Bishop. Melina is a sculptor and installation artist from the United States. She graduated from Oregon College of Art and Craft with the BFA and Fibers in 2015, and today she graduates with a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Art from Emley Carr. She's shown independently with vignettes at generations in Seattle, and her work has been included in group exhibitions at Praxis Fiber Gallery in Cleveland, Soil Gallery in Seattle, and Surplus Space Supermaker in Gallery Homeland in Portland, Oregon. She was a 2016 resident artist at the Icelandic Textile Center in Bluntos, Iceland. Melina was also a member of the Studio Collective Neighbors at the Yale Union in Portland from 2015 to 2019. Mr. Chancellor, I now call upon this year's graduate study speaker, Melina Bishop, to address convocation. Thank you, Trish, and I would like to thank Stephen, Justin, and Elaine for their leadership within the graduate community, and of course Caitlyn and Lee for supporting us throughout this process. I'd also like to thank each of the faculty members who's worked with grad studies as instructors and supervisors. Your wisdom and guidance has been appreciated. It is an honor to speak on behalf of the remarkable group of people that I'm lucky enough to call my peers. Earning a master's degree under any set of circumstances is a meaningful accomplishment, but I think that it is fair to say that we have collectively had a rather unconventional version of this experience with its own unique set of unforeseen hurdles and tests. The graduating class of 2021 has dealt with a firearm campus, the shutdown of the school caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, periods of time without access to studios or facilities, classes transitioning to a hybrid format, and the myriad other challenges which come with maintaining a practice in time of global turmoil and grief. And yet, each and every one of us has found a way to adapt, exhibit an astounding amount of resilience, and to continue our research and making in the face of it all. I'm immensely proud of this community for finding ways to navigate the rocky terrain of these two years, caring for each other, critically engaging with the realities of our present, and taking an active approach to reimagining our future. In the introduction to her book, Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit writes that hope locates itself in the premise that we do not know what will happen, and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty there is room to act. Within this spaciousness of uncertainty, which exists for each of us in the wake of our graduate studies, I hope we are able to continue the work of transformation which has begun here at Emily Carr, maintaining a tenacious commitment to the belief that design and art play essential roles in creating a world more equitable, sustainable, and kind than the one we currently live in. Congratulations to us all, and thank you. Thank you, Dr. Kelly, and thank you, Melina, for that wonderful speech. The graduating class graduate studies will now be presented to the Chancellor to be admitted en masse to their degrees. Artimus Feldman. Andrea Finley. Katrina Nicole Grabowski. Sarah Green. Kevin Holliday. Hung Jae Hung. Shura Majidian. Esteban Perez. Dipali Raitata. Ahmed Rashtian. Nicole Rahill. Kathleen Rogers. Debra Silver. Jill Smith. Sandra Talbot. Nikita Trimble. Anna Veline. Heather Yip. Ying Chau. Kinya Chen. Avi Farber. Sima Furutanzadeh. Jinglan Guh. Kunal Gupta. Julie Van Oyen. Kaiwen Yang. Richard Kennedy. Shrushti Kulkarni. Binuda Kunath. Danny Lee. Erin Catherine Main. Alonso Molina Adame. An Nguyen. Farvardin Niku. Oluwashola Kendi Oluwake. Sepideh Parand. Jihan Pak. Seth Parker. Ryan Smith. Alija Sule. Abir Tahir. Kayanadath Tejas. Khushbu Vansia. Wushan Zhang. Yi Chun Zhang. My virtue of the authority vested in me and in the Senate of this university, I hereby admit you to your various degrees. Thank you, Mr. Chancellor. And congratulations to the newest graduates of our Master of Fine Arts and Master of Design programs. Next, I'm thrilled to introduce Morgan Martino, the 2021 Undergraduate Student Speaker. Morgan is an interdisciplinary designer, researcher, and facilitator whose work focuses on building and supporting communities that can foster caring relationships, critical learning, and informed social change. They graduate today with a Bachelor of Design in Industrial Design and a minor in Social Practice and Community Engagement. Morgan's current research practice explores how everyday material culture and designed systems inform and reflect our complex relationship to care. Through their studies and research, Morgan has had many opportunities to foster community practices through the creation and custodianship of the Mixtake Collective and Vintage DigiCam Club. In 2020, Morgan collaborated with fellow student Naomi Boyd as part of the Shumka and Desus satellite residency to create Pocket Change, a series of workshops centering the pocket as a lens for unpacking wicked design problems. Most recently, Morgan created the Roving Designers, a place-based design collective exploring how to engage in design work outside of traditional studio contexts. Mr. Chancellor, I now call upon this year's Undergraduate Student Speaker to address convocation. Thank you, Trish. Mr. Chancellor, President Siddall, distinguished guests, my fellow students, faculty, staff, family, friends, and loved ones. It is with great honour and gratitude that I join you in celebrating and reflecting on this momentous day and speak on behalf of my graduating class. Graduation is one of the rare occasions in our lives where we are able to pause and catch our breath at the crossroads of past, present, and future. It is a time to reflect on the memories of the past four or so years, remembering the intimate bonds of friendship that formed late at night over tables while working on projects, enjoying shared meals, and listening to music. It is a time as well to reflect on the mentorship from our instructors and classmates alike. The direct feedback gifted to us during critiques and the tacit knowledge we gained simply from immersing ourselves in a setting that centres creativity, criticality, and curiosity. Although we may find ourselves located across the globe as time goes by, these memories will forever keep us connected to one another and to this institution. As so many emails and ad campaigns have told us over the past year, we are living in extraordinary, unprecedented, and challenging times. As overused as these words have become, they are no less true today than before. Many of the hopes and dreams for our final year have had to be placed on shelves for another day or reimagined and compressed to fit on Zoom windows and in bedroom studios. The world we inhabited when we first entered the doors of Emily Carr no longer exists in the same way it did. Throughout these challenges, we have demonstrated incredible strength, resilience, and compassion both as individuals and as a community. These experiences will carry us into our future as we continue to tackle the pressing issues of our time, climate change, colonialism, racial injustice, gender equity, and much more. Whenever we feel lost or afraid, we can return to this time in our lives and see that we were able to weather the storm. I hope that you'll take a moment to celebrate the people who have helped you throughout your degree and this last year especially. Please take some time today to reach out to them and let them know the impact they have had in helping you reach this incredible milestone. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you all for the past four years of support and camaraderie and wish you all a bright and supportive path forward into the great perhaps. Thank you. Thank you Dr. Kelly and thank you Morgan. Congratulations on your many achievements. The graduating class undergraduate studies will now be presented to the chancellor to be admitted en masse to their degrees. Rachel Adair, Darjan Adukhanova, Aisolu Aldanyazova, Hanoel Bum, Tiz Bereta, Paula Bourbano-Delalcassar, Elin Kai, Nicola Campney-Durant, Samantha Chan, Vanisha Chung, Ivy Aimee Chung, Helyung Cho, Hena Hayung Chan, Mayura Colling, Eliza Darby, Aviva Davis, Olaf Ethorsdottir, Jomel Fernando, Malika Gil, Jin Di Hua, Catherine Lynn Hoffman, Siran Huang, Sophia Hwei, Yu Hyun Wong, Amber Ko, Joshua Li, Jessica Li, Liang Xingtong, Yi Lu, Mela Lukovic, Victoria Marshall, Vanessa Montoya Fent, Ghana Morozova, Liv Louise Murray, Eliza Rose, Arina Sin, Yuni Song, Rebecca Sukhchamran, Laina Tian, Yu Guetong, Hannah Tsang, Yu Ting Yu-Yu-Ci, Michael Viniez, Rachel Webb, Ming Ji Wang, Jin Yang Wan, Fan Wu, Zhou Ya Shan Zhu, Nicole Yamamoto, Tai Long Zhang, Cheyenne Aravana, Nicholas Asarasacorn, Eileen Daniela Benavides Chavez, Naomi Boyd, Connor Budd, Saiville Montañez Castro, Anika Dixon-Ruz, Jacob Eastman, Laura Esquaita, Karen Fishman, Whitney Fu, Thomas Gajai, Tuyuan Hong, Zara Huntley, Maria Isabella Elagan, Hyun Jun Li, Zi Yun Li, Qing Yi Luo, Zi Qing Liu, Donnie McNeil, Carolina Marx, Morgan Martino, Daniel McDougal, J-Ling Meng, Joanna Palma, Emily Pan, Catherine Grace Percy, Sarah Rostad, Shi Chou Shi, Bridget Sterry, Christopher Su Zhao, Ayako Takagi, Lauren Chu, Ruth Wang, Jasmine Whalen, Jusanna Wu, Jing Yi Yang, Ting Yi, Albioto Rivera Bernal, Owen Robert Castagne, Wan Ping Chen, Dayan Choy, Yujin Cheng, Nodin Cutfeet, Xinjie Dong, Nika Furuhi, Mila Gao, Cassandra Gurdovich, Yixi Han, Hanbyul Kim, Hyo-Jung Jessica Kim, Juri Kim, Na Young Kim, Sun Hyun Lee, Siyin Lin, Alexandra Livesey, Colby May, Dion Mock, Carson Seal, Tony Shi, Diane Totland Shin, Ben Westergreen, Yikeng Wu, Jiaqi Xie, Yinan Xiu, Kainan Ye, Andrea Isabel Zamora Rosas, Ann Xiong, Jiho Kim, Jan Little, Amir Tamadon, Nastenka Andrea Alava Gaye, Matthew Cornish, Helena Esqueryaga, Amanda Frost, Yun Ji He, Alanna Rose Johnson, Dana Chi-Hin Lam, Xin Yi Luo, Edward Madajemu, Mahma Najib, Leonie Paul, Ella Ponzel, Joshua Ralph, Matthew Kyung Min Robbins, Marzie Saadegi, Tianru Shen, Thaddeus Robert Edward Walker, Elena Yan, Vanessa Jiang, Chonghua Zhang, Yunhuan Zhang, Sarah Cartledge, Wei Chen Chen, Yuxun Chen, Matea Choi, Katina Chung, Lucas W. Chung, Christopher Gazzily, Ennio Enrique Gutierrez Sedeño, Saria Howard, Chaobing Huang, Heisu Ji, Yeji Kang, Kyungzo Kim, Yejin Kim, Lilia Lai, Alex Loh, Dohyun Oh, Mingyue Pang, Shiqi Run, Aktosh Sing, Carmen Tang, Sheng Feng Mike Wang, Tianzhu Wang, Ying Yu, Nathan Yang, Scarlett Zhou, Zhou Yuan Zhu, Chaoting Chen, Xiaoqing Chen, Yanxi Chen, Luoduo, Nancy Fang, Tanvi Kapoor, Samuel Kim, Maxime Lebrek, Tong Liu, Nicholas Orska, Abraham Toledo Acosta, Qingwen Sang, Ferdos Vacilian, Farzana Valladvital Yusuf, Wang Xingrong, Mengxue Xia, Lei Yi Xu, Qin Lian Xu, Wenqi Yu, Wuqian Zhang, Graham Connell, Aheban Maona Harirchian Sa'i, Jiwon Kim, Harry Leshgold, Jane Lu, Xuexian Li, Itamar Sitbon, Hanson Wang, Ku Zhong, Ryan Bershler, Madison Bachman Conrad, Margaret Gonzalez Huera, Stacy Hoover, Kayla Klein, Madison Lemke, Quinn Monlion, Rebecca Nichols, Collin Osler, Shelly Saltzman, Jordan Timkau, Shira Anisman, Chelsea Louise Solis Castro, Vivian Chen, Jia Jie Chen, Wen San Chen, Eun Zhang Che, Yi Fang, Keenan Fonger, Monique Germain, Kobe Jingra Fox, Yuxin Guo, Kyla Hayes, Yuying He, Samantha Herley, Xiang Hui Hou, Encha Su, Lauren Jock, Set Biao Kang, Hai Rayong Kim, Cheyuan Li, Hyeong Kyung Lee, Scott Lahid, Christine Mao, Suhail Nahas, Mika Nakajima Pedengale, Jung Nguyen, Su Min Oh, Amika Pasquale, Clara Peek, Noelle Pember, Brooke Pope, Adam Chu, Megan Randall, Jasmine Siddhu, Natalia Soto, Don Chung, Lillian Tulet, Alice Olivia Watts, Fei Wu, Yu Si Wu, Sichu Yang, Xiaotong Yi, Vanessa Yandel, Chou Ye Zhang, Cindy Zhang, Qi Zhang, Yu Yan Zhang, Meng Cheng Zhu, Ma San Abedi, Sarah Sharon, Shantel Crows, Carolina De La Cajiga, Ali Dasam Han, Jeffrey Henshel, Maria Sophia Huncoruiz Galindo, Tegan Kelly, Xanth Ilana Kitson, Xiaohou Kung, Alan Lam, Nina Robertson, Jordan Shum, Flora Ga-Wai Soh, Delany Sumang, Spava Valdez Tergeson, Marsha Urquhart, Ashley Victoria Olivia Wong, Solomon Zijin Wong, Katrina Gianna Mangosing Abad, Noura Ali, Brittany Appleby, Angelo Bartolome, Hannah Bitante, Dylan Boyle, Trevor Baird Brett, Megan Brooks, Jen Candela, Christy Kars, Anay Kasselman Green, Stella Costell, Chan Wan Ting, Yidan Chen, Holly Schmelik, Hannah Christensen, Hina Chung, Grace Clarissa, Destiny Clayton, Shirin Kui, Qing Dan, Linda Davies, Faith Dimon, Hannah Dow Kenney, Marcy Esaw, Vanessa Mercedes Figaroa, Darius Fultzentner, Jesse Gao, Gao Zhuachen, Darius Gassemi-Kian, Shayla Jiru, Mia Givon, Georgina Howitt, Irene He, Yalshi He, Addison Hill, Zengi Hunsburger, Pamela Christina Jameson, Pascal Zhang, Taja Arya Jinnah, Emily Kahnvisha, Pierre Simon Kauffman-LaRosa, Liam Kernan, Jotika Kosla, Yujin Kim, Jessica Wing-Yun Lam, Kaitlin Lanjil Hurley, Sayuka Lawrence, Hyuk Lee, Lee Ye Jin, Zi Kang, Jingyi Liu, Yan Han Lu, Erin Lucy, Mitra Mahmoodi, Talia Malkovich, Harper Matsuyama, Emanuel Lara Mayer, Shannon Ruth Dionne Miller, Katie Mormon, Mickey Lonnie Danielle Morgan, Bridget Muldoon, Kiran Mueller, Levi Nelson, Chunlu Niu, Madison Sedistrum Nguyen, Christina Norberg, Phoenix Olivia, Yi Tong Wu, Samantha Owen, Kadir Oz, Yanu Park, Jacob Parsons, James Peach, Sydney Francis Pickering, Holly Pilot, Nicole Ponsart, Michelle Prins, Jennifer Pritchard, Amber Rye, Kirk Robinson, Natalie Robinson, Amber Ross, Irma Jerusa Sheila Rivacoba, Larissa Schmidt, Kyle Scott, Matthew Scott, Kennedy Snyder, Ofra Soferman Avshalom, Yongxi Sun, Antonia Tarbujaru, Fiona Thomas, Patty Travis, Mickey Vasera, Mari Ellen Walker, Li Ting Wang, Rebecca Wang, Josephine Watson, George Weston, Claire Wilkening, Mackenzie Wilson, Matthew Wise, Shen Yu Yang, Ding Ying, Rola Yao, Zhao Chenchen, Yasmin Haibub, Marie Chung. My virtue of the authority vested in me and in the senate of this university I hereby admit you to your various degrees. This concludes the formal awarding of degrees. I congratulate each and every one of you on your achievements. Friends and family, distinguished guests, please join me in applauding the class of 2021. I would like to invite Patrick Christie, president of the Emily Carr University Alumni Association, to address our graduates. Greetings graduates of 2021. My name is Patrick Christie and I'm the president of the Alumni Association and a graduate of design from 2011. On behalf of the association, I want to congratulate you. One of the most exciting things for me is learning about where our alumni end up and how they take who they are and what they know and create a difference in the spaces in which they live and work around the world. One of the things that I think is fundamentally important is staying connected and staying invested in the relationships that you build during your time in Emily Carr. These are things that will support you and enable you in the most unsuspecting times ahead. As you take your experiences and head out in a new direction or head back home, I encourage you to be open and to be graceful with yourself as the world around you will appear a bit different than it did when you first set foot in Emily Carr. Again, congratulations and good luck. Thank you, Patrick. I would now like to invite Kim Peacock, chair of the Emily Carr University Board of Governors, to close our virtual convocation. Thank you, Mr. Chancellor. Graduating class of 2021, on behalf of the Emily Carr Board of Directors, congratulations. We all salute your accomplishment. My name is Kim Peacock and I'm the chair of that board, and it's my privilege to close this ceremony today and send you off to celebrate your success with your family and friends. You are now Emily Carr alumni, a large and growing community of creators, makers and designers. Over 10,000 strong Emily Carr alumni are everywhere. Art, design and innovation are happening. The Emily Carr Alumni Association welcomes you with an array of benefits, including the leeway, a social and professional networking site that facilitates collaboration, networking and mentorship among alumni. Hundreds of your fellow alumni are already on the leeway, so it's an excellent place to stay connected. As you launch into the next phase of your life and career, you will take with you everything you learned here at Emily Carr. The skills, the practices, the processes, all that make your work unique and valuable. Take pride in that work and take pride in the energy that that work brings to the world. I hope you will also take with you the love of learning, the resilience and grit you have acquired and the flexibility and adaptability you've shown throughout your time here, but particularly in this past most difficult year. As you go forward, be sure to nourish the positive relationships you've created with your fellow artists and makers. Support each other and stay connected. Strong relationships are our shield in bad times and our cheering section when things go well. And as we emerge into a post-pandemic world in the near future, we will greet it as the American poet Amanda Gorman said, a flame and unafraid. Her words are, the new dawn blooms as we free it, for there is always light if only we're brave enough to see it, if only we're brave enough to be it. Congratulations graduates and wishing you many successes from all of us to all of you. Thank you. This brings to a close the formal part of this convocation ceremony. On behalf of the entire Emily Carr University of Art and Design community and the many honored guests who have joined us for this virtual ceremony today. Thank you and have a wonderful evening.