Arts community mourns former Vancouver East Cultural Centre executive director Duncan Low
Passionate arts leader and academic remembered for adventurous curation and generous optimism
Duncan Low
THE ARTS COMMUNITY is mourning Duncan Low, who died unexpectedly at his home in Oak Bay, B.C., where he was in semi-retirement, on November 18.
Born in Nottingham, England in 1956, he is survived by his partner Janet Scarfe, and his elder brother Steve.
Low was best known as as the former executive director of the Vancouver East Cultural Centre—The Cultch, which he ran from 1996 to 2006. He curated a vibrant program at the performing-arts hub. Later he helped oversee the capital campaign for the multimillion-dollar renovation for the then-aging facility.
“Duncan was a strategist, he always thought outside the box, creating win/win propositions for artists, the public and the city,” the Cultch posted in a statement this week. “He worked tirelessly to raise the money and build the networks necessary to move The Cultch from an arts organisation that was in debt and occupying a crumbling building, to a thriving and vital institution. He managed to do all of this by raging against the system, charming everyone who could help his cause and laughing to the point of crying whenever possible. Duncan was very very funny. He approached fundraising for the building like it was a political campaign. When The Cultch renovation was shortlisted for the $1,000,000 Vancity Award in 2002, Duncan stood in front of the bank’s branches shaking hands with their customers handing out buttons and pamphlets encouraging them to vote for the theatre to win the award. His efforts resulted in a significant increase in voters for Vancity and a million dollars for a fundraising campaign that continued through 2008.”
During his tenure at the Cultch, he also worked to support and nurture resident companies, helping to establish the $60,000 Alcan Performing Arts Award to fund daring, visionary works across different performing-art forms. (Past winners include Crystal Pite’s now internationally famous Kidd Pivot.)
“In our early days, Duncan adopted Electric Company as one of several resident arts organizations at the Cultch as he recognized the extraordinary value of a place to call home,” Electric Company Theatre posted on social media today. “Between 2000 and 2007 we ran our operation out of the Green House next door to the Cultch. In that period, we made three shows for the VECC including Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands which was achieved with the support of the Alcan Performing Arts Award—one of Duncan’s visionary partnerships which altered the face of Vancouver performance. His adventurous spirit and aesthetic sophistication set a new bar for curation and programming and made the Cultch synonymous with artistic excellence and innovation.”
Before coming to Canada, Low started his theatre career as a scene shifter at the Cambridge Arts Theatre, later becoming company stage manager at Perth Theatre, where he met Scarfe in 1979. Inspired by the Vancouver International Children’s Festival, he went on to establish the Scottish International Children’s Festival in Edinburgh.
He moved to Montreal in 1985, later heading West to helm the Cultch for a decade.
While at the Cultch, Low pursued his Master of Urban Studies degree, then a Doctor of Philosophy from the School of Communications at SFU; his dissertation, Federal Arts Policy 1957-2014. The Rhetoric & The Reality, took a deep dive into the claim that 21st century Canadian arts policy is delivering the support necessary to maintain and build a vigorous and sustainable professional arts sector. The city hired him in late 2003 as a cultural planner for festivals and community celebrations.
In 2017, Lowe was awarded a Canadian Science Policy Fellowship at the BC Ministry of Advanced Education, Skills & Training, Research and Analysis Unit, which took him to Victoria. More recently, he had been teaching part time at Thompson Rivers University, volunteering at Our Place, and serving as a member of the Canadian College of Performing Arts Board of Directors.
As his obituary read this week: “He immersed himself fully in his passions and shared his passions generously. He truly loved exposing friends (and strangers) to things that brought him joy, and no one who spoke with him left the conversation without learning something new. He mentored a generation of arts administrators, artists, and curators. His style, directness, ability to get to the bottom of an issue, and his passion will be sorely missed. The people whose lives he touched are better off for having known him, and the broader community is stronger for the leadership he demonstrated as an arts administrator and advocate.”
“We join the BC arts community in grieving the passing of Duncan Low,” the Canadian College of Performing Arts posted today. “His generous optimism and enthusiasm for the arts made an impression on all who knew him, and his dedicated work on the Facility Committee and 'outside the box' approach during his time on the Board of Directors had a huge impact on CCPA. He will be deeply missed.” “I remember his optimism, his robust laughter, his big picture - skip the line and go right to the source approach,” recalled managing artistic director Caleb Marshall.
Low passed away on the same weekend as another big force on the Vancouver arts scene, Norman Armour.
The family has announced a graveside service and reception at McCall Gardens in Victoria on November 30, with plans for a Vancouver celebration of life this spring.
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