A new community led initiative, CityStudio Durham, is offering local postsecondary students an opportunity to apply their skills, creativity and entrepreneurial spirit to real-world projects.

Trent University Durham GTA and The Regional Municipality of Durham, Durham Regional Police Service, Durham College and Ontario Tech University are among the participating partners.

The CityStudio model will bring postsecondary institution expertise and student-thinking to a variety of community projects, including those in wastewater infrastructure, municipal planning, long-term care, social housing, and climate change.

“Trent Durham’s innovative programs, such as Social Work, and Policing and Community Well-being, will prove to be terrific linkages for regional projects,” said Dr. Scott Henderson, dean and head of Trent University Durham GTA. “The outlook for this coordinated approach to experiential learning and civic engagement speaks to the innovative nature of the region and will provide many positive opportunities and outcomes both for our students and for the community.”

Projects are identified and developed by municipal staff, then matched with programs and courses at local post-secondary institutions in the form of class projects, applied research, and field placements, among other formats. Final projects will then be launched in the community by students as experiments or pilot tests.

Projects open for collaboration are posted three times a year on the CityStudio web portal, available at durham.ca/CityStudio.