Program Link: https://livinglabs.ubc.ca/2025
Sponsor: UBC Sustainability Hub
Value: The competition provides a total of $500,000 in seed funding, awarded in two streams:
• Small Projects: $10,000–$30,000 per project
• Large Projects: $50,000–$100,000 per project
Description: At UBC, Campus as a Living Lab is a collaborative framework for researchers, students, staff, and external partners to leverage the campus to explore, develop and test new ideas, and to share the knowledge gained from these experiences. UBC living lab projects respond to the world’s most urgent sustainability challenges. Campus Living Lab projects and activities are guided by a set of core values, in addition to those in the UBC Strategic Plan, Shaping UBC’s Next Century:
Sustainability: We support and develop projects that contribute to ecological, social and economic sustainability, address the climate and biodiversity crises, and are aligned with the long-term strategic vision for the UBC campus and its community.
Equity & Inclusion: We embed justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in all our projects and in our engagement with UBC community members and external partners.
Transparency: We build collaborations and partnerships through clear and open processes, and ensure fair, ethical, consensual, and transparent engagement.
Collaborative Learning: We embrace participatory and reciprocal ways of learning and sharing knowledge, reflective of the different communities, knowledge systems, and experiences of those engaged in our projects.
Living Lab Projects
Campus Living Lab projects leverage UBC’s academic and operational capabilities to respond to global problems in our local context, in alignment with the UBC Strategic Plan: Creating vibrant, sustainable environments that enhance wellbeing and excellence for people in their places at UBC and beyond.
The Campus as a Living Lab Fund supports projects that bring together academic talent and operational expertise to co-create solutions grounded in research, real-world application, and institutional learning. A successful UBC CLL project embodies five core characteristics that define both what the project proposes to do and how it delivers 2025 UBC Vancouver CLL Fund Competition Guidelines: meaningful impact. The first two characteristics reflect the project’s intellectual and creative contribution. The final three describe the project’s reach, impact, and long-term potential. Across all five, projects are expected to uphold and reflect the four guiding values of UBC’s Campus as a Living Lab: Sustainability, Equity and Inclusion, Transparency, and Collaborative Learning.
1. Innovation
Strong projects bring forward novel or significantly improved ideas, processes, or practices that address real-world sustainability challenges. Innovation can take many forms—technical, social, procedural, or cultural, etc.—and may include new ways of thinking, engaging, organizing, or acting. Projects should have the potential to spark meaningful change at UBC and generate inspiration beyond the university.
2. Research Excellence
Projects should demonstrate academic rigour and contribute new insights to a body of knowledge. This includes clear research questions, robust methodologies, and well-defined processes. Strong proposals will reflect excellence in academic scholarship and show potential to inform future research, policy, or practice across disciplines.
3. Relevance to UBC Campus and Community
Living Lab projects are rooted in the strategic context and operational realities of the university. They should directly align with UBC’s sustainability and climate action priorities—such as the Climate Action Plan 2030, the Climate Emergency Task Force Report, and other institutional policies or frameworks. Proposals should clearly identify what will be implemented or improved at UBC, why this change is needed, and how the outcomes will strengthen the university’s ability to lead and learn as a living lab.
4. Student Engagement and Learning Opportunities
Student involvement is a defining feature of a Living Lab. Strong projects actively engage students through research, design, implementation, evaluation, or storytelling. They create opportunities for hands-on, interdisciplinary, and mentorship-based learning, enabling students to make meaningful contributions while gaining valuable skills and insights.
5. Potential Impacts and Knowledge Sharing
A strong project has the potential to extend its impact beyond UBC. This may include replicability, adaptability, or opportunities for scale-up in other institutional, municipal, or community contexts. Knowledge sharing should go beyond academic publication, through tools, frameworks, partnerships, or public-facing engagement. Projects should help build capacity for change across sectors and settings.
Within the context of the CLL Fund Competition, projects are also encouraged to pursue opportunities for:
• Regional partnerships with public, private, and community organizations.
• Collaboration and knowledge exchange on or off campus
• Leveraging the competition funding, and a growth pathway beyond the funded project scope.
Please visit the CLL guidelines to see full eligibility and application details: https://livinglabs.ubc.ca/2025
September 30, 2025
The NOI form is a fillable PDF available through the CLL website.
November 28, 2025
The link to an online submission portal and instructions will be provided to the Project Leads listed on the NOI.
Contact: If you have any questions, contact The CLL team at CLL.team@ubc.ca