Grant: CCI Mobilize Grants

Emily Carr University of Art + Design (ECU) occupies a unique space in the innovation ecosystem, fitting between many kinds of entities - industrial, governmental, social, cultural - joining these in whole-system creative thinking, planning, and making. Partners trust ECU to understand the problems they need to solve because of our ability to catalyze innovation through lateral, imaginative ideation and a deep knowledge of design and culture. This is a moment of great disruption with innovation needs that are urgent and intersect many systems and jurisdictions. More than ever, interdisciplinary and intercultural teams are needed to bring creative and comprehensive solutions to bear. Our proposed program directly targets these challenges by fostering more interdisciplinarity and diversity in partnered projects alongside evidence-based and responsive funding support structures for our researchers and partners. We have identified 4 key clusters of expertise (participatory design, sustainability, knowledge translation, and critical analysis) that align with 4 key regional sectors (health and well-being, cultural production, management of natural resources, and supply chain and waste management) and hold significant societal transformative potential. ECU has a strong track record of successful partnerships in these sectors; and in the context of our province, city, and local community, their innovation needs are pivotal to societal, economic, and ecological health and resilience in the coming years and decades. Specifically, we are targeting 3 cross-sector challenges and innovation opportunities that draw on the expertise of our researchers: 1) Incorporation of new materials and business models; 2) Knowledge Translation; and 3) Disruptive Technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Extended Reality (XR). This proposal builds on ECU's 16-year history of applied partnered research accelerated with a $2.5M CCI Innovation Enhancement grant in 2009 and grown to 5 active research centres in Health, Materials, Creative Entrepreneurship, Sustainability, and Media. Mobilize will build on this strong base by increasing the number and diversity of faculty involved in partnered research, increasing the number of partners we support per year, and enhancing our ability to make data-driven changes that foster an attentive, diverse and accessible research program that responds to the innovation needs of our regional partners.