About
The Centre
The Eric C. Douglass Centre for Creative Changemaking
supports students, faculty, and community members in working across disciplines to foster a world that is more equitable, connected, and joyful. Rooted in Royal Roads University’s vision of inspiring people with the courage to transform the world, the Centre connects those engaged in creative changemaking to each other, bolsters changemaking capacity, and amplifies changemaking work. The Centre honours the legacy of Eric C. Douglass whose story of defying limiting expectations inspires the Centre’s mission.
Our Approach: Letting Vision Emerge
The Centre for Creative Changemaking is being built differently. Rather than launching with a fixed strategic plan, we’re embracing effectuation—an approach that lets strategy emerge from the resources, relationships, and possibilities right in front of us.
Ongoing Collaboration
We begin with the expertise of our faculty, the aspirations of our students, the needs of our community partners, and the opportunities that present themselves along the way. Through ongoing consultation and collaboration, we’re co-creating the Centre with self-selecting stakeholders who share a commitment to creative changemaking.
Meaningful Innovations
We begin with the expertise of our faculty, the aspirations of our students, the needs of our community partners, and the opportunities that present themselves along the way. Through ongoing consultation and collaboration, we’re co-creating the Centre with self-selecting stakeholders who share a commitment to creative changemaking.
Our Guiding Principles
Start with our means—the talents, knowledge, and networks already present
Focus on next steps rather than grand predictions
Build partnerships with those who choose to commit their resources and energy
Welcome surprises as sources of innovation
Co-create the future rather than trying to forecast it
The Centre’s direction will emerge organically from this collaborative process.
We’re pilots steering together, not passengers following a predetermined route.
Learn more about effectuation at Effectuation.
Meet Our Founders
Dr. Catherine Etmanski
as a Creative Changemaker
“I am a passionate educator. Inspired by moments when I recognize the fundamental beauty of humanity—moments of kindness, cooperation, reconciliation, forgiveness, humour, or of reckless abandon”
I strive to replicate elements of this beauty in my work as an educator. I enjoy organizing engaged spaces for growth and, in some cases, radical transformation—spaces that balance deep critical reflection with the joy of learning; that are inclusive and accessible; and that inspire hope for a more compassionate and just world.
I endeavour to promote more conscious and collaborative approaches to leadership and seek to incorporate creative elements into my research, leadership, teaching, and administration. I am actively involved in the Royal Roads University (RRU) community and served as Director of the School of Leadership Studies from 2016 to 2022.
I have edited books or special issues of journals related to:
- Engagement through the Arts
- Food Leadership: Leadership and Adult Learning in Global Food Systems Transformation
- Adult Learning through Collaborative Leadership
- Learning and teaching community-based research: Linking pedagogy to practicE
Career Trajectory
I joined the School of Leadership Studies at RRU in 2012 and have taught online since 2005. My scholarly journey has been interdisciplinary in nature: I hold a PhD in Leadership/Adult Education (UVic), an MA in Community and International Development Planning (UBC), and a BA in Linguistics (SFU). I have served as a board member or volunteer with Canadian Crossroads International, the Martha Farrell Foundation Canada, the Institute for Child Rights and Development and the Community Social Planning Council. In 2012, I was awarded for Excellence in Teaching in the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria. She has worked, studied and lived internationally in such countries as: India, Botswana, the Czech Republic, Fiji and Japan.
Dr. Amy Zidulka
“Creativity has always been a central feature of my life. I have worked as a professional artist, completed degrees in Architecture and Creative Writing, and have been changed through experiences of literature
and theatre.”
But while I remain deeply inspired by the arts, I’ve come to see that, for me, the most meaningful acts of creativity aren’t necessarily achieved through artistic production, but can be found in how we construct our lives and how we imagine new futures for our organizations and society.
For a decade, I supported myself as a traveling boat artist in Alaska, painting watercolors of commercial fishing vessels (I sold 70 boat portraits a year for ten years). People often saw me as creative because I was an artist, but the paintings themselves were straightforward illustrations. What was actually creative—what I remain proud of—was inventing a life that functioned around that work. Similarly, joining a business school faculty felt deeply creative to me. When I first joined, over two decades ago, the culture was unfamiliar to me, and the journey of iterating toward my current work, as faculty in creativity and innovation, has been an emergent and surprising journey.
CREATIvITY REIMAGINED
For me, creativity involves reimagining the containers we inhabit. How might organizations function differently? How can we talk about polarizing issues in less divisive ways, so that futures that are currently unimaginable might emerge? How might education be transformed? How can universities connect more meaningfully with the world? These questions drive both my teaching and my research—whether I’m exploring university-owned social media platforms or developing new approaches to dialogue and social change.
But I hold this impulse toward change in tension with deep respect for what endures. Creativity isn’t always good, and not everything needs innovation. Some systems work and deserve maintenance. Some traditions and long-earned frameworks carry wisdom that should be deferred to, not disrupted. The creativity I value isn’t about novelty for its own sake—it’s about discerning when to reimagine and when to sustain, when to question and when to honor what’s already there.
I value the work of creating a meaningful path, even when it’s unfamiliar, and of learning the ways in which others might do so—and supporting them on that journey.