The annual showcase brought together students and professors from the University of Ottawa, Carleton University, Algonquin College and Collège La Cité to present projects co-created with the City of Ottawa through the CityStudio Ottawa model of community-campus engagement.
This year’s HUBBUB was the biggest to date, with 33 project submissions responding to the City of Ottawa’s Community Safety and Well-being Plan and term of council priorities. At uOttawa, during the 2025–2026 academic year, CityStudio Ottawa involved 486 students from six faculties in 15 collaborative projects with city staff and professors.
All told, more than 2,220 students have worked on 144 projects since the partnership was launched in 2022, creating a vibrant ecosystem of innovation, learning and leadership.
For many participants, the experience was an opportunity to move beyond theory and confront the realities shaping life across the city.
Working with Ottawa’s community partners
Professors helped guide the projects with academic expertise, while city staff and community partners offered insight into the realities facing residents and front-line services across Ottawa. Drawing on surveys, interviews, open data and digital tools such as artificial intelligence and mobile apps, students developed projects grounded in the needs of local communities.
For University of Ottawa medical students Shayan Heybati, Chloe Ho and Alfred Genadri, this meant evaluating the city’s paramedic response unit in the ByWard Market alongside Ottawa Inner City Health and Faculty of Medicine mentors. Shadowing paramedics working with vulnerable populations helped them better understand the complexity of health-care delivery for individuals experiencing homelessness and the network of community partners supporting them, including the Ottawa Mission.
“The most valuable aspect of the program was seeing how health-care delivery can be redesigned around patients’ realities rather than expecting them to adapt to a system that often doesn’t meet their needs,” said Heybati.
The experience also reshaped how the students viewed their future roles as physicians.
“From a career perspective, the project perfectly aligned with our goals of becoming physicians who stay engaged beyond the clinic using community partnerships and health systems improvement to deliver more responsive and equitable care,” Heybati added.
“These projects clearly illustrated the value of multidisciplinary learning at the intersection of community development, public policy and experiential learning.”
Marie-Eve Sylvestre
— President and Vice-Chancellor
Projects rooted in community needs
Among the projects recognized during HUBBUB was “Nourish to Flourish,” a ready-to-eat food delivery initiative to help reduce food insecurity among families living in shelters. Another award-winning campaign, “Raising the Bar,” developed by students from Algonquin College, focused on reducing alcohol-related harms and emergency room visits linked to overconsumption.
The projects mirrored the broad range of social issues students explored.
Marie-Eve Sylvestre, uOttawa president and vice-chancellor, said the projects reflected the University’s commitment to connecting academic learning with the realities and challenges facing communities across Ottawa.
“These projects clearly illustrated the value of multidisciplinary learning at the intersection of community development, public policy and experiential learning,” she said.
For Sylvestre, initiatives such as CityStudio Ottawa also reflect the role universities can play when they’re deeply connected to the communities and cities they serve.