via Wake Up World (via Katrina Prescott on FB):
Seattle’s Beacon Food Forest, located in the Beacon Hill neighborhood, will provide an array of edible fruit-bearing plants including apple, pear, persimmon, chestnut and walnut trees; and edible berries such as blueberry, lingonberry and raspberry. The project, which is already underway, is set to take several years to fully develop the seven acre plot just 2.5 miles from downtown Seattle.
Vancouver is second in North America for population density; NYC is first.
(Taken with instagram from Stanley Park)
Last year, after much mulling of Vancouver’s live performance venue challenges, it dawned on me how much of our public space we don’t fully utilize. And by we I mean me. In particular, I started noticing how many amphitheatres there are in our parks and realized I’d never seen one in use. So… I launched a project called the Vancouver Amphitheatre Project, an exercise in exercising public space, hoping that I could convene friends for various adventures in these underutilized venues.
The first event we held was an en plein air reading of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself from the first edition of Leaves of Grass. As I wrote later:
Wonderful people showed up to share the beauty of his words. We smiled together at his whimsy. Frowned our faces when he told of battle. I wept at moments when his words felt true. And we skipped ahead when he repeated himself more than our patience could bear. Afterwards, we shared beers and got to know each other. It was lovely.
Find a bunch more pics over at the Vancouver Amphitheatre Project Tumblr.
After attending this month’s CreativeMornings/Vancouver talk with community spaces architect Darryl Condon, I’m juiced to start occupying some amphitheatres again! Time to do another event. When? I’m not sure - so much already on my plate…
But don’t wait for me to get it started. It’s easy to take over these public spaces yourself!
Start your own #VancouverAmphitheatreProject event using these guidelines to help:
via vancouveramphitheatreproject:
El Djem Roman Amphitheatre (Flickr / felinebird)
To hold your own Vancouver Amphitheatre Project event:
- Decide what you want to do with the space: a poetry reading, a comedy show, a play, a ukelele jam session, a yoga or stich ‘n bitch meetup, a national anthem contest, whatever!
- Post your idea on the blog here. To do this, the user email is vancouver.henegarATgmail com; the password is happyfuntimes
- Choose a venue. It has been recommended we create a map plotting all the amphitheatres in Vancouver. Great idea. Want to do it? Go ahead. Until that gets made, walk your neighbourhood to find parks offering a public stage. (When you find one, feel free to tweet the location to #VancouverAmphitheatreProject and/or @VancouverPal, who will add this to a map.)
- Get the word out. On Twitter, use the hashtag #VancouverAmphitheatreProject. On Facebook, create an event page. In real life, tell your friends, make signs, write a note on a bathroom stall at the Cambie, etc.
- Let guests know that the event will be in a public space so to expect noise, hecklers, randoms and other happy surprises.
- Be sure to empower performers and guests with information about their rights. Send around the City of Vancouver’s current Noise Bylaws [pdf], which have been condensed by the Safe Amplification Society here.
- Arrive at the space at least 30-60 minutes before the event is set to begin to secure the amphitheatre for your event.
- What to bring: depending on the event and the venue, recommend people bring something to sit on, a beverage (open containers of alcohol are not permitted in public spaces; use your discretion) and, with full understanding of the noise bylaws, perhaps something to amplify voices; a rolled up piece of cardboard is likely the best option.
- Documentation. Take photos, video, draw sketches, sculpt clay - whatever method you’d like, but be sure to document the event somehow so it can be shared with those who attended as well as those interested in possibly hosting their own event.
- Post your pics/video/etc to the VancouverAmphitheatreProject blog (this one right here).
I’ve probably forgotten something, so feel free to send suggestions for changes/additions via email (vancouver.henegarATgmail com) or Twitter (@VancouverPal).
Now go have fun out there!
- Hilary
Participate in crafting the Grandview-Woodland Community Plan! Follow @gwplan on Twitter. (too bad faith-based community excluded from walking tour…)
Scott Timberg dissects America’s disdain for the creative class at Salon.com:
… Taxpayers bail out the auto industry and Wall Street and the banks. There’s a sense that manufacturing, or the agrarian economy, is what this country is really about. But culture was, for a while, what America did best: We produce and export creativity around the world. So why aren’t we lamenting the plight of its practitioners? Bureau of Labor Statistics confirm that creative industries have been some of the hardest hit during the Bush years and the Great Recession. But when someone employed in the world of culture loses a job, he or she feels easier to sneer at than a steel worker or auto worker.
…
“Artists in the Workforce,” a National Endowment for the Arts report released in 2008, before the Great Recession sliced and diced this class, showed the reality of the creative life. While most of the artists surveyed had college degrees, they earned — with a median income, in 2003-’05, of $34,800 — less than the average professional. Dancers made, on average, a mere $15,000.
…
“What does it mean in America to be a successful artist?” asks Dana Gioia, the poet who oversaw the study while NEA chairman. “Essentially, these are working-class people – a lot of them have second jobs. They’re highly trained – dancers, singers, actors – and they don’t make a lot of money. They make tremendous sacrifices for their work. They’re people who should have our respect, the same as a farmer. We don’t want a society without them.”
Many of them, in fact, are effectively entrepreneurs, but have little of the regard of the lavishly paid, mythically potent CEO. A working artist is seen neither as the salt of the earth by the left, nor as a “job creator” by the right — but as a kind of self-indulgent parasite by both sides. Why the disconnect?
“There’s always this sense that art is just play,” says Peter Plagens, a New York painter and art critic. “Art is what children do and what retired people do. Your mom puts your work up on the refrigerator. Or the way Dwight Eisenhower said, ‘Now that I’ve fought my battles, I can put my easel up outside.’”
via Tangential Vancouverism. #quotes (Taken with instagram)
My latest post for VancouverIsAwesome zeroes in on a rad little public engagement event series that uses story and dialogue to empower citizens and city staff to dream up a future Vancouver worthy of us:
Intergenerational storytelling event series empowers residents to help inform Vancouver city policy around transportation, waste, food and green space
In a city where it is often heard “nobody is from here,” where almost half of all residents were born other places, where to have family who remember Vancouver’s golden age of street cars living within easy distance is exceptional – in such a city, an appetite grows.
For connection, sure, but more than that – for help in understanding how we each fit into the rich tapestry of the Vancouver cityscape, for the historical context that shaped this place and for a shared vision of the future that reflects the rich mosaic of experience we transplants and natives draw from while pushing forward with innovative new models that increase quality of life for all.
It is a young city, we say, and by that we mean that it is ours to create and to mold and to colour and to preserve. A DIY city for a post-collapse world.
As developers raze and RIZE Vancouver’s physical topography, its cultural profile gurgles and pops as indie pocket arts projects bubble up from the dregs of the city’s anemic mainstream arts industry, and a minority of impassioned citizens reject business as usual, rallying on Facebook, in council chambers, and from nylon hovels pitched outside our VAG (pound that with a hard G, please).
The winds of public opinion are blowing hot through this city, forecasting a perfect storm for transformative new models in civic engagement.
Enter Re:Generation, an intergenerational event series that builds a bridge between citizens of all ages and the city through meaningful dialogue and storytelling. Produced by a cohort of alumni from NextUp – a local leadership program growing a “new generation of progressive leaders” – the event “holds space for people to come together to actually have intentional time to think and talk about their community,” says organizer Kevin Millsip.
The next Re:Generation event, How We Green Our City, is April 11 at the Waldorf Hotel and will look at green space, parks and how to bring more nature into our built environment. See you there!
Photo by Taryn Cheremkora
via The History of Metropolitan Vancouver:
October 16 A headline in The Vancouver Sun reads: “Chinese seethe over Freeway.” This was in reference to the anger in the city’s Strathcona neighborhood over plans to run a freeway through the area—many of the residents were Chinese who had lived there for decades. Wrote Taras Grescoe in The Greater Vancouver Book: “A San Francisco-based firm concluded that a waterfront freeway would best be served by levelling 600 houses in Strathcona and laying a ten-metre-high overpass over Carrall Street, in the centre of Chinatown. Immediately, protest came from every part of the city, and a crowd of 800 people gathered in City Hall to shout down the consultants’ proposals. The Chairman of the city’s planning commission resigned on the spot, and a year later, the plan was scrapped. Apparently, the spirited editorializing of the local papers in favor of cutting out civic blight with a concrete knife had influenced no one but a handful of architects.”
John Atkin, author of a book on Strathcona, has commented: “It was because of its mixture of housing and industry and the fact that it was the entry point to the city for successive waves of immigrants, that the East End name came to have a derogatory meaning. By the 1950s planners had declared it a slum for demolition, despite evidence to the contrary. By 1967, despite protests, fifteen blocks of the neighborhood had already been acquired and cleared for urban redevelopment when the city announced a freeway to downtown. Strathcona residents were horrified by plans to use the blocks in between Union and Prior for the freeway, connected via a new Georgia Viaduct to the larger network of roads that were to carve up the downtown. The outcry from the general public, community activists and professionals was loud and clear about the lack of public consultation and the amount of destruction the new roads would cause. In the end the Georgia and Dunsmuir street viaducts were the only pieces of the system to be constructed …”
Memorial to celebrate the
Life of Jim Green
at The Orpheum
Saturday, April 14
1:30 p.m - 3:30pm.
Doors open at 12:30pm.
Am Johal, a friend and disciple of Jim Green’s, wrote a very touching remembrance in the Straight. I encourage you to read the full piece, but for those who didn’t know the man who touched so many lives in Vancouver, here are some highlights:
The day Jim Green died, he broke a thousand hearts. Too sudden, too soon. He died peacefully in the Woodward’s building—a place that wouldn’t have existed without him.
…
Best Mayor Vancouver never had. A civic saint. A streetfighter.
…
Jim Green was a mentor, a friend and a drinking buddy. I unofficially earned a master’s degree in urban studies from the University of the Waldorf Pub in the late ’90s, sitting next to him in the bar during the Saturday afternoon meat draws. He would talk for hours about a range of topics including Antonio Gramsci, urbanism, architecture, heritage buildings, the Canadian Seamen’s Union, his favourite flowers, how to properly roll a joint, community organizing in the ’80s, and the May ‘68 riots in France. He loved talking about music. Jim was a vegetarian, but if he ever won the meat draw, he’d hold the winnings over his head and taunt the crowd, calling them “low-lifes” with an affectionate smile on his face.
Jim influenced hundreds of students through the generosity of his time and by living the idea that community knowledge is co-equal with, and often times more important than, academic knowledge. He helped graduate students with their research and taught them in Anthropology 303 at UBC—a course he co-taught with the late Michael Ames, the former director of the Museum of Anthropology. He taught his students to appreciate beauty and how to love cities. These students are now a new generation of professors, planners, government bureaucrats, health-care workers, senior policy analysts, NGO directors, and changemakers in the city. He influenced hundreds and hundreds of young people in Vancouver, who have only begun to make their contribution to the city. There’s a Jim Green Army out there, ready to fight the good fight.
— S Chandra Herbert on Twitter
Franklin St. Studios and Gallery Gachet present:
DRAWUARY: DON’T NOT DRAW
Curated by Gabrielle Hill, Evan Sabourin and Alex Stursberg
March 23-April 20, 2012Opening night: Fri, March 23, 7–10pm
Gallery Gachet pays homage to the resilience of drawing (or “mark making”) as a form of creative expression with an exhibit it’s launching tonight called Drawuary: Don’t Not Draw Show, by Franklin St. Studios, who lost their studio space at Red Gate when it was shuttered by the property owner last fall.
Tonight’s opening also celebrates the launch of the Art Cart + Salon Shop, via Gallery Gachet on FB:
Art Cart is a mobile art gallery and vending cart for the communities of Gallery Gachet and Oppenheimer Park. The Art Cart is a vessel for artists to transport and sell their work, as well as a being a hub for curated exhibitions and projects, community workshops and public events. Art Cart seeks alternatives for “artist space”, and in its own way represents an act of creative survival and resistance. Developed in collaboration between Oppenheimer Park and Gallery Gachet, Art Cart aims to support artist exposure, creative exchange, and art sales. Like drawing, it can be unhinged from convention as it navigates the shifting possibilities for art in the local cultural realm - who makes it, who shows it, who sees it and who sells it.
Salon Shop is an inclusive micro-gallery space located at Gallery Gachet featuring work by Gachet’s collective and volunteer members. As art and cultural spaces and resources are seized and disappear, most artists are being left with limited options. The Salon Shop offers innovative ways to repurpose and share already existing space, especially in light of Gallery Gachet losing their Powell Street studio space back in 2010 and the looming possibility of the loss of their gallery space at 88 East Cordova at the end of 2012.
The Art Cart project was made possible by the City of Vancouver’s Great Beginnings Program, a $10 million fund mandated “to enhance the community pride, livability and public appeal of Vancouver’s first urban areas” - which include Gastown, Chinatown, Japantown and Strathcona - “through improvements to the physical, social, and economic environments.”
via Jessica Werb for the Georgia Straight:
The cart, designed by Dean Bennett and manufactured by Toby’s Cycle Works, attaches to a bicycle and opens up with a tabletop and an all-weather awning. “It’s almost like the art gallery taking to the streets, an art gallery on wheels,” said Lara Fitzgerald, programming director for Gallery Gachet. “It’s kind of this multipurpose space.”
“We’re hoping it’s going to enable artists who perhaps don’t get to show their work outside of the local area in the Downtown Eastside to traverse and go to other areas of the city where there’s a different economic landscape,” Fitzgerald added. “We’re hoping that it’s going to help artists to build their own sustainable practice so that it will give them the opportunity to sell their works. We’re also hoping that it can be a platform for community arts to have a bigger presence within the wider art scene in Vancouver.”
The Art Cart also received support from the Community Arts Council of Vancouver, which brings communities together through “artist-led collaborations that open barriers to understanding.”
MOTION ON NOTICE
4. Campaign Finance Reform
MOVER: Councillor Andrea Reimer
SECONDER:
WHEREAS
1. In 2005, 2009, 2010, and 2012 the City of Vancouver has brought forward formal requests to the Province requesting changes to the Vancouver Charter to allow for local governments to create appropriate rules for disclosure and regulation of election campaign finance.
2. The funds used to campaign for elected office in Vancouver have grown exponentially in the seven year interval Vancouver has waited for provincial action on this issue.
3. The most recent motion, passed unanimously by Vancouver City Council in January 2012, provoked an informal response from the Provincial Government that they would be amenable to modernizing municipal election and campaign rules if support from a majority of municipalities was garnered.
4. A motion from Vancouver to the UBCM in 2009 was pre-empted from debate with the establishment of the provincial government’s Local Government Election Task Force.
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT the Lower Mainland Local Government Association support a resolution to the 2012 UBCM Annual Meeting requesting amendments to the Local Government Act and the Vancouver Charter to allow municipalities to make rules for disclosure and regulation of election campaign finance that are appropriate for their circumstances;
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT it is requested these amendments be made before the 2014 municipal elections.
* * * * *
Learn more, sign the petition: bigmoneyout.org.
via curiositycounts:
Please meet the TEK Robotic mobilization device, the first stand-up wheelchair. For users, this means better cardiovascular health, eye to eye contact, ability to reach things hi and low, etc… This is brilliant example of technology being used to truly improve experiences.
beirut, bc #vancouver (Taken with instagram)
This is on the Granville Strip, between Helmcken and Nelson, on the west side of the street. Tristan, whose husband Joshua Johnson works as a tattoo artist out of the shop across the street, NEXT!, said they just painted it a couple years ago, her voice full of disdain. It’s odd in real life but as a subject for a photo I found it enchanting, reminding me of Central Asia or the Middle East - or pictures I’ve seen of those places.
Being here, by Mark Garry, thread pins, beads
Why Wes Anderson cast Edward Norton as a scoutmaster in his film: “Edward Norton was someone who I corresponded with over the years, and he was...
