Five community-university projects co-led by Arts students and faculty members have received funding from the Spring 2025 Partnership Recognition and Exploration Fund (PRE Fund).
The PRE Fund awards up to $1,500 to bridge small resource gaps, enabling students, faculty and staff to build reciprocal relationships with community partners. Since its inception in 2017, the fund has invested more than $667,873 in 445 research and teaching partnerships, with approximately 40% of the funding supporting IBPoC-led (Indigenous, Black, and People of Colour) community organizations, including 25% supporting Indigenous–led projects.
Learn more about the PRE-funded projects below.
DTES Neighbourhood House Advisory Council (NHAC) Report
- Community partners: Maria Guadin and Arturo De la Torre Méndez, Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House (DTESNH)
- UBC partners: Dr. Kerry Greer and Taylor Schepella, Department of Sociology
In partnership with Arts student Taylor Schepella, this project will support the development of three culturally sensitive focus groups with program participants across DTESNH. The focus groups will explore how neighbours want to be engaged in governance, what kinds of roles or structures feel accessible, and what barriers exist to participation. The results will shape the foundation for a Neighbourhood House Advisory Council (NHAC), envisioned as a permanent community advisory body that can co-lead strategic direction alongside staff and board members. Dr. Greer will support the project design, analysis, and facilitation as part of her undergraduate honours research, while DTESNH will lead recruitment, logistics, and community-facing implementation. Funding will cover honoraria, light refreshments, printed materials, and outreach support.
This collaboration integrates academic inquiry with grassroots knowledge to advance equity, well-being, and inclusive governance in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. By working closely with UBC, the project improves community access to academic research methods and teaching tools while grounding them in lived experience. At the same time, Dr. Greer’s involvement supports applied, ethical research learning in real-world conditions—centering communities who are often excluded from governance and policy-making. The project will result in a publicly shared community report to inform DTESNH’s first Strategic Plan (2026–2031) and advances a shared model of co-creation that values community leadership and sustainable relationships with the university.
Remembering Nelson’s Chinatown: A Window into the Past and the Future
- Community partners: Melody Ma, Critical Alternatives and Catherine Fisher, Kootenay Co-op Radio
- UBC partner: Dr. Yao Xiao, Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice
This project proposes creating a large, bilingual (Chinese and English) visual window poster to honour the Sing Chong laundry—an unassuming yet historically significant building in Nelson, BC, and the last remnant of the largest Chinatown in the BC Interior. Now home to Kootenay Co-op Radio, the building sits where a vibrant Chinese-Canadian community once thrived. The poster will serve as a commemorative monument and public pedagogical intervention, illuminating racialized, gendered, and minoritized histories that have been marginalized and nearly erased from local memory. Despite the significant presence of Chinese migrants in Nelson’s development, no public education space recognizes their stories of migration, labour, exclusion, and belonging. This project reclaims space for memory, dignity, and cultural continuity.
Grounded in linguistically and culturally sensitive research, the poster draws on archival and oral histories of Chinese-Canadian life, focusing on the Sing Chong laundry. Its design reflects community aesthetics and is rendered in both Chinese and English to honour linguistic diversity and accessibility. Through the poster and related workshops, the project mobilizes academic expertise to foster cultural awareness and intergenerational learning. It brings the university and community together as partners in historical reckoning, cultural repair, and trust-building. More than a poster, it is a gesture of remembrance, reclaiming, mourning, pride, and, importantly, a beginning.
Sustaining Indigenous Community Partnerships to Enrich Field-Based Geoscience Learning on Syilx Territory
- Community partner: Jenna (cnúk) Bower, Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre, Osoyoos, BC
- UBC partner: Dr. Nina Hewitt, Department of Geography
This project strengthens relationships with Indigenous community partners to enrich UBC’s third-year capstone field course in Geographical Sciences (GEOS 309), held annually on Syilx territory near Oliver, BC. It responds to the community-identified need for respectful, reciprocal engagement and deeper collaboration between UBC and local Indigenous communities. Through ongoing dialogue with the Osoyoos Indian Band (OIB), including Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre interpreter cnúk (Jenna Bower), this project builds on past collaborations that emphasize meaningful student engagement, acknowledgment of local knowledge systems, and appropriate compensation for shared expertise.
In May 2025, the project team will co-develop a tailored three-quarter-day student experience at the Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre focused on Syilx place names and cultural practices. This includes a guided cultural tour and ecology lesson (~4 hours) about OIB history, colonial impacts, and local flora and fauna, plus a one-hour snake ecology and safety workshop. Additional collaborations with local landowners and educators on fire risk and ecological restoration will continue but are supported separately. Project objectives include building understanding of Indigenous knowledge and colonial histories, expanding teaching materials, and co-creating learning experiences with community partners. Deliverables include a community-engaged site visit, place-based learning activities, reflection-based assessments, and refined field-based community engagement principles. This work fosters mutual learning, centers place-based education, and strengthens sustained relationships with local peoples and ecologies.
Talaysay Comics
- Community partner: Chad Hershler, Deer Crossing – Art Farm Society
- UBC partner: Dr. Elizabeth Nijdam, Department of Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies
PRE funding would support a new partnership between Talaysay Tours, Deer Crossing – Art Farm Society, and the UBC Comics Studies Cluster to create comics inspired by Talaysay Tours’ cultural and land-based tours. Talaysay Tours, owned by Candace and Larry Campo (Shíshálh and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Nation members), is active in Indigenous tourism and education, supporting cultural revitalization and land-based education through Indigenous mentorship. Deer Crossing – Art Farm Society, founded by Chad Hershler and Sandy Buck (Metis), is a community-engaged arts organization where Candace Campo also serves as Indigenous Arts Coordinator. Building on the success of the Remember Comics Project with the Homalco Nation, this initiative explores the intersection of Indigenous storytelling, land-based education, and comics.
Before beginning the project, PRE funding supported a two-day relationship-building comics workshop at Deer Crossing in January 2025, introducing the Talaysay Tours team to comic creation basics, including storytelling, panel design, and Indigenous approaches. Facilitated by Cree cartoonist Alina Pete, the workshop helped participants identify comic narratives for a pilot project and produce short 8-12 page graphic stories about their journey to becoming knowledge keepers. These comics will support future funding applications, with final submissions due March 1, 2026, ahead of major grant deadlines.
What We Wish We Knew: Reimagining Training for Kinship Families and Social Workers
- Community partner: Shari Monsma, Fairness for Children Raised By Relatives
- UBC partner: Dr. Barbara Lee, School of Social Work
This project responds to a community-identified need expressed by kinship caregivers who are part of Fairness for Children Raised by Relatives (Fairness), a non-profit volunteer-led organization. During a recent CUES-funded partnership between Fairness and UBC’s Centre for the Study of Services to Children and Families (CSSCF), caregivers emphasized the lack of training and support at the start of their caregiving journey. They also raised concerns about social workers’ limited understanding of kinship care dynamics, which affected the quality and consistency of support.
Fairness hosted their annual in-person “The Gathering” in June, where a World Café was facilitated to guide kin caregivers in conversations about needed training, support, and social workers’ understanding of kinship families. These dialogues informed a province-wide survey co-developed with Fairness to further assess caregiver needs. The project also built new connections with UBC’s Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology, School of Social Work – Continuing Professional Development, and the Ministry of Children and Family Development Learning and Development. Together, these partnerships are exploring how caregiver-informed training can be developed, delivered, and embedded in professional education for caregivers and social workers, strengthening the foundation for a future collaborative CUES proposal.
