Thematic Clusters
Fostering Interdisciplinary Collaboration
Organized around broad thematic areas of focus, our six clusters support intentional and meaningful collaboration between faculty and students across programs and Schools. The clusters cultivate communities of practice that promote conversations about SRC activities alongside curricula.
Creative Enterprise
Creation and innovation lead to new opportunities and transformative change. An enterprising mindset emphasizes resourcefulness, the identification of opportunities, problem-solving, the embrace of innovation, and the promotion of community engagement and interdisciplinary collaborations. Exploring creative enterprises and innovations in industry practices elevates professional standards and fosters the development of new approaches. This cluster aims to prioritize creative entrepreneurship in our thinking and examine how ambition and self-management as employability skills can be integrated within the curriculum.
- Creative Enterprise Hub
- The Red Bull Gaming Hub
- Chrysalis
- Print Media Research Centre
- Future of Live Entertainment Lab
Creativity & Social Change
Creativity is at the heart of the ideas and actions that drive change and benefit underserved communities. The intersection of creativity and societal change creates the space for artists and researchers to highlight pressing issues, further growing and developing discussions within an academic realm. Focusing on solutions-based research, alongside practice-based research, projects can range from the theoretical to practical, fostering a future that creates an environment for growth, well-being, and equity.
Creative Tech & AI
The rapid and ongoing development of new technologies continues to challenge the methods, organizing principles, and workflows in a wide range of creative fields. Researchers, artists, and designers in this cluster are examining both the impact and creative potential of new technologies, with an emphasis on AI, fostering creative exploration that ensures human-machine interactions support knowledge creation and innovation that can serve society. Finding innovative ways to integrate creative technology and AI in the curriculum is also core to the discussions within this cluster.
- Canada Foundation for Innovation-funded Critical Metaverse Design Network for Embodied and Virtual Experiences (EVE)
- Technological Research in Performance Laboratory
- Synlab Media Lab
Histories, Archives, & Curation
Archives, collections, and exhibitions play a crucial role in shaping inclusive histories by gathering, collecting, and preserving diverse narratives and ensuring that multiple voices are heard and publicly recognized. This cluster focuses on how collecting protocols, institutional infrastructures, preservation and access decisions, exhibition strategies, and media platforms frame cultural heritage. It promotes activities that enable collaborations between artists and other creators, collectors, researchers, and communities that can be employed to broaden our sense of shared histories.
Storytelling & Experiential Media
Storytelling shapes identities, cultures, and experiences. This cluster focuses on the communicative power of storytelling and experiential media, researching their roles in knowledge creation and their power to shape audience engagement and experience in both curated and everyday settings. This cluster examines how podcasting, streaming services, VR, social media, and other emerging technologies transform storytelling, the production processes of content creation, and the ways in which audiences create and engage with content.
Sustainability
As the damaging effects of climate change become more apparent, the urgency for understanding and implementing sustainable practices has never been more critical. Theoretical, experiential, and practical approaches to research are essential for fostering the creative use of technology in developing a sustainable and regenerative future, allowing for innovative approaches in research. This cluster allows both sustainable research and creative activities, as well as research on regenerative futures to thrive, promising significant breakthroughs in this critical area.
Featured in this cluster:
Design Futures
Design is both a process for making and a way of thinking that can reimagine social systems and values. This cluster focuses on design as a future-oriented mode of knowledge production and world-building that integrates material experimentation with digital innovation and seeks to align design with ethical reflection. It explores how design thinking and creative practice can imagine and prototype sustainable, just and inclusive futures across material, digital, spatial, and speculative realms.
Design Futures includes researchers and practitioners from a variety of fields, including fashion, interior design, performance, and communication design.