Event Listings

Artists Walking Home

Date: June – December, 2011; upcoming walk on Sunday, November 13, 2011,  Saturday, December 3, 2011
Location: Downtown Eastside
Website: artistswalkinghome.ca and www.walkinghomeprojects.com

Artists Walking Home is a year-long collaboration between Walking Home Projects and 221A Artist Run Centre comprised of a series of walks guided by local artists, designers, and architects that will invite public participants to learn about the complex historical and social conditions of Vancouver through the embodied experience of the cities cultural producers. Participants will experience a direct connection to the city’s immediate environment – both natural and constructed – and to gain an understanding of how ideas and intention become policy, resulting in action and infrastructure which shape our social and lived experiences in public spaces.

Join Artists Walking Home for upcoming walks in November and December:

Tacit Past: Marks of Vancouver’s History
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Presenter: Samantha Knopp
http://artistswalkinghome.ca/tacit-past

“I think, therefore I am.” Is it right to privilege the mind over the body?

In this walk, Artists Walking Home invites you to experience the alternative and embrace embodied learning. By going into the heart of Vancouver’s beginnings (Gastown, Chinatown and the Downtown East Side), Samantha Knopp will highlight the tangible layers of history and the contestations that surround their physicality. Drawing upon her interests in three-dimensional representation, the walk will invite viewers to share their experiences as they interact with the marks of the past, present and future.

Walk Information
Arrive at: 1:45pm
Walk Starts: 2:00pm (2 hours max, no latecomers)
Rain or Shine, Dress Weather Appropriate
Limited Capacity: 20
Cost: $21

Maraya
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Presenter: M. Simon Levin
http://artistswalkinghome.ca/maraya

Maraya comes from the Arabic word for reflection; image, mirror – mirage; it is meant to make you wonder. Like Narcissus’s deep wondrous gaze, Maraya asks us to reflect, to look again at our own civic mirroring – at what it is that makes here special. It asks, how is here any different from there? The Maraya Project is a dialogue between a network of weary travellers, local pundits, aspiring artists, curators, public intellectuals, writers, photographers, academics, conversationalists, programmers, bloggers, silent walkers, anarchists, and urban planners. We need you to help us reflect on how cities move, how the ground beneath our feet is in constant motion. In an age when the material city has become thoroughly enmeshed in virtual representations, the singularity of place is occluded by a multiplicity of mass-mediated images.

Join M. Simon Levin on False Creek for a walk that both reflects and distorts the Vancouver seawall, and gives us pause to see ourselves. Please bring a camera or an image capturing device—we’ll provide the reflection.

Walk Information
Arrive at: 10:45am
Walk Starts: 11:00am (2 hours max, No late-comers)
Rain or Shine, Dress Weather Appropriate
Limited Capacity: 20
Cost: $21
Walk starting point: Davie at Pacific Boulevard

The starting point for the walk will be emailed to participants after pre-registration.

For registration inquiries visit artistswalkinghome.ca/tacit-past or email hello@artistswalkinghome.ca.

With support from the City of Vancouver’s 125th Anniversary Grants Program and the participation of the Government of Canada.

Bhangra.me: Vancouver’s Bhangra Story


Date: May 5 to October 23, 2011
Location: Museum of Vancouver
Website: www.museumofvancouver.ca and www.bhangra.me

Experience an interactive exhibition that chronicles Bhangra music, dance and politics in Vancouver. From dance teams in the 70s, to international DJs in 2011, this exhibit features Vancouver’s unique Bhangra story. Play instruments, listen to local DJ-curated playlists, read about Bhangra’s connection to social protest, and dance in the Performance Lounge. Share your Bhangra story, memories and photos online at Bhangra.me.

With support from the City of Vancouver’s 125th Anniversary Grants Program and the participation of the Government of Canada.

Read More

Download the Bhangra.Me Press Release

Vancouver 125 Redress Series


Date: May 22 to November 27, 2011
Location: W2 Community Media Arts
Website: www.creativetechnology.org

W2′s Vancouver 125 Redress Series challenges the readiness of Vancouver to live with cultural harmony when for decades systemic barriers to citizenship have barred immigrants from calling Vancouver home. The program kicked off with the Komagata Maru anniversary in May, continues with A Time for Change (Woodward’s Atrium, June 17 – July 1), a photographic record of South Asian migrant farmworkers who pick our food but do not have equal rights to working conditions. Later this year W2 presents artists working on Japanese internment issues, and presents First Nations filmmakers during the November Vancouver Indigenous Media Arts Festival.

Upcoming Redress Event
Saturday, Nov 12, 2pm | W2 Media Cafe – 111 W Hastings | By Donation

Vancouver 125 Panel & Screenings: Loretta Todd on NDN portrayal in mainstream media and representation throughout Vancouver’s 125 years. This event is part of the W2 Vancouver 125 Redress Series with short films screening: Siwash Rock, Dead Ground, The Last Family, Encroaching Vancouver, Oppenheimer Park and A Proud Lineage.

Earlier this year, at the VIMAF Kickstarter event, W2 and VIMAF screened Reel Injun examining how Indigenous People’s of Turtle Island are portrayed by Hollywood, now with this event, we go hyperlocal on the West Coast on the Unceded Coast Salish Peoples’ Territories.

W2′s mandate includes crosscultural dialogue and redress and therefore the W2/VIMAF rebuild a West Coast indigenous media arts festival, and this panel discussion specifically, is an appropriate use of funding from the City’s 125 grants program. W2 Board member, Sid Tan, a veteran of the Chinese Head Tax Redress movement and a community TV activist will join the discussion. Loretta Todd (Metis/Cree) is an award-winning director, writer and producer. She is a commanding presence known for her powerful, visual storytelling, the highest production standards and professional demeanor.

With support from the City of Vancouver’s 125th Anniversary Grants Program and the participation of the Government of Canada.