Arts Innovation Labs

• Put your learning into practice by applying your academic knowledge to complex contemporary challenges, and turn learning into meaningful action.
• Think and create differently by engaging with challenges that require critical inquiry, creativity, reflection and attention to culture, language, power and representation. Start with asking better questions, not just producing answers.
• Work across disciplines and collaborate with students from all faculties in interdisciplinary teams that mirror real-world professional and community settings.
• Get involved for real-world impact! Rise up to a real societal challenge and help find solutions that matter beyond the classroom.
• Earn academic credit. This lab is a 1.5-unit course where engagement, initiative, self-reflection and applied learning are valued.
• Build skills for what comes next in your academic journey. Develop transferable skills that support lifelong learning and help you intentionally design your future.
   

Arts Innovation Labs require a strong commitment over a short period. They’re best suited to students ready to fully engage in an intensive learning experience.

The labs welcome students with a range of academic interests, experiences and skill sets. No technical background is required — only diverse perspectives, curiosity and willingness to engage. Unless otherwise specified, each lab is open to undergraduate students from all uOttawa faculties.

For most labs, participants must:

• have completed at least 24 academic units at the time of registration
• be in good academic and financial standing
• commit to participating in the full duration of the lab

You can take more than one Arts Innovation Lab, depending on availability and program requirements. You could also choose to participate in similar experiential learning opportunities through other uOttawa faculties, including FSS Challenges, Telfer Innovation Sprints and CoCreate Health Sprints, and combine them toward your degree where permitted. Learn more about experiential learning opportunities at uOttawa.
 

Labs unfold over a short but packed time frame, fully immersing you in a challenge.

Here’s what you can expect:

• Collaborative problem-solving: You’ll work in small, interdisciplinary teams to address real-world challenges, making decisions together as you learn from mentors and professors.
• New ways of working: You’ll use arts- and humanities-based approaches to question assumptions, experiment with new ideas and develop responses that move beyond the same old solutions.
• An intensive experience: You’ll work in a fast-paced, immersive lab that stretches your thinking, sustains momentum and shows you what’s possible when you work together.

Arts Innovation Labs are designed to challenge you, support meaningful growth and help make that growth visible to you and to others.