Arts Innovation Lab : The Wellbeing Action Challenge — October 2026
Oct 16, 2026 to Oct 18, 2026 — All day
Registration begins in September 2026.
AHL 3150 : Experiential Learning in Interdisciplinary Studies
- Open to: Undergraduate students from all faculties
- Credits: 1.5 units (graded Satisfactory / Not satisfactory)
Interdisciplinary Arts Innovation Lab
Why this lab? Why now?
In an increasingly fast-paced and demanding social environment, cultivating personal and collective mental and physical health has never been more critical. Wellbeing is not merely the absence of illness; it is an active, lifelong process of building resilience, emotional intelligence, social connection, and a sense of purpose. While evidence-based strategies from psychology and neuroscience provide a framework for understanding happiness, translating these theories into real-world lived experiences requires creative, hands-on interventions.
Art acts as a powerful catalyst for this translation, offering an embodied and reflective medium to explore, express, and cultivate individual and community health. This Arts Innovation Lab invites students to step into the role of wellness designers. You will move beyond theoretical frameworks to actively engineer, prototype, and implement a live activity that directly elevates the health, happiness, and connection of those who participate.
The challenge
How can we use the intersection of artistic practice and neuropsychological science to intentionally cultivate community health? How can we design environments and collective experiences that foster mindfulness, reduce stress, and strengthen human connection?
Working in interdisciplinary teams, you will collaborate with peers and wellness advisors to design, build, and facilitate a localized wellbeing intervention. Over the course of the lab, your team will:
- Discover. Identify systemic stressors and wellness gaps within a chosen community or group by exploring how factors like isolation, academic pressure, and emotional imbalance impact daily life.
- Define. Explore and define arts-based strategies and neuropsychology theory through hands-on practice, drawing upon concepts of mindfulness, emotional awareness, self-care, and eudaimonic happiness.
- Develop. Design and implement a live wellbeing activity using diverse creative mediums—such as collaborative art-making, narrative storytelling, mindful drawing, or textile/tactile manipulation—to foster social connection, gratitude, or stress reduction among your target participants.
- Deliver. Develop live wellbeing activities with measurable, real-world relevance by gathering immediate experiential feedback, prototyping activities, and presenting a scalable template for future community wellness programming.
Anticipated impact
By the end of the lab, you'll have:
- Contributed to real-world campus or community health initiatives by launching an actionable, participatory wellness intervention.
- Developed experimental insights into how creative studio practices can complement evidence-based mental health strategies.
- Strengthened your ability to design under constraints, facilitate group dynamics, and collaborate in fast-paced, interdisciplinary, real-world contexts.
- Gained clarity about how arts- and humanities-based thinking can serve as a direct tool for social intervention and holistic quality-of-life improvements.
Note: If your application is accepted, you will be registered in AHL 3150 (EN) or AHL 3550 (FR) and given access to the course portal on Brightspace, where all core reading modules on positive psychology and studio guidelines will be hosted.
Schedule and commitment
- Friday, October 16, 2026: 5:30 p.m.– 9:30 p.m. (OAG) – Theory Deep-Dive, Team Formations, and Ideation
- Saturday, October 17, 2026: 9 a.m.– 5 p.m. (uOttawa) – SMART Goals, Prototyping, Materials Prep, and Beta-Testing the Activity
- Sunday, October 18, 2026: 9 a.m.– 5 p.m. (uOttawa) – Live Implementation, Participant Feedback, and Final Impact Presentations
Spots are limited. Lunch is provided on Saturday and Sunday.
Once you are registered, your attendance and active participation are required for the full duration of the lab.