If you walked along Toronto’s waterfront this summer, you may have caught a glimpse of large-scale, luminous projections transforming the historic Malting Silos into a canvas for storytelling. Among the artists featured were students from York University’s Digital Media program, whose work was projected onto one of the city’s most recognizable landmarks as part of a City of Toronto series timed with the FIFA World Cup 2026™.

The installations offer a glimpse into a broader story. They were created by students in Ontario's first — and only — undergraduate degree to integrate digital media, computer science and engineering with the arts, a program built around the idea that the future of creative work belongs as much to coders as to artists, and increasingly to those who can move confidently between both worlds.

As digital technologies continue to reshape how people create, communicate, and interact, the boundaries between disciplines are becoming increasingly fluid. The next generation of creative professionals is expected to understand not only design and storytelling, but also programming, emerging technologies and the ethical questions that accompany them. Long before these expectations became commonplace, York recognized that digital media education needed to evolve beyond traditional academic silos.

Jointly offered by the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD) and the Lassonde School of Engineering, York's Bachelor of Arts in Digital Media brings together artistic practice, computational thinking and engineering principles in a curriculum grounded in active, experiential learning. Through studio work, computer labs, collaborative projects and research opportunities, students develop the technical fluency and creative confidence to design games, immersive environments, interactive installations, digital performances and the next generation of new media technologies.

The program itself emerged from collaboration. Its origins trace back to a Senate conversation in 2004 between faculty members who recognized that no Ontario degree reflected the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of digital media, and that no one academic unit could address this gap by itself. After an intensive period of collaborative curriculum development between three departments across what were then three faculties, the program welcomed its first cohort in 2008, creating a model of interdisciplinary education that remains unique in the province.

That collaborative philosophy continues to define the student experience. Every student begins with an 18-month common curriculum that establishes foundations in coding, computational thinking, digital tools and media arts before choosing one of three specialized streams: Digital Media Arts, Game Arts or Digital Media Development. Rather than separating artistic practice from technical training, the curriculum encourages students to use code as a creative medium, producing work that ranges from game design and virtual reality to e-commerce systems, physical computing, mixed reality, Internet of Things applications, interactive performance and data visualization.

“The Digital Media program exemplifies the kind of boundary-crossing education that defines York University,” says Jane Goodyer, dean of Lassonde. “By combining engineering, computational thinking and creative practice, students learn not only how to develop new technologies, but also how to apply them thoughtfully and imaginatively in ways that position them to lead in rapidly evolving industries."

"Creative industries increasingly require graduates who can move fluidly between artistic expression and technological innovation,” says Brandon Vickerd, dean of AMPD. “This program has fostered a learning environment where students are encouraged to challenge disciplinary boundaries, collaborate across fields, and explore new ways of creating and communicating. The result is a generation of creative professionals equipped to contribute meaningfully to the evolving intersections of media, culture, and technology."

In many ways, the program is also a case study in active learning: most of the core courses are experiential, from studio courses that ask students to transform ideas into original creative works to computer laboratory courses that build technical skills through programming and interactive systems development. By third and fourth year, students work together on ambitious  projects that mirror the collaborative environments of contemporary creative industries, bringing artists, designers and developers together to solve complex problems.

“This program allowed me to use my love of coding for creative and practical applications, and so much more,” says Robert Jamrocha-Tullo, an alumnus of the program whose work was featured in Toronto Made, The World in a City Illuminated. “I have not only been able to learn and develop new programming skills but also to use them to create games, websites and algorithms that I am very proud of, as well as many different kinds of art that have been inspired by this unique program.”

For Jane Tingley, chair of AMPD’s Department of Computational Arts, one of the degree’s greatest strengths is the diversity of career pathways it offers.

"When I teach our students, I have noticed an incredible diversity of perspectives, backgrounds, and interests,” says Tingley. “They don’t necessarily take our degree to be artists, or system designers, or game designers, or user experience designers. This often comes to them through interacting with each other and with their instructors. Some come in with a very specific direction in mind, but others find this along the way. Because our students have a range of interests, teaching is always surprising.”

That emphasis on collaboration extends beyond the classroom and into York's research ecosystem.

Digital Media students have opportunities to work alongside faculty from the program as well as from Lassonde’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in research labs exploring machine learning, computational creativity, immersive visualization, digitally mediated performance, usable security, audio technologies and human-centred computing.

Faculty-led spaces such as SLOlab, the Practices in Enabling Technologies (PiET) Lab, Sensorium, Alice Lab and several others bring together artists, engineers and computer scientists to investigate emerging technologies while engaging students as research assistants, collaborators and creative partners.

Research becomes another form of experiential learning, where students can contribute to workshops, exhibitions, performances, hackathons, community-engaged projects and scholarly publications while gaining experience working with industry, cultural organizations and community partners.

"What is really unique about the Digital Media program is its interdisciplinary nature, which supports my research at the intersection of technology, design and human experience,” says Sana Maqsood, an Assistant Professor at Lassonde who has taught the program’s Hypermedia and Multimedia Technology course. “My students have worked on research projects exploring issues such as online privacy, digital security and human-centred design. This makes our class discussions richer, as our students are able to explore the course concepts both from design and research perspectives.”

Industry engagement forms another important part of the learning experience. Throughout the program, students present work in public exhibitions, participate in game jams, and enter design competitions. Their projects are regularly recognized through initiatives such as City of Toronto events, Ubisoft Toronto NEXT and the Level Up Showcase, while annual exhibitions every December and April at the Inter/Access gallery, a highly respected Canadian artist-run centre and production studio in downtown Toronto, provide them with opportunities to present their work to audiences beyond the university.

Co-op education is another way that students connect with employers, giving them a chance to build professional networks with domestic and international employers and gain paid industry experience in areas such as immersive computing, virtual/mixed reality and data visualization.

According to Tingley, the philosophy of extending learning beyond the classroom is also shaping the program's future. Following a recent cyclical review, faculty are redesigning elements of the curriculum to make complex computational concepts more accessible through experiential learning. Rather than introducing programming and mathematical theory in isolation, new courses will increasingly connect technical concepts to creative practice, helping students understand not only how technologies work but why they matter within artistic and professional contexts.

Artificial intelligence is one area that is receiving particular attention. Rather than adopting a single approach, faculty are developing context-specific ways of teaching Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) that reflect the realities of different creative industries. In some courses, students use GenAI to support coding and design while documenting and critically reflecting on their development process. In others, particularly within game design, students examine the ethical, economic and creative implications of AI, including its impact on employment, authorship, and artistic practice.

“We are in the process of discussing how to integrate AI into our curriculum so that students understand not just how to use it, but also what it is, what the ethical dimensions are and also how to create and train their own models,”says Tingley. "Digital media changes incredibly quickly, which means our curriculum has to evolve with it. Our goal isn't simply to teach students today's software or platforms; it's to help them become adaptable creators and critical thinkers who can shape the future."

As creative industries change, employers increasingly seek graduates who can collaborate and move comfortably between disciplines, combining artistic vision with computational expertise and technical fluency. York's Digital Media program anticipated that shift nearly twenty years ago, building an educational model where code, design, engineering and creative practice reinforce rather than compete with one another.

From public art installations on Toronto's waterfront to research laboratories, game studios and immersive digital environments, students are learning that the most innovative ideas rarely emerge from a single discipline. Instead, they are created where technology and creativity meet—and where artists, programmers and engineers learn not simply to work alongside one another, but to build together.