FLEET: UBC is rolling to Vancouver's Point Grey Campus and we welcome your project proposals!

This Open Call invites the UBC community and beyond to submit proposals to engage with FLEET Mobile Artist Studio in the Fabric of Campus Fibre Garden at UBC. This unique public space is a dynamic research and learning site where textiles, agriculture, traditional land practices, and creative practice intersect. We are seeking creative and/or community-engaged proposals to activate the space with urban agriculture and land-based activities, slow fashion and sustainable textile practices, public space innovation, knowledge exchange, and interdisciplinary experimentation.

The Vision: A Green Space for Art, Research, and Community Engagement

‍The Fabric of Campus Fibre Garden is a recent awardee of the Campus as a Living Lab  program at UBC. This welcoming meadow/garden site at the centre of campus, including the FLEET Mobile Artist Studio, furthers UBC’s efforts toward decolonization, and its vision of encouraging learning everywhere on campus. With student-designed public art, land-based research on fibre plants, and the FLEET Studio’s lively changing program, it will be a place where research, education, community and traditional practices, and campus life intersect across disciplines, cultures and hierarchies. The site is a collaboration between UBC Campus + Community Planning and the Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory, with the FLEET Studio managed by Other Sights for Artists’ Projects.

FLEET and the Fibre Garden — Specifications, Possibilities, Plans

The Fibre Garden and FLEET Mobile Studio will be at UBC’s Point Grey (Vancouver) Campus, on unceded, ancestral xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) territory, from late-May 2026 through at least April 2028. The site is located off the University Blvd. trolley-bus loop, between the Gordon B. Shrum and Wesbrook buildings. Selected projects can begin as early as July 2026.

POSSIBLE ACTIVATIONS  This is an open call for research, creation, and knowledge-sharing activities. The combination of the FLEET Mobile Artist Studio, the Fibre Garden research plots, and the open green space offers a rare opportunity to produce fibres and other research in public green space, and to ground artistic work in the rhythms of the land and in campus life. Applicants are welcome to propose to activate a combination of the Fibre Garden, the FLEET Mobile studio, and the surrounding meadow space—or focus on one of these.

Possible activations could be:

SHORT TERM OR INTERMITTENT (a couple days to a couple weeks) — community workshops, temporary art projects; screenings, exhibitions, lecture series…

‍SEASONAL (one to a few months) — artist residencies, seasonal garden use, field tests...

LONG TERM (up to a year or more) — urban agriculture and other research projects, longterm temporary public art or architecture installations, land art…

‍

TIMELINE AND PROCESS:

Wednesday, May 27, 11am-1pm — on-site information session

Thursday, May 28, 4-6pm — on-site information session

June 15, 2026, noon — Submission deadline

June 2026 — Adjudication by selection panel (UBC researcher, art professional from Other Sights, UBC student representative, Fibre Garden representative)

End of June 2026 — Notification to applicants

Nov 2026, May 2027, Nov 2027 — Additional open calls are planned

For further information or questions about the project or your application:

Attend an information session, noted above, or email FLEET General Manager Jennifer Van de Pol, fleetstudios@othersights.ca. For inquiries about the Fabric of Campus Fibre Garden specifically, contact Assistant Professor Germaine Koh, germaine.koh@ubc.ca.

‍

‍

‍