about the lab
INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE OF ART + DESIGN
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INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE OF ART + DESIGN ✱
The Wilson School of Design houses seven programs within KPU, Canada’s only polytechnic university, where hands-on skills are supplemental to traditional academics.
We believe that the purpose of design is to universally and responsibly affect positive change. The Wilson School of Design is a catalyst for relevant and meaningful change. Change that affects people’s lives calls for rigorously exploring, identifying, and developing where the potential for progress lies. The potential we see and nurture in the students we select, and the potential for advancing society at large.
Our conferences were made possible in part by a Teaching and Learning Innovation Grant, celebrating KPU’s proud history as a teaching university.
Lab founders
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Lab founders ✱
Erin Ashenhurst, BFA, MA, CDP
Erin has taught history, culture studies, and studio courses at the Wilson School of Design since 2010. With a background in editorial art direction and interactive design, her academic and creative projects explore themes including urban living and the built environment, digital narrative and online identities, film, photography, memory, and humour. Living in Vancouver, the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples, her writing on the depiction of the city in film and television has been published in books including The Fantasy of Reality: Critical Essays on The Real Housewives (2015), and Screen Tourism and Affective Landscapes: The Real, the Virtual, and the Cinematic (2023).
Carley Hodgkinson, BSc, BDes, MDes
Carley has chaired and taught studio and technology ethics courses in the Graphic Design for Marketing program at the Wilson School of Design since 2017. In her graphic design practice, Carley worked in agency, inhouse, and publication positions, and ran her own business, focusing on book design in the cultural sector. Prior to going back to teaching full time, Carley moved into user experience design, working as a senior visual designer on business intelligence software and big data collection. Her Masters work, Designing for Experience: Socio-Technological Installation in Transitional Public Space, sparked interest in public spaces, experience design, and urban planning, participating in social practice exhibits in Halifax, Lisbon and Vancouver.
RESEARCH ASSISTANTS
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RESEARCH ASSISTANTS ✱
Thank you to our outstanding Wilson School of Design Research Assistants from the Graphic Design for Marketing program for their excellent work on branding, website, print, and presentation design, and for their invaluable support during conference events:
