As the Emily Carr University of Art and Design prepares to open its doors in Prince George, the province is stepping in to help get it on its feet.
On Friday morning, Prince George-Valemount MLA Shirley Bond announced that the provincial government was providing a one-time $2.1 million investment to support the school's start-up and program delivery costs of the new Emily Carr Centre for Design Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
Announced in January, the satellite campus will begin offering credited programs out of the Wood Innovation and Design Centre next fall.
The money will go towards the school's second round of consultations on program design, said Bond.
"We're very pleased to announce $2.1 million to make sure Emily Carr finds their home here and provides the kind of curriculum we think will lead to innovation and really bring to life what this building was meant to do," she said.
Emily Carr administration brought along an example of the kind of relationships they're hoping the new programming will foster.
The university's academic vice president and provost, Bonne Zabolotney, used a hand-carved cedar door, designed by Emily Carr student William Callaghan, to represent how creative value could be added to a piece of lumber.
"This piece, it's been hand carved, it has been digitally scanned and it is now prepared to be rapidly reproduced through a (computerized numerical control) machine," she said, adding the design could be used on different types of wood of varying sizes and sent around the world. "So the value of this natural resource has just been raised significantly by pairing traditional techniques with our new digital reality. And these types of relationships and creative processes will form the basis of our academic planning here at WIDC."
The school has a 2017 goal of offering an associate degree in design with a focus in wood, Zabolotney said.
"At Emily Carr we believe that creativity is our greatest natural resource," said Emily Carr's associate vice president of external relations Broek Bosma. "And when we apply creativity to some of the world's most wicked problems our potential is truly unlimited."
The school is still looking for input on how to tackle those problems through its curriculum and is hosting a community open house at WIDC on Sept. 18 and 19. There will also be en Emily Carr University exhibit that same weekend at Two Rivers Gallery during the Mini Maker Faire to hear community and industry feedback.
"The Emily Carr Centre for Design Innovation and Entrepreneurship represents a chance to re-envision a future of the wood industry; to reinvent and redefine the meaning of secondary manufacturing and, to my knowledge, this is the only program in the world that is based at the core of the operation - where the fibre is sourced - and not at a distant market," said Bosma.
A previous version of this story incorrectly identified the artist of the carved red cedar door.
