ECU Opens New Graduate Student Studios at Centre for Digital Media

Emily Carr University of Art + Design (ECU) has officially opened its new 10,000 square-foot graduate student studios and working spaces in the Centre for Digital Media (CDM).

Located directly across Carolina Street from ECU, the facility includes Master of Design (MDes) working areas, Master of Fine Arts (MFA) studios and critique/gallery spaces and common amenities, including a lounge, kitchen and meeting rooms.

“With more than 2350 full-time students, we’re already testing the limits of our footprint at ECU’s eight-year-old main campus,” says Trish Kelly, President + Vice-Chancellor at ECU. “This expansion will allow us to repurpose spaces on the main campus to support undergraduate education. It’s also a first look at how we’ll be able to grow to accommodate broader programming for students at all levels and offer a deeper suite of resources and supports for our community members as the False Creek Flats neighbourhood continues to develop around us.”

The CDM project is generously supported by the BC Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills, which has provided $1.6 million in capital project funding.

In June, the members of the ECU Board of Governors toured the facility to admire the newly completed project.

The CDM once housed facilities supporting the operation of Finning International, the Vancouver-based heavy machinery company which, in 2001, gifted an 18-acre site on False Creek Flats to the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, BC Institute of Technology and ECU via the Great Northern Way Trust. In addition to ECU’s new grad student facilities, the CDM houses classroom space for academic use by ECU’s postsecondary partners, as well as areas for businesses, startups, research organizations and other commercial and public endeavours.

The new grad studios at CDM are currently in use by hybrid graduate studies cohorts, including students on summer residency as part of the Low-Residency MFA and Critical Ecological Practices programs. The studios will welcome their next full-time MDes and MFA cohorts in September 2025, on the eve of the official launch of ECU’s centennial celebrations.

“Our main campus graduate studios were not set up with regular collaboration and interaction between MFA and MDes students in mind, so we knew we had to prioritize that way of working going forward,” says Justin Langlois, ECU’s Associate Vice President of Research + Dean of Graduate Studies. “This new facility does exactly that. It clusters student research interests in a way that hadn’t been possible before. And personally, my excitement comes from thinking about how this expansion might function as a model for an accelerator-type environment, where diverse interests, expertise and programming feed one another and create a fast track for bringing new ideas to bear in meaningful ways in the broader community.”

Meanwhile, the former grad-student areas in ECU’s main campus building are being repurposed for classrooms and other spaces supporting ECU’s undergraduate cohorts. Community members are advised to be aware of construction activity through August 2025.

See our recent Community Update for more information.