Eastside Culture Crawl Society lays groundwork for establishing Eastside Arts District
Now year-round, group plans a CREATE! Arts Festival for August 2021, and works to loosen the squeeze on artists’ spaces in the neighbourhood
THE EASTSIDE CULTURE Crawl Society is rebranding itself as the Eastside Arts Society—part of its longterm plan to establish a designated Eastside Arts District and go year-round.
New initiatives include the first CREATE! Arts Festival in August 2021, featuring hands-on art making activities led by local visual artists and craft makers.
The Vancouver Foundation has awarded the group $300,000 to use over three years to develop a strategic plan for the project—one that seeks to build capacity for artists and arts organizations within the geographic region where the Crawl has traditionally taken place.
Vancouver’s East Side is home to the highest concentration of artists in any neighbourhood across Canada and the birthplace of the popular annual Eastside Culture Crawl, which is preparing to celebrate its 25th anniversary in November.
The Crawl society has been taking an increasing role advocating to save artists’ spaces in the neighbourhood as real estate prices skyrocket. The three-year project would look to expand programming and spaces for artists across all disciplines and propose policy changes to sustain their work in the area.
“Since 2010, hundreds of artists have suffered devastating losses to their workspaces and communities due to evictions, rent increases, and shrinking studio space,” Eastside Arts Society artistic and executive director Esther Rausenberg said in the announcement today. “The Vancouver Foundation grant is the first step towards the creation of policies and funding models that will offer sustainable solutions for artists.
“At the same time, the establishment of a designated arts district will serve to formally recognize the significant value and impact artists make on a healthy, thriving society, while simultaneously enhancing economic growth and boosting tourism. To support artists is to support our city.”
Over the next three years, EAS will collaborate with the City of Vancouver, which launched its own 10-year plan to support arts and culture in 2019 and passed a unanimous motion in February 2020 to support the Eastside Arts Society’s dream of defining an Eastside Arts District.
Work beginning now will include analyzing existing policies and legislation, zoning considerations, and real estate context; mapping current assets on Vancouver’s Eastside, including studios, galleries, theatres, festivals, public art, restaurants, breweries, and more; and engaging community stakeholders, including artists, performers, Indigenous leaders, arts organizations, post-secondary institutions, landowners and developers.
Based on that data and feedback, the society plans to develop a plan that includes the expansion of year-round arts programming opportunities, the creation of an interactive website to serve as a comprehensive resource for both locals and tourists, the preservation of cultural and artistic sites within the community, and the establishment of new workspaces for artists of all disciplines.
In 2019, the Eastside Culture Crawl released a report called City Without Art? No Net Loss, Plus! that found more than 400,000 square feet of artist space had been lost over the previous decade. Making matters worse, rental rates for those spaces had increased by 65 percent.
The society will continue to produce the annual Eastside Culture Crawl festival, the massive open-studio event held each November. Pre-pandemic, the celebration drew more than 45,000 attendees and featured over 500 painters, jewellers, sculptors, furniture makers, weavers, potters, printmakers, photographers, glassblowers, and more.
Meanwhile, more information about the CREATE! festival will be announced in July 2021.
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