135 REASONs TO LOVE OCAD UNIVERSITY THE 2011/2012 ANNUAL REPORT OF YEARS THIS IS A BOOK OF OUR FAVOURITE THINGS. We think you’ll enjoy the way it tells a story and, in 135 ways, counts down to the present. No doubt you’ll notice too that, in looking back at 2011/2012, this anniversary edition of our Annual Report looks boldly forward. You can blame that, as we do, on our big imaginations. At OCAD University, imagining who we are and what we might become reflects the creative thinking we inspire in our students. For what we’ve learned, about established approaches, is that they should never be taken for granted. And that it’s always worth creating a new and better way. THE 2011 / 2012 ANNUAL REPORT 1 In touching three centuries, OCAD University has both held and made brighter the eternal flame of art and design. Our studios, classrooms, research labs, hallways, parks, library and common spaces bubble with the energetic imaginations of more than 4,000 students, from the “shiny people” — the apt term Jan Sage, our Director, Admissions & Recruitment, has given to our eager first-year students — to our well-honed professional fourth years and our clever, self-motivated graduate students. OCAD University has a lived set of values, respecting and advancing ethical practice, advocacy, diversity, accessibility, Aboriginal cultures, wellness, and global citizenship, and evincing creativity in entrepreneurship, innovation and sustainability. Our faculty and staff cross several generations, but all hold profound dedication to our students — committing their lives in many cases to their mentorship and our institution. As a result, our alumni are leaders in the art, media, design and curatorial worlds. They’re also innovative medical researchers, bankers, inventors and engineers. Our faculty is a wise, witty and healthily skeptical group, offering a fantastic mix of cognitive, material and intuitive knowledge. They love a good studio critique and debate. With their MESSAGE FROM help, the institution has evolved into a proper university, formed a senate, adopted outcomes-driven learning, increased its excellence and rigour, THE PRESIDENT and sky-rocketed research capacity — all without losing the healthy chaos, curiosity, quirkiness and out-of-the box thinking that is requisite in an art and How could one not love OCAD University? design school. OCAD University has always spilled beyond its walls, whether by stimulating last century’s new-wave music scene and Toronto’s continuing Queen West phenomena, galvanizing graphic design in Canada, kicking off Toronto’s architectural revolution with Will Alsop’s Sharp Centre for Design, or founding unifying industry initiatives such as the Mobile Experience Innovation Centre. A significant number of faculty members have launched their own companies, contributing to Ontario’s high cultural industry GDP. We are a frugal and intensely productive university, championing quality despite our no-frills budget. We are willing to take risks, ask the difficult questions, ever expand experiential learning and engage purposefully with the world around us. For 135 years, our institution has fiercely and wisely protected its independence, seeing this as a means to ensure one of the best art, design and media educations in the world. So, how could we not love OCAD U? DR. SARA DIAMOND, PRESIDENT AND VICE-CHANCELLOR, Photo by Tom Sandler. OCAD UNIVERSITY, O. OF ONT., RCA 135 REASONS TO LOVE OCAD UNIVERSITY 2 THE 2011 / 2012 ANNUAL REPORT 3 How fitting that each of the 135 items in this report represents a year of our legacy. Although these are achievements specific to 2011/2012, taken together they create a tapestry of OCAD University’s past and present and point to our great potential for the future. Whether it’s about art, design, research or strategy, the synthesis of disciplines fuels insights and forges new ideas. It’s a concept that has informed my career, eventually returning me to OCAD University as a member of its Board of Governors. It’s also why I am committed to the institution and its unique mission. The ability to integrate left and right brain skills is a mark of our interdisciplinary approach, an educational model in high demand. That demand is accelerating as global challenges require a coming together of people from different disciplines, collaborating to achieve relevant and simplified solutions. Already the integration of these skills and processes into the OCAD University curriculum has given us a strategic edge, as evidenced by our recent successes in business innovation competitions with traditional business schools. There is much to love in that. MESSAGE FROM At OCAD University we are strengthening our relevance not only by THE CHAIR, embracing change, but also by inspiring and driving change. The mix of invention and innovation that is central to our mission, along with the BOARD OF GOVERNORS passion of our students and faculty, will ensure that we continue to do so, as will the new strategic plan we approved in this reporting year. I love the innovators in our community for their enquiry, insight and creativity. You’ll see in these pages how our students and faculty gather and assemble information to identify needs, create inspired new works of art and design and generate solutions in the form of game-changing knowledge and ideas. Supporting them means continuing to grow the institution’s collaborative opportunities in business, healthcare and technology. That growth will produce what you’ll find in this report: viable, relevant and breakthrough results. I liken it to an aircraft accelerating on a runway, creating increasing friction to stimulate lift. We at OCAD U are airborne and gaining altitude. I can’t wait to see what the future holds for our students, equipped as they are with the talent and skills our world needs today. IAN C. TUDHOPE CHAIR, BOARD OF GOVERNORS Photo by Ron Baxter Smith. 135 REASONS TO LOVE OCAD UNIVERSITY 4 THE 2011 / 2012 ANNUAL REPORT 5 135 134 OUR 135TH ANNIVERSARY. The institution opened its first classrooms, located at 14 King St. W., on October 30, 1876. Twenty-five students were enrolled. Photo by Christina Gapic. OUR ADVOCATES AND FRIENDS. Take, for example, the Hon. Monte Kwinter. He joined us this year to chair our 135th Anniversary Celebrations Committee. A 1954 Industrial Design graduate and recipient of an OCAD U Honorary Doctorate in 2003, Kwinter is Member of Provincial Parliament for York Centre. J.W. Beatty and Arthur Lismer standing in front of the George A. Reid Wing, c. 1930. 135 REASONS TO LOVE OCAD UNIVERSITY 6 THE 2011 / 2012 ANNUAL REPORT 7 133 132 Photo by Cheryl Wang. SEVEN DECADES. Almost as impressive as this year’s anniversary was the THE GROUP OF SEVEN. Its story, our legacy, continues to make news — with diverse group of grads who came out to celebrate it. In attendance at May’s legendary wilderness painter Arthur Lismer (OCA Vice-Principal from 1919–27) Alumni Day festivities were guests who had graduated as far back as 1940 named a National Historic Person in 2011. and as recently as 2012. Arthur Lismer skipping rope with students, c. 1927. Courtesy of OCAD U Archives, #PH326. 135 REASONS TO LOVE OCAD UNIVERSITY 8 THE 2011 / 2012 ANNUAL REPORT 9 131 130 serious role models. YOUNG CURATORS. In 2012, artist Aimée Henny Brown joined forces with Faculty of Art Professor Barbara Astman was appointed in 2011 to the AGO’s OCAD U, the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) and Via Rail to produce Overland Canadian Curatorial Committee. Astman is an internationally recognized Station: par voie de terre. This journey into the history of Canadian rail travel artist who specializes in a hybrid of photography and new media. She’s also was curated by the first-year Criticism & Curatorial Practice MFA students a grad (Experimental Arts, 1973). who comprise September Collective. Aimée Henny Brown, HO (1:87) scale Canadian train station model, curated by September Collective. 135 REASONS TO LOVE OCAD UNIVERSITY 10 THE 2011 / 2012 ANNUAL REPORT 11 129 CREAtive CLOUT. OCAD University celebrated it this year with the “Imagine” campaign, a Toronto-wide initiative that profiled the influence and research capacity of our community. Insisting that “he, she, we imagined,” the campaign focused on such luminaries as Don Watt (1936–2009). Watt graduated from OCAD U’s Industrial Design program in 1957 and went on to become the mastermind responsible for brand designs for Loblaw, Nestlé, Kraft, Home Depot and more. Campaign artwork by Endeavour Marketing. 135 REASONS TO LOVE OCAD UNIVERSITY 12 THE 2011 / 2012 ANNUAL REPORT 13 128 127 THE ELECTRIC BIKE. Just one year OUR CULTURAL DISTRICT. after graduating, henry Chong’s Digital Futures Initiative assistant Industrial Design thesis project, the professors Kate Hartman and Emma Revelo LIFEbike, earned him the Westecott each delivered talks in $10,000 Grand Prize in this year’s 2011 at the Toronto International Film Up-Start Competition hosted by Festival Bell Lightbox, an OCAD U MaRS Discovery District. Chong’s neighbour. Their invitation to win followed Industrial Design grad participate in “Women in Film, Jessica Ching’s Up-Start prize for Games and New Media Day” under­ Best Blended Value Opportunity in scored how central OCAD U and 2011, for her company Eve Medical. its faculty have become to Toronto’s creative corridor. 126 125 VISION. Even when our lens is on A CIVIC ICON. Also featured in the past, we’ve got vision. Take Meryl the Imagine campaign, industrial McMaster (BFA, 2009). She was one designer Claude Gidman is possibly of five visual artists invited to expore best known for his contribution the War of 1812 in Harbourfront to Toronto’s cityscape via the Red Centre’s 1812–2012: A Contemporary Rocket, or Toronto streetcar.