Stories of Partnership: hua foundation and UBC ACRE + ACAM

Joanna – It’s so nice to see everyone here today. My name is Joanna Yang, I go where she/her pronouns and I’m the Senior Manager of the Center of Asian Canadian Research Engagement, which is another acronym if you didn’t know so we just call it ACRE. It’s so nice to see some familiar faces, some new faces here today at 312 Main, so welcome.

Right now we’re collectively situated on the ancestral, traditional, unceded territories of the three nations, the Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish and Musqueam. And for me, a Land Acknowledgement always serves as an opportunity to reflect on my personal responsibility as a Chinese Canadian, second generation settler, child of immigrants. This is my chance to think about the complicity that I have in upholding colonial systems, especially as an employee of the University of British Columbia, which is one of the most colonial names you can get out there. And I also think about the responsibility I have to dismantle the systems through my work, but also through the way I am in my personal life. I hope that this serves as an opportunity for you to think about that as well. Just quickly, the Center for Asian Canadian Research Engagement, or ACRE, was established two years ago, with the intent to create a space to co-create and co-produce publicly relevant research alongside Asian Canadian communities in place with Asian Canadian communities. So it kind of gives you a sense of why we’re at 312 Main today as opposed to Point Grey. And quickly it was created in response to the way we witnessed rising levels of anti-Asian racism throughout the pandemic. But it’s not to say that that has gone away. And today, I hope that you leave with a sense that you’ve learned a little bit about the different types of Asian Canadian community engaged research programs, initiatives, and events that many folks here have been responsible for over the past many, many years at UBC and beyond. So you’ll have a chance to hear from JP, christina and Szu later on today.

And for us involved, we often find ourselves considering our place in relation to other people and communities, both in our personal and professional lives. And so this work is not work that we leave at five o’clock, at least emotionally. It doesn’t end on the weekend. It’s really part of who we are and that’s why I think about how we occupy these Indigenous lands in relation to where we come from, or as our ancestors come from, and why we are still here. And so it’s very fulfilling, yet challenging work. But I think a lot of us are drawn to it because of that and because of each other, and because of opportunities to deepen relationships with each other and communities that go beyond the bounds of maybe where our parents or grandparents are used to. And I think, especially as a parent now, I think it’s really important to think about different ways we can imagine a collective future that is more equitable and inclusive of all.

Szu – Hello, my name is Szu Shen, I use she/her pronouns. I’m the Program Manager for the Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies (ACAM). I’m very humbled to be here today to be honest. JP and christina, I feel like I’ve known you for close to 10 years, and maybe seven years for you. They’re both individuals who’ve done so much brilliant work, both within and outside of ACAM. And I’ve learned so much from just working with you and observing how you work with others as well. So I’m really excited for the conversation that’s going to happen today. I want to thank Kat and the Community Engagement Office for providing the space because I feel like over the 10 years we’ve worked together, we’ve never had a chance to sit down and reflect on our partnership. And what does that mean for us as individuals, but also as people who work at UBC. So yeah, I’m excited. I guess before we jump into the conversation, I’ll just invite the two speakers to introduce themselves.

christina – Hi, everyone. And just before I introduce myself, I think Szu is a little bit more humble. Szu’s actually a King’s Award of Excellence Staff Member. In regards to a lot of the work that we do in community, I think Szu plays such a huge role in our ability to do that and so I just wanted to shout that out. So my name is christina lee, I used she/they pronouns. I am the Director of Community Capacity and Strategic Initiatives at hua foundation. I am an ACAM alumni, I graduated 2018 and I am currently co teaching ACAM320J with JP.

JP – Hello everyone. My name is JP Catungal. I use he/him pronouns. I’m an Assistant Professor in the Institute for Gender, Race, sexuality and Social Justice or GRSJ, or the Social Justice Institute, yet another acronym. And I’m also affiliated with ACAM. I am founding co-director of ACRE along with Henry Yu. And to echo what’s been said, it’s been really amazing in the last 10 years to work in various capacities with both ACAM and more recently, ACAM and with our community partners, and collaborators and co-conspirators, both at UBC, and community.

Szu – Thanks both. So yeah. When I was first asked to moderate today’s event, I was also asked a question, how did this awesome 10 year alone relationship start? And it was really hard for me to answer that question. So I asked around. And the more I asked around, the less sure I was about how it started because there’s just so many stories. Some people are saying, “Oh, they started noticing hua because both ACAM and hua are very passionate about mentoring and empowering young people in a way that values their lived experience and cultural backgrounds. And in some sort of saying, “like, Oh, I just met folks from hua at different community events in Chinatown or around Vancouver and that’s how they got connected and talking”. And then there’s another faculty who mentioned that “Oh, like, I think it’s a shared interest. And talking about food, food security, sustainability and accessibility through a culturally appropriate and relevant lens.” So there’s just so many different ways that we come together. So as I asked around, “I was like, oh, maybe there wasn’t a single moment that the two organizations sit down and say, “Hey, let’s work together and be partners.” And you know, there’s no business handshake. I think, the more I asked around, the more stories I heard. It was like, Oh, I think this partnership actually emerged, not as a top down decision, but more like from a different and multiple encounters and interpersonal connections that we built on the ground. And that speaks to a very important aspect, I think of how we work together, is that—and chris you’re talking about, when we were preparing for today’s event, that we got to know each other as people first, not as people we work with, or as partners, but as people who share similar interests and passions, but also people who have lives outside our work. Yeah, and I think that really guides and informs how we work together, especially in terms of the care and compassion we have for one another. So I just wanted to invite chris and JP to maybe also talk a little bit about how the partnership started for them, and also how the partnership has shifted over the years.

christina – Yeah, I was joking when we were preparing for this event, I was joking that Szu and I should probably compare notes to make sure our stories line up because I’m not sure that I could define a particular moment either of when the partnership began. And I guess it’s also because I did the ACAM minor. So I started, I think I officially declared my minor around maybe 2015 I wanna say? But I wasn’t with hua in any official capacity at that point not until about 2018. And so that kind of overlap and the blurriness between those lines, I think really speaks to the depth that ACAM has always been engaged in community, and speaks to the kind of values that really uphold our partnership to work together. And so whether it was like some of the other projects that we’ve worked with ACAM and ACAM students like our anti racism and solidarities resource guide, and our language access project work—all of those partnerships are in some ways, through and with ACAM but as a community member and not necessarily as an institution. And so, through all of those experiences together, I think that really led to the idea of building this course together. It wasn’t a particular moment where we decided, “Hey, we should have a research studio for like students,” it was like, you know, we’ve, JP and I are working together on the language access project work and like, some of our response work as an organization prior to the course coming together. And really like you know, in those in-between conversations, like Szu was saying, as people between our work, that’s when those ideas really have an opportunity to form or like, okay, maybe this can be something like more tangible and we can pull together a project in that way.

JP – To me, one of the most pivotal moments of kind of the origin story of ACAM320J—which is the research studio that Christina and I co-teach, we’ll be offering for the second time in September—is the pandemic. We worked together on what became the C-19 Response Coalition, which was a coalition of community members, and I include myself and other UBC folks who are involved from Tagalog, Vietnamese, and Chinese speaking communities to respond in culturally appropriate and culturally and linguistically appropriate ways in a pandemic to ensure that resources, public health messaging, but also government benefits reach our communities, and including those who are most vulnerable, and especially those who are most vulnerable. And we were very cognizant of the kind of language barriers, but also the more softer kind of cultural manifestations of those barriers—the ways that images are used, but also stereotypes circulated around the virus and who was causing it and who was to blame. And we didn’t want our communities left behind. And so we worked together as a coalition to produce resources for our various communities. And that evolved into the Language Access Projects, when we realized that there was a larger systemic issue around large scale communications around for example, pandemics or other emergencies, that there were barriers to who the messaging is crafted for. And so that became the kind of foundation for our work when we realize, okay, we’ve been working together on this, and also, you know, working in community and other capacities prior to that. How do we then create even more capacity? And that was partly how ACM320J was created is to seize the opportunity to use the classroom as a space, where we can train younger people into doing this kind of work, working with community in ways that advance our kind of commitments to equity, and to community-engaged forms of responsible and ethical research and pedagogy. So those are, the very direct, one on one, interpersonal kinds of relationships, but also, like, very immediately relevant kinds of ways that kind of ground the work that we’ve been doing together.

Szu – Thanks for sharing that. Yeah. I remember the beginning of us working from home, and us trying to figure out how to get on Zoom meetings, maybe around late March 2020. And I think it was Kevin, who reached out to our director that time and say, “Hey, we have this project that we really wanted to respond to the committee needs in terms of getting reliable, but also culturally and linguistically equitable resources out there.” And I’m kind of curious in terms of, because this is not something I guess, not like a traditional affiliate program would do, right. So I’m curious to like, I guess from chris’s point of view, what was the thinking behind approaching ACAM? And for JP, from your perspective as a faculty, but also as someone who is affiliated with ACAM, what’s your response—I think in terms of like, maneuvering, like in terms of like your capacity as like institutionally situated faculty in higher education, but also like this kind of very immediate ask to respond, and to support a community? Maybe JP first?

JP – I was lucky in that semester that I didn’t have any teaching. So I didn’t have to do the emergency maneuvering to switch to online. And so I had capacity unlike other people to be able to do that. I had banged a couple of course releases by that point that I used that semester and it worked out that way. So that was one. That was one answer to that question. Another answer is that I had witnessed by that point already, the staggering ways that the Filipino community was touched by the pandemic and other Asian Canadian communities, also. The discourse, the racist, anti Asian discourses that had already been circulating by that point. But also in the case of the Filipinx community, knowing from my own research, and what you know, the scholarship and statistics say, but also from my own family members and community members—the disproportionate ways that people from my communities work in, in healthcare and caregiving, in Canada customer service, essential work, right. So a lot of my people were in the frontlines, including my mom who works at Home Depot, for example. And so like very immediate, very personal ways that I witnessed the pandemic bearing on my community. And so I also witnessed for me in that community, the ways that misinformation was circulating through transnational digital networks. And, yeah, so that was also something that I wanted to respond to. And so it was really useful for me to be in community, to respond in ways that was not like, I mean, many of us, I think, certainly myself, felt very overwhelmed by just the you know, the sheer immediacy of the need to respond, but also just the sheer uncertainty at that time in March and April 2020. And so, it was really heartening for me to be in community to be able to, like make use of each other’s know-how, and capacity and expertise, so I think the pandemic really tested my understanding of academia as the site of expertise. And so that’s, that’s really important. For me, that was a big lesson of the pandemic: that actually, community knew how to respond. Right. And so that’s also really important. And then when we think about a course, like ACAM 320J, the kind of work that we do, is we need to kind of de-center academia, or the university as an institution, as the prime site of expertise. That my experience from working with the senior team responsible for the coalition really made it clear to me that I knew very little about, or at least, I did not appreciate enough what kinds of knowledge and know-how and expertise actually reside in and are held in community.

christina – I think, just to several points that you made there as well, is that part of it also, in our broader work of capacity building and systems changes, really kind of through the pandemic, seeing the cycles of burnout that we’re hitting with the community members, artists, especially those who are responding to emergency and how, like, this kind of ongoing question of like, how do we increase the capacity for people to respond, for communities to respond, to the emergencies as they happen, and things like that. And so whether it’s like through activating system change work, which is where my work tends to be, or some of my colleagues in terms of like, you know, even collective gathering and sharing and supporting each other is a form of capacity building. And so opportunities if we can, like formalize those within a space that has a little bit more structure and stability and to kind of create that infrastructure for these types of partnerships and things like that to grow. That was something that I learned under the pandemic.

Szu – Thanks. You both have already kind of touched on the course that you’re co teaching last year, and then you’ll be co teaching again this year. And we will just shift the focus a little bit to talk about the course. So ACAM 320J is a community university engagement supported fund. And we’re very lucky to receive the funding support last year to develop and deliver the course. Ee piloted the course last year and received really positive feedback from both the students and community partners that we’ve worked with. Yeah, so just I think you really talk about how that idea started. But I guess I wanted to learn a little bit more about it from the curriculum perspective, with ACAM like how does that fit with the rest of the courses, in terms of the overall pathway for students?

JP – So ACAM is celebrating its 10th here, so it’s ACAM 10. And throughout the last 10 years, ACAM’s curriculum has grown and this is one of the ways that it has grown is through the creation of ACAM320J. The J—we have a 320 series where like a bunch of us teach under that skeleton course, and so eventually, it will become hopefully its own course. But it’s a way for us to pile in and try out courses. There are much larger conversations to be had about ACAM borrowing capacity from other units. I’m bought out of one of my courses in GRSJ to be able to teach in ACAM. ACAM as an undergraduate minor is not a line holding, faculty line holding unit. And so that also introduces its own kind of challenges. It’s certainly a context for the kind of work that we are able and not able to do. And there’s also resourcing implications for that. So for the last 10 years—people in this room know very well that chasing resources has been one of the key tasks of both certainly ACAM but even more recently, ACRE. I really appreciated the help of folks, particularly in this room, who have helped us be able to do that. Back to curriculum: 320J, was created in part to ensure that our ACAM students, both those who are formally minors, declared as minors in the ACAM program, and also others who are interested in community engage work that is culturally and linguistically and equitably appropriate training and methods on working with community—that there is a space for that in their learning, in the way that they are trained. So that these are skill sets and commitments that they can then take in their own life, both still as students, but also eventually when they graduate. It’s really significant I think that christina, one is the one that is co teaching the course with me as really a knowledge bearer in the community through the work that they do. But also, it’s significant that christina is an alum of ACAM. One of my alliances has always been that alumni engagement is community engagement.

Even while they reside in different buckets within the university, another conversation, but yeah, So by design, it’s necessary I think, for ACAM320J to be able to do the kind of studio type of work that we want to do, like direct hands on partner work with community, for it to be small enough to be able to provide that kind of more one on one, more personal and more direct engagement with the students. And we bring a lot of community folks as knowledge bearers, as guest speakers as mentors but also as project partners. And I’m sure we’ll talk about that a bit more later.

christina – And I guess just part of the ideation process and as we do course planning which we will be starting again today after this event. A lot of the thread in my brain, as an alumni, What would have been a dream course for me as a student? And I think that has really given me—well, you might talk about, like how this course is pretty unprecedented. There hasn’t really been an exact example of it in the past, as far as I know. But that kind of gives us a lot of space to be creative about the ways that we approach this type of work. And so that kind of freedom to dream, through and to imagine, like what curriculum can look like has been really exciting to run with. And I think, especially bringing community into the classroom in this way, is really something that we actually talked about quite explicitly in the classroom, as well is like: How do we equalize community knowledge with academic knowledge? And those sorts of experiences and wisdom, intelligence and those types of things as all being on the same level and not privileging one over the other. Because, as JP was kind of saying, you know, there is a lot of that wisdom, but it’s just like, sometimes, you know, whatever circumstances in people’s lives, they don’t bring them into post secondary education, and that doesn’t mean that that wisdom doesn’t exist. It’s in a different place in a different time. And I think, in particular, thinking about the ways that this idea of like academic objective knowledge has always, historically, and continues to be a tool of oppression, to really turn that on its head was in the classroom, and how the students go into that mindset of questioning, in a systemic way in how we have value of knowledge, experience and those types of things.

JP – Yeah, I think it’s really important for us to know that part of what ACAM320J has come up against, or comes up against, is that there’s a long history of the university being extractive and damaging to community. And so there is, from particularly historically marginalized communities, a certain kind of suspicion, and doubts and reticence to work with university. So it’s significant that christina, in our community partners in the community course members, come into our course. The university doesn’t parachute into community. It’s also a different way of doing community engaged work in the classroom, right. So rather than thinking about, you know, students are seeing projects as offering solutions to problems that are in community, right, thinking together about partnership and co-creation of knowledge in a kind of horizontal way, I think is really quite important. I think that history of reckoning with a university, right, as a historically oppressive institution, I think is really important. I think we, certainly in our teaching, that’s something that we talk about with our students. Right, and how do we do, how do we proceed from that, is a question that we collectively in the class try to deal with.

Szu – Yeah, thanks for sharing that. I really see the way you work with community partners—that the two of you, the care you put into approaching the partners and also introducing them to this idea of coming to UBC to work with students, and introducing them to the idea of partnering throughout the term, like you really put that thought into each steps of the course. And I also want to talk about this, but I also want to go back to a point you’re talking about earlier about resourcing. I mentioned earlier that this course last year was not funded by CUES. I just want to maybe invite chris and also JP to talk about what was it like to co apply for the funding. Chris is our master of grant writing here. We’ve co written so many different grant applications, but like, yeah, please share your wisdom.

christina – I feel like it takes up more than half of my job is just writing grants all the time. I think what’s really important in our working relationship and our community relationship is that the commitment is there outside of funding. And so I think that our approach to it in the sense that whether funding comes to a project or not, we’re both committed and we’ll figure out a way. If a particular grant that we applied for doesn’t come through, which has happened many times, you know, our commitment to each other is based on trust and not based on funds. And so that really speaks to that partnership and relationship with ACAM and all the acronyms—because there are obviously like other parts of the ACAM ecosystem that we definitely interact with as well in the same ways. And so in that mindset of approaching grants, I think, not only does that I think make my grant writing easier, like my job as a grant writer easier, is that I think that there’s so much of that foundation there. And we have so much beautiful familiarity with each other’s mission and values, and what we want to see come out of the project, that it really—the process of grant writing is not necessarily as arduous as some other things may be. To that, as well, I mean, there are challenges with resourcing. One of the main challenges that often comes up is like, you know, even if staff departments have like various vendors, see our work for what it is, understand, support, hold the same values that we do—when I kind of referred to just a couple minutes ago around that kind of like “objective” academic vision is that when we have adjudicators for grants, they may not have that same familiarity with the values behind community engaged work. And so we have in the past, through lots of different funders, been told that our partnership is not the right fit for a community engaged fund. And for us to receive that feedback after the grant is closed, it’s a little bit like, what? And so, you know, that’s like, been a huge systemic challenge for us in terms of like, we don’t always know, going into it, who we’re writing for. And I think that that kind of idea of blind objectivity really has a lot of colonial bearing to it and it has a lot of impacts on communities when they’re trying to like—it’s kind of like in a broader sense too like in racial justice work, which makes up the majority of our work, it’s like, when you have to go into a room and justify why racism is bad, it’s like that kind of thing. And so, when grant applications, for example, are limited to like, in 1000 characters, do we have to explain that racism is bad first, before we get into, like what we’re doing as the actual outputs of the project? And so those things are things are such a huge factor, not only within granted programs, but on a systemic level in terms of, you know, whether we may want to, like pursue more sustainable funding from the faculty of Arts for something like this course, and not have to be applying for grants every single year to make this program happen. It’s like, is there that level of support and understanding of the value of those things at a faculty level at the Dean level, and those types of things as well?

JP – Where to begin? Grant writing is emotionally laden work. Let’s start there. It is a space where we dream together. Like when we think about what we want to do together? What do we want to propose? It is labor intensive work. You know, being up at midnight providing feedback or rewriting things, that kind of thing. And also receiving feedback is also emotionally labourous work, particularly when the rejection seem unfair, and definitely misunderstanding the kind of work that we do, but also even more, if it’s clear from the feedback that the feedback is coming from a place that is institutionally really damaging, like, premise on very colonial and conservative ideas about what university relationships should look like. For example, there’s not enough impact on the community or something—as if it’s unilateral like the university to community. Right, “the university should impact the community”—that kind of thing—that’s really frustrating. When, you know, the hua foundation, or community partners, for example, are like we want to work with you, we want to train the students. That’s the impact we want to have.  And that will eventually reap benefits for us in the longer term. Maybe we didn’t communicate that properly or clearly enough, but they’re still, I think, in some, in many instances, this like, very, traditional idea of, you know, the kind of university parachuting in to provide solutions. That is really frustrating when we receive that feedback later on. So while our relationships are based on trust, a very important foundation, for sure, resources are still really necessary. And because, in parth, resources are necessary for us to be able to actualize our commitments to proper equitable, culturally appropriate ACAM 320J and just community engaged work. Right, and it’s, you know, small things like providing food for our community partners. Not small, actually, that’s significant. Because it’s, how, part of how we make community part of how we sustain relationships, right? We want to be able to ensure that when community partners come to UBC and Point Grey, we’ve talked a little bit about the politics of location, right? At the very least, their parking is covered. And these costs add up. And we’ll get back to some of that, I’m sure. But that’s the question of resources for us, is actually, are we able to put our money literally where our mouth is in terms of the kind of commitments that we have? Right? Does our spending reflect? Are we able to reflect our commitments through the ways that we put our resources to work? Right, and that’s really important.

Szu – Yeah, I’m so glad you mentioned parking meters, cause I remember, I was exchanging emails of cause to just figure to out okay, how do I get you because they’re higher as the faculty to teach a course. But then somehow there’s something on the system, you couldn’t get the faculty, I was like, Okay, should I just list your car under my accounts, or at least get a staff account?  And yeah, it was just a lot of back and forth. Like when you think about community engagement is sounds really good. And I was like, dreaming thing, but there are a lot of nitty gritty things that you have, you want to do well, and you want to do it in a way that kind of is mutually respectful and beneficial to each other. Yeah. And to go back to the course itself. And of course, trader, you both talk about the importance of putting community and academic expertise on the same level. Can you share a little bit more about like, why is it important? And why is it important for you to co teach?

JP – I think it goes for me, it goes back to what I said earlier, which is that there’s a lot of knowledge or a sense of community that is not available or foregrounded enough in classroom and university settings. Because of this, again, history of the university being elevated in a particular way, as the holder of knowledge is the second expertise. And that is something we want to kind of address in the course and so bringing experts who bring you know, their work, but also their values and their experiences, their histories of personal lives into the classroom is really important. A lot of us do our work, including myself as I can, you know, as someone who does community engaged research and teaching. I bring my personal history as a first generation working class, migrant queer person, all of that informs the kind of work that I do. And I’m lucky to be in units GRSJ and E camp where that is valued, but that is not true everywhere in the university, particularly in units where like objectivity and leaving yourself behind is touted as a better way to go. Yeah, so that’s, I think it really important as as a teacher with commitments to equity, social justice, that we subject the university to these very critical questions about putting its money where it’s not this, right, that we actually shift systemically even one classroom at a time. The kinds of practices that we practice, as researchers, as teachers, as folks who work with community, right, so that’s, that is really important for me, in the classroom in 320J,  we, you know, assign readings that are not just academic books, or journal articles, that but resources produced and community. Access Alliance, which is a kind of a multicultural, anti racist health organization, and based in the Greater Toronto Area, has a resource that we drew quite a lot on and as part of our course, curriculum, and we assigned, work producing nation. And we also brought in folks who have worked in community, both from the university and from the community, we brought funders into the classroom, we invited folks our community showcases and that’s another part that we should probably also talk about is that sharing knowledge with community is also community engaged worker, ensuring that our the work that we do doesn’t just live on subsequent dust, which happens on the university. Right. So that’s also something that’s really important to me. So those are just a couple of points that come to mind from your question.

christina – And I think also, that you mentioned, the community showcase what was really huge that we actually decided as a class, to move our communication base from classroom time, on a Thursday afternoon at the Music Library to a Saturday evening, in that Quick Sight community center. in Mount Pleasant, to make sure that it was actually accessible to the communities that we’re serving, UBC, point gray is at the end of the earth, it is so far away. And even if we were to make the event in the evening, like after working hours, it’s a considerable distance for a lot of people to travel. Without much less like during class, our class time was like 12 to 120 or something like that last year. And so the students were very committed to ensuring and really implementing those practices of accessibility in those things for community as well. And I lost my train of thought, I have fun. Do I come back to me?

JP – Can I add something to that? I mean, it goes back to the question of like, practices, but also resourcing. You know, when we planned that showcase, to me, one of the things that we dealt with the sentencing, how do we make this a welcoming space for everyone? Right? How do we lay out the space that we provide food? If we’re doing in the evening? Right? We should probably see people, right? And so okay, we need resources for that. Right. But also, you know, in this case, like, showcasing your work, presenting back to the community also relies or requires that you not just present your work, but also that you put chairs out, like the kind of the, the labor, the manual labor that actually is necessary in order for community engagement to happen, right, that is community engagement. These are the kinds of things that we teach our students, right, it’s not just kind of like up here high level questions about, you know, the philosophies and ethics and communication but actually like, what work needs doing, right, how many chairs that we need, again, what layout do we you know, arrange the room, right, should we have when we communicate to the RSVP list shouldn’t be communicated that kind of accessibility characteristics of the space. How do you get better? These kinds of nitty gritty questions that can sometimes disappear or get hidden when we frame it? Certainly in the classroom setting community education is a kind of lofty philosophical question. And so as these are as important to making community engage pedagogy can I add something to that? I mean, it goes back to the question of like, practices, but also resourcing. You know, when we planned that showcase, to me, one of the things that we dealt with the sentencing, how do we make this a welcoming space for everyone? Right? How do we lay out the space that we provide food? If we’re doing in the evening? Right? We should probably see people, right? And so okay, we need resources for that. Right. But also, you know, in this case, like, showcasing your work, presenting back to the community also relies or requires that you not just present your work, but also that you put chairs out, like the kind of the, the labor, the manual labor that actually is necessary in order for community engagement to happen, right, that is community engagement. These are the kinds of things that we teach our students, right, it’s not just kind of like up here high level questions about, you know, the philosophies and ethics and communication but actually like, what work needs doing, right, how many chairs that we need, again, what layout do we you know, arrange the room, right, should we have when we communicate to the RSVP list shouldn’t be communicated that kind of accessibility characteristics of the space. How do you get better? These kinds of nitty gritty questions that can sometimes disappear or get hidden when we frame it? Certainly in the classroom setting community education is a kind of lofty philosophical question. And so as these are as important to making community engage pedagogy can I add something to that? I mean, it goes back to the question of like, practices, but also resourcing. You know, when we planned that showcase, to me, one of the things that we dealt with the sentencing, how do we make this a welcoming space for everyone? Right? How do we lay out the space that we provide food? If we’re doing in the evening? Right? We should probably see people, right? And so okay, we need resources for that. Right. But also, you know, in this case, like, showcasing your work, presenting back to the community also relies or requires that you not just present your work, but also that you put chairs out, like the kind of the, the labor, the manual labor that actually is necessary in order for community engagement to happen, right, that is community engagement. These are the kinds of things that we teach our students, right, it’s not just kind of like up here high level questions about, you know, the philosophies and ethics and communication but actually like, what work needs doing, right, how many chairs that we need, again, what layout do we you know, arrange the room, right, should we have when we communicate to the RSVP list shouldn’t be communicated that kind of accessibility characteristics of the space. How do you get better? These kinds of nitty gritty questions that can sometimes disappear or get hidden when we frame it? Certainly in the classroom setting community education is a kind of lofty philosophical question. And so as these are as important to making community engage pedagogy as the questions around what is it? How do we actually save our philosophies?

christina – So the other point that I wanted to say was that for all that we had in terms of community engagement, and bring me in classroom and for brain customers community, one at some of the feedback that we got from the students, they actually wanted more, like, even more like they wanted to hear more from community organizers, they wanted to do site visits, and community, they wanted to visit the offices and the studios and places of the organizations that they work with actually working, they wanted to be even more deeply engaged, apparently, like, you know, quite engaged course, or whatever it was. And I think that really speaks to the desire for a lot of students to really be involved in this work, when they have the opportunity to see a real pathway towards that, really jumping into it, because I like one of the comments that students made was that, like, they had always been interested in this type of community advocacy organizing work, but after having taken this class, I felt it was way more tangible and real as an opportunity than like, you know, it was just an abstract thing that they wanted to do before, but they could actually see themselves in this position on having taken this class. And we really saw that drawn a lot of students I think, and in their growth throughout the class, one of the things that really impacted me was seeing the students grow from September to December. And one of the examples was, that like, really sticks out the most to me, was that one of our guest speakers, in the earlier part of the course, was getting, okay, how much can I talk about it. They were employed by the UBC in a community manager role, but during the semester was laid off from the position, because the department that they work for did not value the work that they were doing. And it was so inspiring to see the students on completely on their own, asked to write a letter to that department, to the faculty and everything like that, to say that they’ve disagreed with what happened there. And they wanted to see justice. And they wanted to the university to uphold its community commitments to community engagement that are like, plastered all over, like the big flags. And that goes all over UBC. But what is the actual material tangible support? That looks like for people who do that really important work, the person was told that it can be replaced by like a coordinator role or something like that. But that person had been in that role for like six years, and all of the relationships that they have built up over the course of their time in that position, made their work so much more impactful, and the students wanted to do something about it. And that was like literally emotional for me.

Szu – Yeah, thanks for sharing that. I remember that moment. How the students really just come together and they collectively come up with Hey, we want to do something about it and about someone who kind of supports the program from behind like it’s always nice to see student growth even though I’m not physically in the classroom teaching them but I feel like oh, like these are like the children that can go and like take on like, this is important role, just being themselves but also like learning how to be themselves in different spaces in an institution. Okay, this speaking of space, this talk about the the space we’re in right now. So they told me this is paid by UBC ACRE, which is kind of unusual. Because someone’s stories, we heard that some of our colleagues is having trouble even to get funding to pay for like food or lunch, like the department meetings. So I guess like, can you talk a little bit about why is it important to use university resources in this way and to offer advice for staff who might want to, I guess, talk to suggest to the leadership that they need budget for space for food for honoraria, or for like, different things that we like the nitty gritty things you talk about that we usually don’t think about when we talk about community engagement.

JP – Our emotion reflects our values. Finances, the way that we spend our resources. And that’s really important to ACAM and ACRE turn now because it is the through these questions or resources, that we are able to actually make our work happen. You know, that co-share space that we pay for an ACRE in partnership with communities is unique direct resources towards kind of meeting our commitments to community partnership, I think it’s demands relatively simple, like if we say we’re committed to community partnerships, then we paid for that we resource that, we say we, you know, want to strengthen and steward the relationships that we have in community. And we invite people to things, right, we need to ensure that, you know, what we invite them to, actually allows us to be to hold those relationships in a good way that we that sharing food is actually a way that we enact those commitments, and so we need to pay for food. The co-share link a partnership, it comes partly from the fact that, you know, when a ACRE was starting, we heard a lot from community members, even before actually, one point great is far right, that we need to meet community where community is, right. And so that is one response is like, Okay, if we’re going to, you know, meet community where community is in this case, like, literally, then we need space in community. Right. And we need to devote money for that. Right. So, to me, it’s partly a question of what our priorities are. Right? The decisions around how we spend money at UBC, and I guess anywhere really, is, is driven by priorities, right? What do we prioritize? What do we prioritize? Argument means to relationships, right, to sustaining our relationships through being together? Right? Then we need to support the ways that we actually do that work. Right, and we, when we come together via food, that’s one way when we come together via food that is meaningful to us. Right? The food is carefully curated. If you come to any income or any career for that, you’ll know that, you know, half of the planning meeting is devoted to talking about it. Its because it’s important to us, right, we make assumptions about what universal food is at UBC, in ways that actually normalize certain foods over others. Right is just like something that everyone will like. Right? But there are cultural, culturally appropriate, there’s a [inaudible] of politics. Right? And we want that also reflected in the work that we do. Right? We want people to be able to articulate certain marginalized communities to be able to see themselves in the space that we have together. Right, so those nitty gritty things are important to us.

christina – The moral of that story is no Costco sandwich platters please. I think that really speaks to just the approach of seeing as people before research subjects before data points.

And I think that that is really at the core of, you know, why we’re in live sharing office space together and why we continue to have partnership projects and things like that, and I think to that end as well. With ACRE, paying for the space is understanding the different contributions that different people can make, but are not monetary outside of capitalism. And so the value and like really pushing to value non monetary contributions to work to community to collaborations as just as important as monetary, financial contributions. And so if UBC, as a huge institution has the ability to cover the financial costs, it releases that barrier for community organizations that they also are always thinking about in the back of their minds. When I say that, it’s like spend half my time writing grants, it’s like, that is such a huge barrier to our ability to really dream. It’s, you know, talking to Kevin, yesterday, we were having our weekly meeting and like adding more things to our wish list of things that we wish we could do, if I wasn’t grant writing, wasn’t doing other things like so many things that we wanted to implement as an organization. Like in terms of our internal system, team work or also like external work, partnerships, so much of that has been added to this long wish list of things that we wish we could be doing. But, you know, capacity was always the big thing.

Szu –Yeah, for sure. And so I want to talk a little bit more about the space sharing aspect of this partnership. So like, why is it important to be in a safe space, and also what has been the impact for you, as a community partner, to come into this space and to just, you know, be with each other.

christina – I think it really points to the idea that reciprocity and community aren’t one time, things. Like it’s constant action. It’s, it’s how we show up every day, or, you know, once a week, or however much that we have the capacity to do but it’s an ongoing thing that doesn’t begin with a particular project idea. And so, that approach, I think, is really why we want to be sharing the space together. And it’s like, I was kind of alluding to earlier around, you know, the idea for this class was not just one thing, and we sat down and brainstorm for it was over lots of conversations, but what gaps we were seeing in community, and what we wanted, as particular outcomes and goals at a systems level. And those types of conversations can only really happen in a good way when you’re constantly, you know, around each other and you have that trust. And we know that sometimes it’s something that comes up in like a tiny little conversation, just as you’re stepping out to grab lunch or something like that. It’s not necessarily meetings that you’ve loved, or the zoom call that you put in a doodle three months ago. It’s like, you know, JP, and I attended an event last week, and we’re just chatting about funding and stuff like that before because he showed up a little bit earlier, I bumped into him. And so it’s like those in between always being in space together.

JP – Up think we all know that a lot of work happens in the in between spaces, the hallways, the watercooler conversations, right. So there’s an entire literature and economic geography about the economic value of face to face that I won’t get into, but I like, you know, there is something really important about that being together, right? Because it is relationship building at its most basic level, when you know, we share lunches together, when we dream about, okay, we have access to certain spaces, we have shared commitments, we invite each other to things that we do, right? These are really important things because they use like the kinds of things that sustain community and our relationships. Right. So and that’s part of how we learn with each other, and about each other. Right, I think that’s really important.