In anticipation of the opening of a new campus in 2017, Emily Carr University of Art + Design has been committed to making sure its students are prepared to enter an Internet-focused business world that values art and design skills by partnering with over 100 companies, including Vancouver-based startup accelerator GrowLab.
Emily@Grow is a new program and partnership with GrowLab that puts together innovative young companies and Emily Carr's skilled design researchers. The program went through a successful pilot phase in fall 2013 and has now partnered with the BC Innovation Council (BCIC) for additional funding.
“In a larger strategic way, Emily Carr is about trying to figure out how to continue to be super-relevant and super-engaged with what's happening in culture and what's happening in innovation. This is an example of that,” said Kate Armstrong, director of Emily Carr's Social and Interactive Media Centre and one of the leaders of the program.
She said the the pilot program in the fall allowed the school to verify that there was room for improvement in the way design was being integrated in startups.
“There was a gap with the early-stage company teams that [GrowLab was] seeing coming through their accelerator,” Armstrong said. “They were seeing people who typically had somebody whose expertise was in business, someone whose expertise was technology, and they really needed design expertise because they didn't typically have one.”
GrowLab was happy to partner with Emily Carr, and has a history of teaming their businesses up with skilled people from various disciplines.
“We have done a similar type of program with Lighthouse Labs,” said Jonathan Bixby, GrowLab's executive director. “They put on these boot camps where they teach their students basically how to build apps or [use app creator] Ruby on Rails in eight weeks.”
He said the companies from the original pilot phase were impressed with the abilities of Emily Carr's students. “Some of our companies actually have continued to work with them after the project,” Bixby added.
Bixby said the program isn't just about providing companies with design experts; it's also about giving students experience with innovative startups as opposed to throwing them into a huge corporation.
“I believe the world is getting eaten by software, the world is getting eaten by startups. So for me, I believe the best education someone can get is to go and work at a startup,” he said. “It's flexible, it's dynamic, it's changing all the time, it's a perfect microcosm of where the world is going to from an innovation and entrepreneurship perspective.”
One of the companies on board with this current phase of the program, Allur Spark, has an Emily Carr intern working on design for its real estate customer relationship management software.
“What we hope to get out of it is providing an experience and some know-how, and at the same time get the benefit of someone using their natural talent and helping us figure out some problem that we might have not had the perspective of looking at,” said Allur co-founder Jeff Park.
SpaceList, a real estate listing company located in Vancouver, was part of the initial pilot program, and ended up keeping its intern on as an employee afterwards.
“He just jumped in and started helping us with design. As a startup we are always trying to do more faster, so to have him jump in and start rowing was really helpful for us,” said SpaceList CEO and founder Bill MacEwen. “He was really able to make these incremental changes in a very agile way and start improving the design of the site from Day 1.”
With the success of the first two phases and additional BCIC funding, Emily@Grow will be moving forward with another round in September and will continue building the program from there.
“The overall intention is to take this as a starting point for how Emily Carr is working with accelerators and to grow that, because it has really immediate impacts for the companies, which is something BCIC likes to see,” said Armstrong.
