Can a New Vision Save Vancouver’s Arts Spaces?

Vancouver city council has joined the battle to address the crisis that’s closing arts spaces and threatening the city’s cultural community.

Council unanimously passed OneCity Coun. Christine Boyle’s motion directing staff to find ways to protect and expand arts spaces.

“It’s hard to survive in the arts in Vancouver,” Boyle said in council chambers Thursday. “Supporting these groups that are lifting up under-represented voices and telling stories that really help us remember who we are as [a] rich and diverse community is really important.”

Boyle emphasized that her motion builds on the collaborative work already being done by community members, the city’s arts and culture advisory committee and local groups like Vancouver’s 221A Artist Run Centre Society. Formerly an artist-run gallery in Chinatown, 221A is now a non-profit in downtown Vancouver that works with artists to improve social and cultural infrastructure.

Among its newest projects is the proposed Cultural Land Trust, which aims to create a more sustainable model for operating arts spaces in Vancouver by acquiring properties that would be collectively managed by the community as arts and culture spaces.

Boyle expressed support in her motion to council.

While 221A announced its Cultural Land Trust proposal this spring, the idea originated from a BC Co-op Association meeting in 2013. The staff at 221A then did a study funded by the city and the Canada Council for the Arts, which was completed in 2019.

Now in its seed funding phase, the Cultural Land Trust takes a collective approach to providing cultural infrastructure in an increasingly difficult landscape.

The goal is to facilitate the long-term stewardship of land and buildings for cultural use and strengthen access for equity-denied groups. To do this, the Cultural Land Trust is striving to secure 30 properties in B.C. by 2050. These properties will be collectively owned and governed by the community, with direct representation from tenants.

It’s long-term work that is sorely needed. According to data on the Cultural Land Trust website, over 80 per cent of artists and cultural organizations in B.C. face economic displacement as rents and living costs rise. In the past decade, more than 400 artist production spaces, music and performing arts venues, and galleries have had to close, it says.

Collective ownership, community governance

Brian McBay, 221A’s executive director, said the Cultural Land Trust is a way to embed “certain values around collective control of land and ensuring equity groups, including Indigenous folks and host nations, can have a mechanism in place to ensure that there’s right relations when it comes to using these lands and developing them.”

The Chinese Benevolent Association of Vancouver’s model of collective ownership and community governance, for example, has allowed them to own many of their properties and maintain affordable rents.

“Let’s learn from that history of Chinatown,” said McBay. One of his hopes for the Cultural Land Trust is that it may provide the long-term sustainability that many arts organizations currently lack. He points to the five- or 10-year commercial leases for many arts spaces, which make organizations vulnerable to market forces that can price them out. A sudden rent increase on a gallery space in a hot neighbourhood, for example, can make the space unaffordable.

“Unlike residential property, commercial real estate doesn’t have any rent controls from government, so they can double it or go wild,” he said. “We have an existential crisis basically coming all the time.”

McBay notes that a number of artists’ spaces are in older industrial buildings — ideal spaces for redevelopment.

“Ultimately it’s up to [the] city to choose where they want to put density. And they chose to put density in a lot of these areas,” said McBay. “It’s a lot easier to put it in an area where you don’t have residential neighbourhoods.”

To preserve the soul of independent arts organizations, the people running them need support, McBay said. The Cultural Land Trust will serve to consolidate knowledge and become a “one-stop shop” to help arts organizations navigate regulatory processes.

Representatives from independent cultural organizations agree this kind of resource is needed.

“Many small arts organizations don’t have the capacity to navigate the City of Vancouver’s permitting, licensing and development processes,” said Brent Constantine, executive director of Little Mountain Gallery.

If arts spaces are lost to development, finding a new home is challenging.

“It is extremely costly and complicated for arts groups that don’t have the expertise to lead a capital project,” he said.

Constantine said that short-term leases also make it difficult for organizations to secure grant funding.

McBay said collaboration is key to addressing these issues successfully. He is currently meeting with all three levels of government to try to see the land trust model adopted in more communities across the province.

Cultural land trust models have had previous success in cities such as London, England; San Francisco, California; and Austin, Texas.

“We need to be sophisticated and we need to be collaborative. And it takes community and government to come together to make these happen,” McBay said.

“It needs to be designed into the city. It can’t be like a leftover thing.”