Coming up next week at SFU Vancouver:

Thursday, March 19: Info Session – Canadian Technology Accelerator in Denver
Time: 9am Place: Rm. 7000, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St. Cost: Free with registration.

Established in 2011 by the Consulate General of Canada in Denver, the Sustainable Technologies Canadian Technology Accelerator (CTA) Program is in Denver, Colorado working in conjunction with the National Renewable Energy Labs (NREL), the only federal laboratory dedicated to the research, development, commercialization and deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency in the United States.

Thursday, March 19: Myths vs. Reality in the Transit Debate
Time: 12:30pm Place: Rm. 1600, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St. Cost: Free. No registration required.

Is Translink a bloated, inefficient and wasteful public agency providing terrible public transit? Probably not, but facts don’t matter - emotions do. What matters is that people believe it is true and that they act on that belief.

Those are the sentiments that, pollsters say, are driving the public’s current view of the Transportation Referendum. Where did these ideas come from, and why do so many of us believe them? They’re part ideology, part economic theory that began 70 years ago. They’ve since been promoted by a collection of Canadian and American think tanks, adopted by successful politicians, and are influencing some of our most fundamental public decisions.

Thursday, March 19: Imagining Insurrection: Popular Insurgency in Shakespearean England - Ian Dyck Memorial Lecture
Time: 5:30pm Place: Rm. 1400, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St. Cost: Free with registration.

Ian Dyck was a longtime member of the Department of History who sadly passed away in 2007. He was known to many in our community as an inspired teacher, a valued colleague, and a dear friend. Among British historians, Ian was best known for his definitive work on the radical reformer William Cobbett and for his commitment to recover the lost histories of rural English labourers. In Ian's memory a Visiting Lectureship was established with the support of Ian's friends, family and other donors.

Friday, March 20: The Role of the Artist Provocateur
Time: 7pm Place: Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre, Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 West Hastings St. Cost: Free. No registration required.

From the provocative cartoons at Charlie Hebdo, to the music and actions of Pussy Riot, to hard hitting plays like Sarah Kane's Blasted, artists around the world have been agents of provocation for millennia. But what about Canada today? Is there a role for the artist provocateur in this country? Or is general public apathetic to engaging with artistic representations of challenging ideas?

Join five practicing artists from hiphop, theatre, cartooning and the visual and live arts for an intriguing discussion that opens up the question of the role of the artist-provocateur in contemporary Canada.

Monday, March 23: Coast Salish Singing and Drumming Workshop
Time: 7pm Place: Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre, Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 West Hastings St. Cost: Free. No registration required.

Join SFU Woodward’s, the SFU Vancity Office on Community Engagement and SFU Office of Aboriginal Peoples in learning social songs, drumming and dance with instructor Russell Wallace. Workshops are free and open to everyone!

Tuesday, March 24: Flamenco Juerga | Film Screening, Performance And Artist Talkback
Time: 7pm Place: Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre, Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 West Hastings St.   Cost: Free. No registration required.

A celebrated part of the Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival since 2010, Barrio Flamenco: Flamenco for the People, is a community of spirit, pride, and passion. Join host Kelty McKerracher and filmmaker Colin Askey for the first public screening of a short film about our growing flamenco community in the Downtown Eastside. Learn about the history of flamenco and how it resonates with the neighbourhood's values and struggles. Best of all, be treated to a live performance and talkback with some of Vancouver's most exciting flamenco artists as well as special guests the Carnegie Flamencos!

Tuesday, March 24: Beyond Compost - Closing the Organic Waste Loop for a Greener Economy
Time: 5pm Place: Rm. 1400, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St. Cost: Free with registration.

Redeploying food waste as a renewable resource has been considered a sensible approach in waste management in present day society. It is true that compost has been central to agricultural operations for centuries as both fertilizer and feed for livestock. Due to a variety of factors, in today’s urban centers, organics are often landfilled, not capitalizing on a valuable resource while further adding to undesirable environmental emissions. To contribute to the overall solution of waste management, companies and municipalities around the world are developing methods to convert consumer food waste into feedstock, fertilizer, bio-energy and other valuable by-products. The March GTEx Forum will feature three of BC’s home-grown innovations in organic waste diversion: the City of Surrey’s biofuel processing facility, EarthRenu’s food to biogas technology, and Enterra’s food to feedstock approach.

Tuesday, March 24: Panel Discussion – C-51 The Anti-terror Bill
Time: 6:30pm Place: Morris J Wosk Centre for Dialogue, 580 West Hastings St. Cost: Free. No registration required.

This panel will address the implications of Bill C-51, the so-called "Anti-Terror" Bill, for the future of democratic institutions in this country. Panelists include Professor Craig Forcese (University of Ottawa, Law), Professor Margot Young (UBC, Law), Ms. Micheal Vonn, (BCCLA), Professor Max Cameron (Director, Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions, UBC) and Mr. Zool Suleman, Immigration Lawyer. 

Tuesday, March 24: Art is My Weapon – Woodsworth Lecture Series
Time: 7pm Place: Rm. 7000, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St. Cost: Free. No registration required.

What does it mean to be a woman artist using the public space as her canvas when that same space is still dominated by men? And what if the artist uses her jewelry design to convey the message of political and social revolution? Can art really influence change in the minds of ordinary men and women instead of being limited to the elites?! This seminar will look at how public art became a tool and reflection of social and political change during and in the aftermath of the January 25th revolution in Egypt.

Wednesday, March 25: Gwynne Dyer - The New World Disorder?
Time: 7pm Place: Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre, Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 West Hastings St. Cost: Tickets $20.

There are lots more things to worry about, if you’re up for it. China’s relations with its neighbours are going from bad to worse, and its armed forces are growing fast. Climate change is moving quickly, and little is being done to contain it. New UN figures say that the world’s population will go on growing past the end of the century, by which time it may have reached 12.5 billion.

Has the dam really burst? Is the reasonably stable world of the past few decades going to be overwhelmed by violence and chaos? The level of fear of the future is definitely rising, and this lecture tackles it head-on. (Hint: it's probably not as bad as it seems.)

Wednesday, March 25: Information Session – Management of Technology (MOT) MBA
Time: 12pm Place: Segal Graduate School of Business, 500 West Hastings St. Cost: Free with registration.

Interested in graduate school or know a colleague or friend who might be? Build a solid business foundation with Beedie's MBA in Management of Technology, a two-year part-time business curriculum tailored to the challenges technology managers face.

At this one hour session, one of our renowned faculty members will teach a mini-case. Alumni and/or students will also be present to share their experiences of the program. Staff from the Career Management Centre advise on how an MBA can advance your career, and of course, the Admissions team will be on hand to give an overview of the program, and its requirements.

Thursday, March 26: Media Explosions: The Spectacle of France's First Atomic Tests in the Algerian Sahara, 1960-2014
Time: 5:30pm Place: Fletcher Challenge Theatre, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St. Cost: Free with registration.

In recent years, the French and international media have offered readers, listeners, and viewers "shocking" revelations regarding the program of French nuclear testing that began in the Algerian Sahara in February 1960. The fourth world power to acquire the atomic bomb, France entered the club atomique during a violent period of decolonization that would only decades later be acknowledged officially by the French government as an "Algerian War". What have been the legacies of that first test in 1960, and how do contemporary headlines frame and mobilize that history in the present?

Wednesday, March 25: President's Dream Colloquium: Linda Tuhiwai Smith
Time: 7pm Place: Morris J Wosk Centre for Dialogue, 580 West Hastings St. Cost: Free with registration.

This SFU Public Square event in the President's Colloquium on Protecting Indigenous Cultural Heritage will explore new approaches to collaborative research and policy development on protecting Indigenous cultural heritage, with a particular focus on those that foreground the interests and concerns of Indigenous communities.

Thursday, March 26: From Local to Global Challenges, What Needs to Be Done for a Successful Climate Conference in Paris 2015?
Time: 5pm Place: Asia-Pacific Hall, Morris J Wosk Centre for Dialogue, 580 West Hastings St. Cost: Free with registration.

The December 2015 Conference of the Parties (COP21) will be one of the most important international climate conferences ever. The stakes are high: with new evidence that we will surpass the global 2°C temperature increase targets, COP21 represents our best hope for a binding agreement between countries. This Conference could set the conditions for a transition towards resilient, low-carbon societies and economies.

This Conference needs to mark a decisive step forward in the negotiation of the future international agreement that will enter into force in 2020, adopting its major thrusts with the aim that all countries, including the greatest greenhouse gas emitters.

Thursday, March 26: Framing Inequality as a Crisis
Time: 7pm Place: Rm. 1400, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St. Cost: Free with registration.

While the "blind spot debate" continues to live on with the exploitation of the labour of audiences by the marketers of goods and services at its centre, some are beginning to suggest that other, perhaps more important considerations have been left behind. Oscar Gandy is Professor Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania where he taught until his retirement in 2006.

March 19-20: The Which
Time: 7pm & 9pm Place: Studio T, SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 W. Hastings St. Cost: Free. No registration required.

SFU School of Contemporary Arts presents The Which as week 3 of the Black Box performance series.

February 5 –Woodward's Community Singers 2015 Workshops
Time: 6pm, every Thursday evening Place:131 West Hastings St. at PHS Woodward's, 10th floor, entrance is two doors east; Goldcorp Centre for the Arts entrance at 149 West Hastings St. Cost: Free. No experience or auditions required, no cost, no obligation, drop-ins welcomed.

This is a free, drop-in, non-auditioned community choir.  All voices are invited to join us in song. Together we sing music from gospel, folk, popular, and contemporary traditions. It's informal, fun, playful and profound.

We're a friendly gang of welcoming people who live or work in the area, go to school at SFU or come from around the city to gather here and enjoy the community we build through music.There are usually 25 to 35 singers each week and always a handful of new singers joining us for the first time. Participants are also welcome to come, drink a cup of tea and just listen.

January 15 – May 15: Geometry of Knowing
Time: Audain Gallery hours Place: Audain Gallery, 149 West Hastings St. Cost: Free

Geometry of Knowing is a group exhibition that investigates approaches to the acquisition of knowledge in the full mind-body-spirit sense of intelligence. Organized in four parts and presented across two galleries located in a post-secondary pedagogical institution, the objective of the project is to investigate the way in which artists engage tactics of fieldwork, embodiment and materiality in a manner that reveals or instigates a process of knowing.

Philosopher’s Cafes

Thursday, March 19: Is Canada’s Economic Future as Promising as its Past?

Friday, March 20: Relationship(s) of Boomers and Millenials

Monday, March 23: Live Twitter Chat with Renée Saklikar

Thursday, March 26: Bike Café – Bridging the (Cycling) Gender Gap

Friday, March 27: What Should We Do When Our Peers Disagree With Us?