The purpose of this Fund will be to establish and build the new StudioDH within the Digital Humanities at Carleton University. StudioDH will be a radical reconfiguration of how we do humanities research and teaching. It will be a practice-forward collective that will take the students’ process of learning beyond the campus and into the community. As a public focused, inside-out community-based research/art collective, students who opt for the studio practicum component of the Digital Humanities specialization will have the opportunity to work closely with public and private-sector partners via a physical ‘pop-up’ style laboratory, set in the community and open to the public. These will be partners who rely heavily on digital media, including partners in art and entertainment, media production, library and archives, museum, digital gaming, travel and tourism, advertising and technical writing sectors. Students will take an entrepreneurial approach to their research projects, identify community needs, find audiences for their work, and present solutions. They will explore what Digital Humanities can mean for them as scholars and citizens as well as the future of their chosen field and the civic community.

Through the new StudioDH model, we will create an innovative opportunity for future leaders to have a positive impact — while building towards a shared understanding of Digital Humanities research and its applications at Carleton and beyond. In addition to establishing a new practicum model, StudioDH will result in developed courses, theses, whitepapers, articles, guides, exhibitions, community building events, and virtual/physical conferences for further knowledge sharing, both within the Humanities and the wider community. This unlocks the potential to engage representatives of national and international community groups who work in fields that could benefit from the research and generated solutions.