The Ministry of Advanced Education’s Aboriginal Service Plan grant was recently awarded to Living Lab for the 2021-2022 period.

This grant gives 50k of core support for our planning and restoration work. The UVic Office of Indigenous Academic and Community Engagement coordinates these funds and brings together the community and campus groups that receive these program-seed funds.

Living Lab is also engaged in programs and partnerships with Professors John Taylor, Nancy Shackelford, and Jeff Corntassel, all of who received UVic Internal Impact grants in the Summer of 2021 to focus on ecological restoration (with a special focus on camas growing on campus) and Indigenous community knowledge-participation.

Living Lab campus team member Kristian Dubrawski, the Canada Research Chair in Rural and Indigenous Water Sustainability, and member of the UVic department of Geography and Civil Engineering received an Environment and Climate Change Canada 5 year grant for a project to empower rural and Indigenous communities across Canada called Community-engaged Nature-based Climate Solutions for Water.

Dubrawski’s project looks at how to mitigate both water stress induced by climate change, and local loss of nature/biodiversity through an integrated and scalable nature-based climate solutions (NBCS) toolkit/solutions bundle for water sustainability.

The position will focus on co-creating this toolkit with community partners, in respectful and reciprocal ways that combine water science/governance, environmental justice, and community engagement.

The working group includes Dr. Crystal Tremblay, Geography, Special Advisor on Community-Engaged Scholarship; Dr. Eric Higgs, Environmental Studies; Dr. Nick XEMŦOLTW̱ Claxton, Human and Social Development and Living Lab Academic Director; Dr. Nancy Shackelford, Environmental Studies; UVic Living Lab Project, and several other community group partners.