Where community and campus collide

Fanshawe’s new purpose-built Innovation Village connects students and faculty with industry and community to drive collaboration and tackle societal challenges

Photo: Located in the heart of Fanshawe’s Oxford Street campus, Innovation Village is designed to foster collaboration between industry, community, students and faculty

GONE ARE THE days in which public colleges could stand apart from the wider innovation economy. Be it tech, ­manufacturing or the social sectors, today’s colleges see their role as one integrated into the economy at large. And to do that, schools like Fanshawe College are making big investments in facilities meant to incubate and foster the innovation flow.

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“Innovation Village is Fanshawe’s $58-million ­investment in our innovation future,” explains the school’s chief innovation and open assets officer Simon Trevarthen. “We have a vision and a roadmap to be the college leader in innovation, and Innovation Village is really the place where a lot of that happens. It’s a space for collaboration and ­creativity, and where imaginations can have no bounds.”

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A 95,000-square-foot physical and virtual hub, Innovation Village is centrally located at the heart of Fanshawe’s Oxford Street campus. The building includes the Diane Blake Centre for Excellence in Extended Reality, more than a dozen collaboration rooms, media and applied research labs, two makerspaces, the Leap Junction student business incubator, the Indigenous-focused Kalihwíyo Circle, the Canada Life Village Square and Forwell Hall, a new concert and event space. Designed by Toronto-based architects Diamond Schmitt and built by London’s D. Grant Construction, it was financially supported by FedDev Ontario as well as the city and the Fanshawe Student Union.

That’s what Innovation Village is. What, then, do school officials hope it achieves? Trevarthen says Innovation Village is, in some sense, a capstone on how the college has committed to applied and experiential learning.

“Most of our faculty are working in their respective fields, so it’s a place to bring industry and community partners together to solve community problems, be they around questions of social innovation, business challenges or ­sustainability challenges.”

Part of the facility’s impact will be measured on how the school ranks globally on metrics like research, innovation, social impact and economic development. But for it to really be a success, Trevarthen says innovation needs to be felt locally. Fanshawe has a great record on this front — around 80 per cent of their graduates remain in the region. “We really are training and building the capabilities and talent for the region, and that’s really something powerful,” he says.

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Essential to this mission, says Trevarthan, is fostering links with local business and industry sectors. “We have a whole raft of ways in which partners can be involved — everything from employment and co-op and internship programs all the way through to direct collaborations with industry,” he explains. “The vision for this space is giving the city and region a key piece of its innovation ecosystem — a place to convene and bring our talents and funders to the table so we can start meeting and exceeding the needs of what our growing economy needs.”

When he looks around and sees a growing EV sector, a healthcare sector in need of talent and calls for new approaches to housing, Trevarthan believes Fanshawe can play a role. “How do we convene and create those ­opportunities to help us solve real-life problems with the expertise of our students and the talent of our faculty?”

Innovation Village’s grand opening in late January ­signalled the start of a new chapter in terms of how Fanshawe tries to tackle this. The hope for Fanshawe is that by creating a central piece of infrastructure like Innovation Village, it will allow the school to be flexible, nimble and dynamic in how they respond to quickly shifting economic and community needs.

“My favourite part about it is the vibe,” says Trevarthan. “When you enter Innovation Village, there really is a hum of student and faculty activity. From the first day we opened, we were full of people using the space in the way we intended — in creative and dynamic ways. I think it’s a beautiful, stunning space, but it’s our students, our faculty, our staff and our partners coming together and using this in ­collaborative and creative ways that will truly bring Innovation Village to life.” Kieran Delamont