Community Impact Report 2024-2025
A year of community, connection, and celebration!
Our Annual Community Impact Report highlights UBC Inspired’s programs, events, placemaking initiatives and community engagement, showcasing the growth and success of our portfolio in the last year, and ways we are work to fulfil UBC priorities, and respond to community needs.
Most of all, it shows how working in partnership with community members, departments, student organizations, and others, helps create extraordinary experiences at UBC for everyone. This asset-based community development approach is at the core of UBC Inspired community programs and events, and continues to highlight the incredible talents and committment of UBC community members. All of the programs shown below are ones that UBC Inspired is proud to support in collaboration with our campus partners.
This year has been one for the books, filled with community, connection, and celebration! We saw the return of Harvest Feastival, a beloved campus celebration, back for the first time since 2019. Cheered on student staff in sharing their vision for an inclusive campus at student-focused Pride event Queering Kinship. Worked with faculties to design and deliver programs that take learning out of the classroom and into the community. Admired the creativity, commitment, and capacity building of community members who share their gifts through the Inspiring Community Grant program.
Cheers to each of you in the UBC community who contribute to creating a vibrant, connected, and inclusive place to live, work, and learn. We look forward to another year of sparking imagination…together!
From events that brought us together…
Harvest Feastival Returns!
This epic celebration of food, friends, and arts and culture returned to campus, delivering a delightful and delicious celebration for over 700 guests! UBC Chefs prepared six fabulous dishes, served family-style, featuring locally-sourced ingredients. After dinner, guests followed the always-inspiring Thunderbird Marching Band to the Arts and Culture District where they enjoyed a spectacular evening of specially-curated programming.
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Queering Kinship
We were thrilled to partner with the Arts and Culture District and UBC Exposure on Queering Kinship, a Pride event designed and delivered by students, for students. Queering Kinships created a visible and celebratory space for queer representation and a connected and inclusive campus. Main Mall came alive with activities like a queer pop-up library, collaborative community art making, a student photo exhibit and more! It culminated in a “drag extravaganza” hosted by MC extraordinaire Gaia, and featuring seven incredible UBC drag performers.
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700+
Community members attended Harvest Feastival, back on campus for the first time since 2019!
“Queering Kinship focuses on rethinking kinship and queerness, exploring how queer identities establish relationships and what it means to connect, build community, and find home.”Jesse Medrano, Arts and Culture District Work Learn
400+
Kids and their grown ups joined UBC Inspired and Active Kids for an afternoon of circus-inspired fun at Tough Toddler!
15 years!
We celebrated 15 years of Thrive at UBC with yet another fabulous Thrive by the Fire, kicking off a month of mental health literacy. Guests gathered around toasty fire pits while UBC student performers from Blank Vinyl Project took to the stage to perform incredible sets.
and celebrated community
Kids Take Over UBC
This beloved flagship event brought 1000+ kids and their grown-ups to campus to enjoy a day of arts, culture, music and more, courtesy of 24 campus partners. From scavenger hunts at Nitobe Gardens, to puppet-making at the First Nations House of Learning, nitrogen ice-cream demos with Faculty of Chemistry, to hands-on crafts at the Asian Centre and more, there was something for everyone! Co-creating this event with partners each year continues to be a highlight for the UBC Inspired team!
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Artful Bonds- a student placemaking event
To celebrate the end of the school year, our student team hosted a drop-in placemaking event centred on community art, self-reflection, and gratitude! Feel-good music, happy chatter and laughter enveloped Lee Square as community members reflected on the year behind them by decorating postcards with words and images of thanks. Throughout the afternoon, postcards were added to a gratitude wall, creating a beautiful piece of community artwork.
Artful Bonds Reflection
550
UBC Inspired Community Services Cards were issued, providing Acadia Park families with access to UBC’s world-class recreational and cultural amenities!
The beauty of Culture Club is the offerings are accessible at so many different skill levels. Our grandson is always fully engaged with the activities. Culture Club also serves as a springboard to introduce the museum to him. Museums are cool; Culture Club demonstrates that. Culture Club is a highlight of our Sundays with [our grandson].Culture Club Participant
$15,000
in funding was awarded to 34 outstanding community-led projects through the Inspiring Community Grant
281
families participated in seven sessions of Culture Club, supported by UBC Inspired and delivered through MOA’s educational programming team. Culture Club sessions are designed to engage families in hands-on intergenerational art activities focused on cultural connection and creative exploration.
to programs that entertained and educated…
Light Up Lee Square
This year’s event featured glow-in-the dark activities, some intense rounds of Dance Dance Revolution (courtesy of the Move U Crew) and a beautiful roster of community-artwork centered around the theme “united by community”
Light Up Lee Square 2024
Acadia Park Pop-Up Programs
This pilot program let UBC students take what they learn out of the classroom and into the community. Weekly pop-ups included storytime with librarians-in-training, and a physical literacy program planned and programmed by UBC Kinesiology students.
Community Bike Clinics delivered by our partners at the Bike Kitchen, helping to support safe, active transportation to, from, and around campus!
42
“Lichens can dye clothing, be used as fire starter, and are found in toothpaste”Nature Club Participant, February 2025
3,287
kids and their grown-ups were “Inspired at the Chan” by everything from a Disney sing-a-long to Metis Jig dancing and more, at this beloved community concert series, designed especially for our youngest patrons!
1600
pounds of rubber and 57 cubic meters of metal were diverted from the landfill, through the Bike Kitchen recycling program!
we shared and celebrated a year of community and connection
Inspired at the Chan
Inspired at the Chan is a family-friendly concert series, designed especially for our youngest patrons of the art! Offered in collaboration with the Chan Centre for performing arts, the series hopes to spark a love of arts of culture that lasts a lifetime! This year’s spectacular shows included a Disney-themed sing-a-long, Metis Jigging, Carnival of the Animals and more!
Get Inspired!
Beaty Nature Club
This long-running program, a collaboration between UBC Inspired and Beaty Biodiversity Museum provides hands-on opportunities for kids to engage with real scientists and learn all about Beaty’s specimens collections! Beaty has noted that kids who were once participants in the program when they were younger, now volunteer with it, creating a real full-circle moment!
volunteer hours contributed by students through the Peer Health Educator program, funded by UBC Inspired, and delivered through the Student Health Equity and Promotion unit.
4500+
“Being a PHE has been the most rewarding part of my University experience so far. I have found such a wonderful community and a home on campus.”Peer Health Educator
57%
of Beaty Nature Club participants live on campus!
8
food-literacy workshops were hosted through a funding partnership between the Food Hub and UBC Inspired, supporting food security and skill-building for students on campus.
Community Impact Reports
Community Impact Report 2023-2024
Read Report