Bread and Salt

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image001 Inspired by stories and memories from the East End’s historic Ukrainian community, this 85th Anniversary tribute interweaves oral history with live theatre and music, haunting choral singing and the driving rhythms of Ukrainian dance. Bread and Salt is performed by a multi-generational cast of over sixty professional and community actors, singers, dancers and musicians.   Co-writers - Beverly Dobrinsky and Savannah Walling with writings by Clifford Odets, Helen Potrebenko, Ivan Franko and Taras Shevchenko Director - James Fagan Tait* Music Director - Beverly Dobrinsky Actors - Montana Hunter, Stephen Maddock*, Billy Marchenski, Helen Volkow Musicians -  Sheila Allen, Jonathan Bernard, Alex Chisholm, Mark Haney, Alison Jenkins,  Bud and Heidi Kurz Conductors - Gregory Johnson and Beverly Dobrinsky Dance Directors - Debbie (Wishinki) Karras and Laurel (Parasiuk) Lawry Stage Manager - Leigh Kerr* With the Vancouver Folk Orchestra, Barvinok Choir, Dovbush Dancers the AUUC School of Dance. Choreographic contributions by Serguei Makarov, Liliya Chernous, Gina Alpen (Con8 Collective) and Danya Karras. *appearing courtesy of Canadian Actors Equity Association Click here for more information and the history of the Ukrainian Hall.

Coming Back to Our Home

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The Ukrainian Hall’s history dates back to 1928 when it was built as the Ukrainian Labor Temple by immigrants from the prairies and Europe.
“Coming out of war and internment camps, we knew we needed a meeting place for mutual support. There was no welfare or social services – we had to do it for ourselves…. We didn’t know how to build a hall, we just did it – built it with our own hands in 1928, then paid off the mortgage in three years, paid it off in pennies, nickels, dimes.”     - Bread & Salt
Immediately upon opening the association sponsored a full slate of cultural, educational and social activities. But within a year of the hall’s opening, Vancouver was hard hit by the Great Depression. The hall became a focal point of labour struggles of the Dirty 30s.  It was the organizational headquarters for the occupation of the Carnegie Museum and the On-to-Ottawa Trek in 1935 and a place of refuge for strikers in the great Post Office Sit-in of 1938. After Germany invaded Poland, Canada entered the war, invoking the War Measures Act.  The hall was padlocked under “Defense of Canada Regulations”.  Although the Association had lost their hall, they were welcomed by the Croatian Hall (now called the Russian Hall), and the Italian and Finnish Halls, so they continued their dancing and language schools and raised thousands of dollars for the war effort.
“After the Soviet Union allied with Canada in the war against the Nazis, the ban against the Association was lifted.  But we had to petition the federal government to get back our halls.  There was a 6 ½ block parade when the Ukrainian Hall reopened… We were coming back to our home.” – Bread & Salt
  THE STORY OF “WAITING FOR LEFTY” During the  1935 six month lock-out strike between the Longshoremen’s Union and the Shipping Federation, Labour Defense lawyer Garfield King got together with actor/director Guy Glover to form Vancouver’s Progressive Arts Club.
“We felt an urgency in the air, a need for theatre with a little blood to it, some substance and real life themes.” – Bread & Salt
  Putting out a call for workers interested in “plays of social significance with revolutionary implications” (BC Worker’s News), Glover and King organized a workers’ theatre troupe composed of unemployed workers.  They found help at the Ukrainian Labor Temple who gave them free rehearsal space and volunteers from its cultural programs.  Two thirds of the actors were Ukrainian, including sixteen year old Harry Hoshowsky (who played mandolin in the Vancouver Folk Orchestra up until last Christmas).  The cast rehearsed and premiered a new play that had been banned in seven cities: Clifford Odet’s “Waiting for Lefty”, the story of New York taxi drivers meeting to vote on whether or not to go on strike.  Playing to packed houses and standing ovations at this very hall Oct. 25, 1935, and then across the Lower Mainland, the play toured Canada to the 1936 Dominion Drama Festival where it won the prize for Best English Language Play.   85th ANNIVERSARY OF THE ASSOCATION OF UNITED UKRAINIAN CANADIANS (AUUC) The Association of United Ukrainian Canadians has a rich and proud heritage in the Downtown Eastside.    Since its founding in 1928, the Hall has been involved in efforts to support social justice and in building cultural programs, providing a continuous program of instruction and performance in dance and choral and instrumental music. Today the AUUC sponsors Vancouver’s longest running folk orchestra, the Barvinok Folk Choir, the AUUC School of Dancing, the highly trained Dovbush Dancers, and the annual Malanka, a Ukrainian New Year Celebration.  The Association produces artistic activity throughout the year and is a host of rehearsals and cultural events produced by visiting cultural groups and arts organizations.   For more information visit:  www.auucvancouver.ca

The Tree of Community Art Practice (2012)

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Reflections on a Resident Art Practice in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside By Savannah Walling Published in alt.theatre Vol 9.4 (June 2012) Download a PDF of this article. Over thirty-five years ago, Terry Hunter and I planted into the creative soil of the Downtown Eastside a seed that has grown into Vancouver Moving Theatre’s tree of community art practice. Today this tree shelters and nourishes artists working with a community and a community working with artists in all kinds of collaborative relationships, giving birth to new art made with, for, and about the Downtown Eastside. The tree absorbs and sprouts from what is already in place: the neighbourhood’s diversity and accumulated wisdom. Its roots probe through multiple layers, cultural landscapes, and social systems, seeking understanding and connection. The tree’s branches weave individuals and groups into mutually beneficial relationships. Its trunk supports art-creation that celebrates, challenges, commemorates, educates, and heals. The tree grows through over-lapping phases of research and development, creation, and production before seeding legacies for the community, the next generation of artists, and other communities facing similar challenges. Here is our story of the evolution of a Downtown Eastside tree of community art practice. Looking for an affordable home in 1975, Terry and I moved into the Downtown Eastside, Vancouver’s founding neighbourhood situated on ancestral unceded Coast Salish territory between Burrard Inlet and the False Creek Flats. Here we discovered a diverse, largely low income community filled with people from different walks of life, circumstance, and culture. Before the Downtown Eastside was clear-cut one hundred and twenty-seven years ago, it was home to the tallest and oldest trees in Canada. Today the area is home to the largest urban Aboriginal unofficial “reserve” in Canada and the second largest historic Chinatown in North America: an entry point for immigrants and young families, a working and retirement home for resource workers, a haven for middle class professionals who value sustainability over growth, a sanctuary for artists and the marginalized, and site of major events in Vancouver’s history. The Downtown Eastside has been a gathering place of vastly differing governance systems, cultural traditions, and art practices. Like a biologically diverse forest filled with “trees” of all kinds and sizes, the community’s diversity has been the source of its health, its fiercely productive creativity, and its divisive polarities—as well as its historic struggles and capacity for survival. In the words of Nathan Edelson, “The Downtown Eastside is a community that has experienced great suffering, but it is also a community that has demonstrated incredible resilience, determination, and innovation.”(1) During our first years in the neighbourhood, Terry and I explored fusions of dance, music, and theatre within the avantgarde dance collective Terminal City Dance. By 1983 the company could no longer contain the expanding visions of its collective and it split apart into three entities: the Vancouver Dance Centre, Karen Jamieson Dance Company, and Vancouver Moving Theatre. Terry and I co-founded Vancouver Moving Theatre (VMT) to house our inter-disciplinary art form, and to fulfill our dream of bridging barriers between cultures and connecting artistic practice with community. But it took fifteen years of touring drum dances and mask dramas before we stayed at home long enough for the dormant seed to sprout into six years of small-scale Strathcona Artist at Home Festivals (1998-2004). Through this festival we uncovered a rich vein of artists, history, cultures, and great stories. The more we learned and the more we participated, the more involved, inter-connected, and committed to our community we became. We began the slow journey of transforming from artists living in the Downtown Eastside to artists nurturing and being nurtured by this community.(2) As we became connected to our community, our eyes opened to its beauty and the challenges stemming from poverty, self-reliance, and being treated as a dumping ground for the city’s problems. Over the years we’ve seen significant changes. A powerful partnership among developers, real estate investors, labour unions, and government has driven land development and rezoning, leveraging investment with mega-projects like Expo 86 and the 2010 Olympics. Insensitive development has threatened the community’s identity, human scale, and heritage, and has displaced residents. Policing actions in the 1970s that moved prostitution from indoors out onto the streets coincided with a series of murders and disappearances of sex trade workers. The traumatic legacy of Indian residential schools, the downsizing of mental hospitals, welfare rate reduction policies, privatizing and off-shoring of jobs, and the loss of affordable housing all correlated with a surge in visible poverty, survival sex trade and property crime, homelessness, and self-medicating on all levels of society. Furthermore, a new drive-by drug market spiralled out of control as Vancouver plugged into the global drug markets. During the 1990s, new grassroots initiatives rose to lobby for systemic changes. Their goals were to make the neighbourhood a healthier place to live and to contribute through arts to restoring culture and transforming community. When residents engage in their community and culture, neighbourhoods start to heal and move forward. Vancouver finally opened a supervised drug injection facility—the first in North America. Artists, activists, and organizations participated in collective actions for community-led renewal during the one hundredth anniversary of the Carnegie Community Centre building at Hastings and Main. The Carnegie Community Centre invited Vancouver Moving Theatre to co-produce a community play created for, with, and about the neighbourhood. Although the task was too big, timelines too short, and financial resources insufficient, we knew that our community, although negatively sensationalized by media across Canada, had tremendous talent. It was our turn to give back. Everyone involved hoped the project could bridge barriers of language, culture and social differences in a community experiencing serious threats to its survival. Our community partner asked us to work with the community play principle discovered by British playwright Ann Jellicoe (1977). We agreed and visited Cathy Stubington and the community of Enderby to learn more about the process.(3) In this kind of community play, a small core of experienced theatre artists work with community volunteers—as many as wish to participate—to create artistic work that expresses and celebrates their community. Jellicoe had discovered an art-making process whose guiding principles replicate nature’s principles for building healthy eco-systems: diversity, interconnectivity, and interdependence. Establishing a healthy root system is fundamental when organizing a diverse group of people to co-produce something that comes in on schedule and budget, navigates bumps, and is artistically coherent and meaningful. It took a month of negotiating with the Carnegie staff to agree upon the community play’s goals and guiding principles; expectations around social, cultural, gender diversity and bridge-building; and definitions of “Downtown Eastside,” “community member,” and “community play.” The responsibilities were overwhelming for everyone involved.(4) As resident artists we couldn’t leave after the play was finished; we would have to live with the consequences and so would our community. We learned on the job. We asked for help. We learned about community values and traditional protocols. Undertaking the massive project was an act of trust by all involved. The experience wasn’t perfect. All the challenges of producing big collaborative plays were present: from people who didn’t got along, got sick, weren’t prepared or didn’t understand English, to security issues, family emergencies, people with post-traumatic stress, robberies, computer crashes, evictions, mental health and drug issues, and aesthetic and cultural differences. But together we created an imperfect miracle. The audiences loved it. “A vibrant Downtown Eastside theatre community has been created,” said poet Sandy Cameron in the Carnegie Newsletter (1 Nov 2003). “People are getting to know each other. People connected to the play are greeting each other on the street. They know their play reflects the strength, pain and beauty of our multicultural Downtown Eastside that rises like a phoenix, from one generation to the other.” Co-producing In the Heart of a City: The Downtown Eastside Community Play (2003) turned out to be transformative for Terry, myself, and Vancouver Moving Theatre.. This was the moment when the creative seedling planted in the 1970s grew a deep and strong taproot, the foundation of our tree of community art practice. Guidelines inspired by Jellicoe’s play process and codeveloped with the Carnegie Community Centre have guided our evolving practice in the Downtown Eastside ever since. When art projects end, the abrupt loss of daily rituals, social meetings, and meaningful work is rough on people in marginalized circumstances. After the community play ended, participants were hungry for more. Terry and I owed another big debt of gratitude. We had barely scratched the surface of the community’s stories. How ethical is it, we wondered, to do big community-engaged projects without sustaining follow-up and—in the words of Ruth Howard—“continuity or attentive wind-down”? What could we give back as thanks after the project was over? Whose responsibility was it? The artists? Community partner? Funding agencies? The community? The answer: All of the above. The success of the community play stimulated new growth: an annual, massively inclusive creative opportunity. In 2004, assisted by funding from the City of Vancouver and from Friends of the Downtown Eastside,(5) the Carnegie Community Centre partnered with VMT to co-produce the first Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival: an annual twelve-day celebration of artists, art forms, cultural traditions, history, activism, people, and stories about the neighbourhood. Out of the play’s deep taproot extended the festival’s wide, spreading roots. Its programs are developed by collaborative consensus with community partners and artists, some of whom partner with additional organizations for additional support. The most recent 2011 festival involved over 40 community partners, 30 venues, 100 events, and 1000-plus artists, from novices to cultural treasures. As its roots extend, this tree of community arts practice grows taller and stronger, producing new flowers: smaller scale collaborative productions(6), mini-festivals around specific cultural communities, a national community play conference, leadership training institutes (7), creative partnerships with Runaway Moon and Jumblies Theatre, and professional co-productions incorporating job opportunities for community play participants. These projects and the funds they have drawn into the neighbourhood help us to give back to the community in the form of more creative opportunities. Some flowers disseminated wild seed that have germinated into cross participation and new growth (8). Participants have gone on to create plays, concerts, exhibits, and history walks; to get more education, and jobs onstage, backstage, or teaching; to participate in arts or activism projects; and to sit on boards of non-profit organizations. The taller the tree, the deeper the roots it requires to stand firm in the torrents of life. Vancouver Moving Theatre collaborates with art and non-arts organizations in partnerships that intertwine our individual roots for cross-support, interconnection, and sharing of resources. We negotiate to codetermine goals, guiding principles, expectations, responsibilities, and in-kind contributions: this dance balances the needs of individuals, organizations, and the community as a whole. Anyone can dig a hole and plant a seed. But as resident Bessie Lee said, “After one plants nice creative seeds in a field, they must be protected and nourished in order to provide a good harvest.” Each creative plant has its own development timeline, personality, and needs. A plant that grows too fast doesn’t develop strong roots to anchor it in place. And roots push down before leaves grow. Artists are the leaves in our tree of community art practice, absorbing nourishment from the community as they co-create new art. Terry and I look for artists who are experts in what they do, enjoy working collaboratively, care about the project’s purpose, like the neighbourhood, support its values, and are ready to learn from it. We ask them to avoid taking sides on local issues in the rehearsal hall and to steer past negativity by sticking to arts and theatre protocol. In the words of director James Fagan Tait, as professional artists in a community-engaged process, “we have to be fully prepared at each rehearsal, to support and speak with respect to the cast members at every stage of the process, [and] to work out differences with members of the artistic team at another time and place without intruding on the rehearsal process.” We ask the artists to help devise creative structures with room for community input, locally generated images, and opportunities to perform and build. We cast Anglo, Asian, Aboriginal, Latino and Black participants to honour our community’s demographics. We cast participants in roles and contexts to match talents and temperaments, and encourage them to work as a team to bypass blocks that stop the flow of expression and to move past preconceived limitations. Ordinary individuals, when challenged and provided with opportunities and support, are capable of creating the extraordinary. Well organized, smoothly running, safe, fun, and inclusive environments encourage everyone—from novice to professional—to give of their best and to respect the work of others. Small everyday courtesies help big time on big projects. So do strategies that defuse tense situations in ways that leave everyone’s dignity intact and fresh, nutritious refreshments presented in a respectful manner. As artist Rosemary Georgeson reminds us “problems diminish by sharing and feasting.” Within our limited resources, we provide fees for professional artists; honorariums for heavily involved community participants and performers; leadership training in exchange for in-kind service; mentoring, coaching, and skill-building opportunities for veteran play participants; participatory experiences for novices; limited involvement opportunities for community choirs and volunteers; refreshments, thank-you meals, and occasionally child care. When tough issues are involved, we have provided a peer counsellor with experience around these issues. We encourage social mixing; we don’t exclude people because of dress or everyday behaviour. Most events are free or by donation; we distribute complimentary or low-cost community tickets for ticketed events. We program street events during the Heart of the City Festival. Working in “alliance” is a key principle in our strategy and survival as resident artists in the Downtown Eastside. Our work with social systems already in place is non-adversarial. We meet with artists and partnering organizations to learn how we can work with each other and what each can contribute, establishing with the lead artists a collaborative process that suits the community, the project, their working style, and the resources. We attach theme-related events to existing programs, and hire outreach workers who have lived and worked in the neighbourhood and understand its concerns. The art we co-create is about stories and images of this neighbourhood—a community that isn’t represented in mainstream art—incorporating aesthetic practices and forms outside the “high art” gates. And our documentation breaks out details of the collaborative process and contexts the community and its concerns. We try to never promise more than we can deliver. Determining the scale of a project, its collaborative structure, artistic disciplines, balance of experimentation, and accessibility and community-engagement protocol is always an enormous challenge. So is nourishing artistic excellence and community process, giving value to each with funding, staffing, and resources. Too often, artists are overworked, productions need more rehearsal time and staff, and artistic visions are bigger than available resources. Not all affordable venues are wheel-chair accessible. Some places require front door security. Some people don’t like to go to certain neighbourhoods or venues. People can be on different “meds,” self-medicating, or in recovery. Some have personal hygiene or memory issues. Occasionally someone’s been too dangerous or disruptive to participate. If they’re verbally abusive, we move them out right away or others will be afraid. The challenge is to do this in a way that is respectful, does not humiliate, and leaves the person with the ability to come back at another time or in another context. Before starting new projects we take time to learn how our partners’ community functions, its parts relate, and its connections act and interact. We co-design projects that suit their situation, values, and resources in order to develop meaningful relationships and work in support of each other, taking the time to learn and observe carefully before we act. The reason so many projects have been successfully realized and had a long-lasting impact is that everyone from professionals to novices worked hard and with mutual respect most of the time, coped respectfully with inevitable bumps, gave of their best, forgave mistakes, and really, really wanted the stories to be told and the projects to succeed. The resulting aesthetic is often raw, refined, and heart-felt. The successes are rooted in relationships of trust and cross-support developed over thirty years in a community Terry and I have come to love and respect. Learning from our mistakes, we take small steps in creating art that excites us, involves and engages people from our community, acknowledges our sources, and challenges negative stereotypes about the place we live. We know that art offers no hard and fast solutions for the complexities of the human condition and its relationship to the lands and waters of this planet. Depending upon intention and context, art can empower, re-connect and heal or help displace, marginalize and scapegoat. We can’t control or stop the process of change, but we can make the best of our situations and advocate for healthier choices. In an unhealthy community, resources are used up faster than they can be replaced. Benefits are privatized and costs are born solely by the community. Loss of diversity results in vulnerability to change whether from scarcity or glut. A profoundly unequal world is profoundly out of balance—it is unsustainable. An unhealthy arts practice is also unsustainable. Artists burn out. Self-care is essential when operating under conditions of unpredictability, stress, and overload. How do I cope? I alternate big and small projects. Do my homework in advance. Pay attention to what is said and done, prepared to adjust or abandon plans. When overwhelmed, I focus on one step at a time. If I can’t solve the problem immediately, I allow myself to postpone it. I preserve time for my family (especially suppers). I journal, sing, and go for long walks, taking big steps in the open air. I reach out to friends and colleagues I trust. I remind myself to plan as if I’m going to live forever and to live each moment as if I’m going to die tomorrow. Nature’s systems teach us how to build healthy communities and a healthy community arts practice. Mature forests are resilient, healthy habitats, with aesthetic appeal and renewable resources. An old growth forest has many kinds of trees, young and old, growing together to ensure that diverse species will survive. This complexity of habitats nourishes opportunities to interact, providing a wealth of raw material to adapt to changing circumstances. Old growth forests bring energy into an area, preserve diversity, store resources to recycle into the system, reproduce without damaging or depleting the environment, and provide shelter and support for the next generation. Fallen decaying trees serve as nurse logs for new seedlings.(9) Why do some communities vanish while others stay strong, why do some preserve their unique identities while others lose them? It is about inter-connection, roots, diversity, cross pollination, succession, balancing the needs of individuals and the community as a whole, preserving relationships. In the words of Downtown Eastside poet/activist Sandy Cameron, “We work to make our community a better place, not a perfect place, but a better place. If we look for immediate results in this work, we are in danger of falling into despair. Society doesn’t change quickly and our commitment is for the long haul.”(10) Our community’s stories help us draw strength from the past, to feel proud of our history and who we are, to have the courage to keep going and to never, ever lose hope. As Terry and I enter our sixth decade of life, we think a lot about transferring information and passing on the torch. Even when a tree falls, it is only halfway through life. It continues to have the capacity to shelter, to nourish the earth with nutrients as it decays, leaving its legacy: a seedbed for new creation. Whether or not we successfully pass a sustainable festival onto a new director, we are working on written and audiovisual legacies to serve as creative seed to nourish new generations of artists. We are exploring with community partners opportunities for a more deeply rooted sustainability for Downtown Eastside arts than gambling upon gaming and the largesse of corporations. Our trees of community art practice—the culture we carry, the art we create—show how we can come together despite seeming differences to reverse collective forgetting so communities see themselves clearly reflected in their own light, rather than through the distorted images of other people’s mirrors. In rediscovering healthy aspects of our home and culture, all of us recover a sense of ownership, pride, and destiny; motivation to protect our communities; and wisdom to preserve them for future generations. You cannot leave it to other people to take care of your community. “It’s the people who make our community beautiful,” said poet Sandy Cameron, “and they do it be reaching out to each other and helping each other. Even as the giant fir is nurtured by its roots, so our community of the Downtown Eastside is nurtured by its members." (11) Guiding Principles of VMT’s Tree of Community Art Practice
  • Involve culturally diverse professional artists engaging in their art practice with a community;
  • Create art from inception through completion with, by, and for that community;
  • Partner artists and arts organizations with non-art organizations;
  • Build projects of all sizes and shapes, from performing to visual arts, media arts, processions, and community celebrations;
  • Support community members with a variety of art-making and capacity-building opportunities;
  • Integrate art making with a community’s stories and concerns, images and traditions, assets and hopes;
  • Intertwine process and product—all part of the art; Cultivate respectful, inclusive environments;
  • Encourage everybody involved—from novice to master—to give of their best;
  • Relate to the whole community, including Aboriginal, Asian, and Anglo;
  • Result in a transformative experience;
  • Leave a legacy for the future.
NOTES 1 Acceptance speech on behalf of the Honourable Jim Green by former city planner Nathan Edelson to the Planning Institute of BC, 5 November 2011. 2 See my article, “Excavating Yesterday: The Birth, Growth and Evolution of a Resident Artist in the Downtown Eastside,” alt.theatre 7.2 (2009): 24-28. 3 The community play form was brought to Ontario by Dale Hamilton (1990) who inspired Cathy Stubington to create a community play in Enderby, BC (1998), in turn inspiring the Downtown Eastside. See Ann Jellicoe, Community Plays: How to Put Them On (Methuen, 1987). 4 See my article, “The Downtown Eastside Community Play,” alt.theatre 3.4 (2005): 12-15. 5 Friends of the Downtown Eastside is a group of business leaders supportive of grass roots community-led renewal in the Downtown Eastside 6 See, for example, my article, “We’re All in This Together: Negotiating Collaborative Creation in a Play About Addiction,” alt. theatre 5.4 (2008): 14-20. 7 See my dispatch, “Reflections on a cross-country collaboration in community arts training,” alt.theatre 7.3 (2010): 31. 8 See Leath Harris, “The Magic Circle,” alt. theatre 4.1 (2006): 9-10, 15. 9 Toronto’s Jumblies Theatre acts as a giant nursing log for new trees of community art practice with its generous and visionary start-up support of resources, knowledge, mentoring, and interning. 10 Sandy Cameron, “Longing for Light,” Carnegie Newsletter, 15 July 2009. 11 Sandy Cameron, “Dear Friends, Thank You,” Carnegie Newsletter, 4 August 2010.  

Life Under the Golden Rule (2012)

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Originally published in alt.theatre Vol. 10.1 (Sept. 2012) Download a PDF version of this article. By Savannah Walling Art and art making are barometers of a community’s well-being, reflecting the landscapes in which we work and the golden rules by which we’re guided—from “He who has the gold can make and change the rules” to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The inner city Downtown Eastside is highly stressed. Land development and rezoning plans are transforming Greater Vancouver into a “world class creative city” of architectural icons, glass towers, condominiums, and 24/7 mega-entertainment casinos. Global marketing has sent home prices into the stratosphere. Certain politicians encourage creative activity to attract investment capital and “improve” neighbourhoods; the pressures to transform artists into “regeneration bulldozers” are real(1). So is gentrification as a global urban “regeneration” strategy to remake areas into “whole new complexes of recreation, consumption, production and pleasure as well as residence.”(2) The recent addition of Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts and Woodwards Redevelopment brought thousands of new residents and office workers into the community virtually overnight. The neighbourhood is transforming under our feet: single room occupancy hotels become student and worker conversions at rents above welfare rates, and shops and services shift into boutiques and up-scale restaurants. Tensions within the community are increasing. Advocates for low income housing and human-scale streetscapes are pitted against advocates for affordable entry level housing or public safety or improved housing standards. Two years of cut-backs and turmoil have been super-stressing arts organizations. BC’s arts funding was always well below other provinces, but in 2009 the BC Arts Council’s funding was cut in half. BC Gaming also reduced its contribution to arts, sports, educational, environmental and social services by 50%—and eliminated funding for adult arts and sports.(3) Intensive lobbying by the BC arts community and a provincial election restored some arts funding. A one-time Olympic Sports and Arts Legacy Fund was re-directed to the BC Arts Council to temporarily maintain its grants budget at a stable level. BC Gaming recently expanded eligibility to include arts and sports for adults. But the size of the “pot” didn’t change; there’s less available for everybody. Another side-effect is the shrinking of matching funds from federal programs. Criteria and regulations narrowing eligibility are axing programs and services. Although almost every industry has some kind of subsidy, incentive, or tax break, social services and arts are targeted for cuts. Government funding is being re-directed to prizes and one-time commemorative events. Thankfully, the City of Vancouver has continued its modest but steady support of the arts despite the tough economic climate. We know that art won’t die and artists won’t stop making art. William Cleveland, director of the Centre for the Study of Art and Community, reminds us, “Even in the most desperate places, every war zone, prison—art making is pre-eminent, breaking out all over, a matter of survival.” But arts infrastructures, years in the making, have been decimated. Organizations struggle to stay afloat. Seasons are reduced, arts projects cancelled, postponed, or shrunk. Artists lose jobs. Political policies influence programming, production values, and the decisions about which artists, images and stories will be supported to represent our culture. When I’m feeling overwhelmed, I remind myself of the words of my singing teacher Ralph Cole: “If you can deal with the shit in your life you can grow the perfect rose.” Surfing the tidal wave of cuts, Vancouver Moving Theatre downscaled to concerts, staged readings, and workshop productions. We managed to preserve gaming funding for the Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival by framing it as a “neighbourhood-based heritage festival.” We joined forces to provide leadership training in community arts (with Toronto’s Jumblies Theatre); a Christmas fund-raiser to benefit the festival and community arts (with SFU Woodwards Cultural Programming Unit); and job opportunities for professional and DTES emerging performers (an adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot with NeWorld Theatre, the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, and Theatre UBC). To build healthy communities, all of us are needed. We contribute through art because we’re artists, guided by the ethic of reciprocity as we focus on creative projects tailored for and with our community. Alongside other Downtown Eastside artists, activists, businesses, and social organizations, we’re striving to nurture local talents and community well-being as we navigate the cultural storms of life. NOTES 1. With thanks to Maggie Hutcheson, “The Community Artist in the Creative City: Engaged Citizen or Regeneration Bulldozer,” Out of Place (dispatches from artists on the loose) (Jumblies Press, 2010). 2. Neil Smith, “New Globalism, New Urbanism: Gentrification as Global Urban Strategy,” at neil-smith.net. 3. The BC government now takes 90% of all gaming revenues. Treating gaming as a voluntary tax and “cash cow,” it’s shrunk the portion of gaming allotted to non-profit organizations from 45% to 10%.  

The Art of Hospitality: 3rd Downtown Eastside Artfare Institute

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Vancouver Moving Theatre and Jumblies Theatre in partnership with Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden present

The Art of Hospitality: 3rd Downtown Eastside Artfare Institute

A volunteer work-learn opportunity and mini-practicum in art that engages with and celebrates community

        Photo: MABELLEarts Midwinter Parade 2013, by Katherine Fleitas

This workshop will explore artful hospitality and develop skills in art making that is welcoming, inclusive and able to bring people together across differences, facilitated by some of Canada’s leading community artists, including Ruth Howard (Jumblies Theatre, Toronto), Savannah Walling (Vancouver Moving Theatre) and Leah Houston (MABELLEarts, Toronto). Introductory sessions, a mini-practicum with an active community arts project, hands-on activities, discussions, take-home resources, and a culminating event that weaves together feasting, conversation, storytelling, music and cultural sharing from Coast Salish, Chinese, and Ukrainian traditions. DATES:  April 7-15, 2013 April 7, 8, 9 – 10:30-12:30 pm - Group sessions; 1:30-4:30 pm - Work according to individual plans April 11, 12 – 10:30-4:30 pm - Work according to individual plans April 12 – 1:30-4:30 pm- Work according to individual plans; 6:30-10:00 pm – Rehearsal April 13 – 10:30-6:00 pm - Final Preparation, Performative Feast, Wrap-up April 15 – 10:30-12:30 pm – Closing reflections and evaluation WHO’S IT FOR?
  • People interested in and/or with experience in art that engages community;
  • People with flexibility and reliability who enjoy working creatively with diverse people;
  • People with arts-related background (experience  &/or training) to contribute to the creation of our performative feast (e.g. visual arts, design, music, performance, calligraphy, culinary arts);
  • People who can apply what they learn and share it with others through their work.
YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES:
  • Participate fully from April 7-15 (days off April 10 & 14), including core group sessions, individually-tailored work plans and schedules, final rehearsals, culminating performative feast and closing gathering;
  • contribute in a spirit of collaboration, cooperation, and respect for community needs;
  • notify project coordinator in advance of any scheduling conflicts and changes and to work out a solution.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?
  • Deepen your community arts skills and experience;
  • Meet and network with like-minded creative people locally and from across the country;
  • Be part of an ambitious and innovative multi-year Vancouver project with Toronto partners;
  • Jumblies’ training workshops are recognized nationally as credentials by arts employers and academic institutions;
  • It will be lots of fun!
LOCATIONS: Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden (578 Carrall St.) and Ukrainian Hall (805 E. Pender St.). FEE: There is no cost involved.  This is a work-learn volunteer experience and exchange. MEALS: A community feast on April 13; coffee/tea; otherwise bring your own. CERTIFICATION:  Those completing the intensive will receive a certificate form Vancouver Moving Theatre and Jumblies Theatre APPLICATION PROCESS: Limited to eight participants, selected partly based on experience and potential to benefit, with a view to creating a compatible and diverse group, including Downtown Eastside community members. Click here to download an application (Word doc) or email Leah Houston at info@jumbliestheatre.org to request a form. Application Deadline March 20, 2013, midnight. Email completed application to both info@jumbliestheatre.org and vancouvermovingtheatre@shaw.ca. See details in application form about mailing the application. Applications arriving by March 20 will be assessed and space confirmed by March 28.  Late applications will be processed only if there is space. Please visit www.vancouvermovingtheatre.com and www.jumbliestheatre.org for information about our other activities.

Upcoming for 2013

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Vancouver Moving Theatre is currently working on five community engaged projects: THE BIG HOUSE is a theatrical performative feast that  celebrates  the neighbourhood’s founding cultures,  weaving together music, story sharing,  hands-on art-making and feasting traditions of Vancouver’s  Downtown Eastside. This spring April 2013 we will offer workshops on “The Art of Hospitality” and try out two work-in-progress prototypes of The Big House in partnerships with the folks at the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden and the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House. Co-produced in association with Toronto’s Jumblies Theatre, the project brings together producer Terry Hunter, artistic director Savannah Walling, designer Ruth Howard, musician Beverly Dobrinsky and culinary artist Rosemary Georgeson.  The premiere of the production/event will be held in May 2014 at a yet to be determined location in the Downtown Eastside. [caption id="attachment_878" align="aligncenter" width="640" caption="Theatrical-performative feast, Arts for All Institute: Oppen-Arts, Oppenheimer Park, November 2010. Photo courtesy Keith Martin."][/caption] BREAD AND SALT is a music, dance and oral history tribute to the historic and current Ukrainian Canadian community of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. A collaboration between Vancouver Moving Theatre, Beverly Dobrinsky (singer, composer and musical director) and the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians, Bread and Salt will take place at the Ukrainian Hall (805 East Pender Street) during the 2013 Heart of the City Festival in an event commemorating the 85th anniversary of Vancouver’s Association of United Ukrainian Canadians. TRAIN OF THOUGHT: Vancouver Moving Theatre is pleased to be joining the coast-to-coast creative multi-community journey: Train of Thought, produced by Jumblies Theatre and cross-country partners including Vancouver Moving Theatre.  Timed to coincide with The Big House, the innovative networking project will link and develop community arts initiatives through an evolving dialogic journey across Canada by train with at least eight stops along the way,  connecting with fellow Canadian community artists engaged on projects for, about and celebrating their communities. The train leaves in May 2014 right after the final presentation of The Big House! THE V6A PROJECT is a community arts legacy project: a celebratory history and resource of community engaged theatre and music productions and projects created with, for about the Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside from 2002 to 2012 by Vancouver Moving Theatre, the Carnegie Community Centre, DGB Productions, Savage God, Theatre in the Raw and in partnerships with Enderby, B.C.’s Runaway Moon Theatre and Toronto’s Jumblies Theatre. The resource features a 180 page book, a slide show, a website and a visual display.  Please visit heartbook.vancouvermovingtheatre.com to view the nine productions featured in the resource package.  Our new book - From the Heart of a City: Community Engaged Theatre Productions from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside 2002-2012 - will be ready for distribution soon. As of the writing of this post, the visual display is on display at the Carnegie Community Centre gallery on the third floor. Call 604-665-2220 and ask for the Carnegie administration office to see if the display is still up. BAH! HUMBUG!:  Victorian England meets Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in a bittersweet twist on the cherished classic that celebrates the transformative power of human redemption.  Commissioned and co-produced by SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs in partnership with Vancouver Moving Theatre, the East End adaptation of the Charles Dickens holiday favorite, “A Christmas Carol”, benefits the Downtown Eastside Heart of the Festival and community arts in the Downtown Eastside.  (December 2013, Fei & Milton Wong Theatre). We hope to see you at one of these events and/or our anniversary celebrations. As always, Terry Hunter Executive Director 11 February 2013  

Terry and Savannah Receive Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal

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The founders of Vancouver Moving Theatre, Terry Hunter (Executive Director) and Savannah Walling (Artistic Director) were recently honoured for their contributions to Canadian culture with the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.  Presenting the awards in the Heritage Hall at a ceremony on 23 January 2013 were Libby Davies, MP, Vancouver East, with Jennie Kwan, MLA, Vancouver-Mount Pleasant and Shane Simpson, MLA, Vancouver-Hastings. [caption id="attachment_860" align="alignleft" width="640" caption="Elaine Carol (Miscellaneous Productions), Savannah Walling, Libby Davies MP, Terry Hunter"][/caption] Terry and Savannah were recognized for “producing innovative arts events, which involve people from the Downtown Eastside in telling their stories through their company Vancouver Moving Theatre. They involve residents in the creation, development and production of cultural events, educational program and community festivals….Through their work, residents and visitors alike come to see the value, history and strength of this diverse community.” (Awards Program Guide) Terry and Savannah were thrilled and honoured to be joined at the award ceremony by family members Mary Hunter (mother) and Dr. Robert Hunter (brother); their nominator Dr. Frank Harris; Vancouver Moving Theatre Board of Directors Ann McDonell (President), John Atkin (Secretary) and Renae Morriseau (Member-at-Large);   nomination supporters Michael Clague, James Johnston and Rika Uto; and Downtown Eastside performer Stephen Lytton. [caption id="attachment_861" align="alignleft" width="640" caption="RCMP officer, Michael Clague, John Atkin, Terry Hunter, James Johnstone, Mary Hunter (front), Savannah Walling, Frank Harris (back), Steven Lytton (front), Ann McDonell, RCMP officer"][/caption] Congrats to the other thirty-four recipients from Vancouver East who received the award, including among others  friends and colleagues Elaine Carol (Miscellaneous Productions), James Crescenzo (drama teacher, Templeton High School), Melva Forsberg (artist, business owner),  Marlene George (Seniors & Cultural Sharing Programmer, Carnegie Community Centre); Bruce MacDonald (historian/author), Kevin McNulty (actor), Jane Newton-Moss (Breakfast Program, Strathcona Community Centre), Bill Sample (musician, composer, musical director), Ron Suzuki (programmer, Strathcona Community Centre), Richard Tetrault (artist), Joe Wai (architect), Larry Wong (historian/writer) and Ellen Woodsworth (community organizer). We are also delighted by the recognition of community advocates Nathan Allen (manager of Pigeon Park Savings Credit Union); Dr. Alan Bates (head coach of the Portland FC Homeless Street soccer team); Katrina Pacey (litigation director at Pivot Legal Society); Charlie Quan (a champion who fought for justice and redress from the unjust Chinese Exclusion Act) and Alex Tam (a beloved Downtown Eastside pharmacist). [caption id="attachment_862" align="alignleft" width="640" caption="RCMP officer, Terry Hunter, Jenny Kwan MLA, Elaine Carol. Richard Tetrault, Savannah Walling"][/caption]

Bah! Humbug! returns

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Bah! Humbug! 2012 - A Woodward’s Seasonal Tradition!

December 15, 2012 | 2:00 PM and 7:30 PM $20 general | $10 student/seniors Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre Goldcorp Centre for the Arts BUY TICKETS Directed by Max Reimer Starring Jay Brazeau, Jim Byrnes & Margo Kane Featuring over 20 popular & seasonal songs, an audience sing-a-long, seasonal refreshments, and an organic turkey draw! A contemporary adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Bah! Humbug! parallels the economic disparities between Victorian England and Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Reconceived as a reading and musical event where Scrooge owns a pawn shop on Hastings Street, this presentation includes community actors working alongside professional actors from the city. This imaginative production offers a new twist on a cherished classic that celebrates the transformative power of human redemption. A Woodward's tradition, each year the family-friendly adapation contains new twists and turns while highlighting the vital issues affecting Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Directed by Max Reimer, Bah! Humbug! features award-winning actor Jay Brazeau as Ebenezer Scrooge, First Nations actor Margo Kane as the narrator, Juno-award winning musician and actor Jim Byrnes as Jacob Marley, and gospel and blues/singer Tom Pickett as Bob Cratchit. Musical performances are diverse and include pop songs, folk, blues, gospel, and industrial rock along with traditional seasonal favourites. This truly is a version of A Christmas Carol like you've never experienced before. A witty, heart-filled production! –Megan Harris A fantastic way to get into the spirit of the season! –Diane Roberts, urban ink .. one sweet humbug... becoming an annual favourite... a made-in-Vancouver Christmas Carol... Brazeau is a great humbugging Scrooge...Don't miss it..... -Jo Ledingham,  Vancouver Courier
 

Reflections on a Cross-country Collaboration in Community Arts Training

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Originally published in alt.theatre Vol. 7.3 (March 2010) Download a PDF version of this article  By Savannah Walling and Ruth Howard In November 2009, Vancouver Moving Theatre and Toronto’s Jumblies Theatre joined hands across Canada to present the Downtown Eastside Arts4All Institute—six days of learning, idea-sharing, films, panels, art-making, mutual support, and inspiration. Produced for the first time in western Canada, and specially tailored for the Downtown Eastside community, the institute provided an in-depth introduction to principles and practices of art that engage with and build community. Host director Savannah Walling and lead artist and facilitator Ruth Howard joined forces to adapt an intensive course developed by Jumblies in Toronto over the past three years as part of the Jumblies Studio. The name 4All springs from a close relationship between this initiative and Jumblies Offshoot project, Arts4All, at Davenport Perth Neighbourhood Centre. Joining Savannah and Ruth as facilitators were Canadian community play movers Terry Hunter (VMT), Varrick Grimes (Toronto/Newfoundland ), Keith McNair (Jumblies), Cathy Stubington (Runaway Moon Theatre, BC), and Lina de Guevera (Puente Theatre, BC). Panels on forming community partnerships and making room for diversity reflected a spectrum of community-engaged arts as practiced by Judy Marcuse (ICASC), Rosemary Georgeson (urban ink), Bruce Ray (gallery gachet), jil p. weaving (Vancouver Parks Board), and others. Coordinator Susan Gordon organized nourishing lunches. Community partners included Carnegie Community Centre, Community Arts Council of Vancouver, DTES Heart of the City Festival, UBC’s Humanities 101, Ukrainian Hall, and Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation. Reflecting most community art projects, the twenty-one participants represented a diversity of backgrounds, skills, interests, and purposes. Most were local, but some arrived from other neighbourhoods, from Victoria, from Kamloops. All shared an interest in gaining skills and in processes that engage with community. Participants included veterans in the field wanting to revisit basics, challenge skill-set weaknesses, learn from and share with peers; professional and emerging artists wanting to engage more effectively with communities and learn how this differs from mainstream arts presentations; and others who’ve participated in a variety of arts-related community activities wanting to learn how to go about becoming professionals in the field. Some wanted to put Downtown Eastside-created projects onto the road to share with friends and relatives, to shed light on realities of city life, and to inspire other communities to put on their own plays. Most had big or small projects in mind and were ready for tips and tools on project start-ups; on facilitation, communication, conflict-resolution, delegation; on preparing (and maintaining) budgets, business plans, and funding proposals; on forming partnerships; on assembling collaborative creative relationships; and on documentation, evaluation, and legacies. Big questions were addressed. What do artists need to know to work successfully with community members on arts projects? How do we create projects accessible to diverse levels of experience, age, cultural and social backgrounds, and openness? How do we ensure that community-engaged artists focus on a community’s real issues and understand that when we risk opening up old wounds with tough themes, we must ensure that these communities and individuals will be okay after we leave? The energy and enthusiasm during the institute were contagious. Collaborations were great fun. Participants appreciated the diversity and willingness of people to be themselves, the respect and humour displayed throughout, and the shared wealth of resources and breadth of life and artistic experience. Everyone learned.   BIOS Savannah Walling is Artistic Director of Vancouver Moving Theatre, and interdisciplinary company producing community-engaged art and the DTES Heart of the City Festival. Ruth Howard is a theatre designer and creator and founding Artisitic Director of Jumblies Theatre, a company that makes art with, for, and about people and places of Toronto. Contact: Info@Jumbliestheatre.org   www.jumbliestheatre.org  

Excavating Yesterday: The Birth, Growth, and Evolution of a Resident Artist in the Downtown Eastside

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By Savannah Walling with contributions by Terry Hunter Published in alt.theatre Vol. 7.2, December 2009 (download a PDF of this article)

All things however they flourish Turn and go home to the root From which they sprang – TAO TE CHING

Sifting through shifting landscapes of memory, I unearth evidence of our journey—shards of creation, ancestral and artistic trace-lines, social and political forces…Terry’s farm-instructing, music theatre-loving grandparents who worked alongside residents of the Saskatchewan Red Pheasant Reserve….My Oklahoma grandparents who farmed next door to Comanche neighbours…Whispers of civil wars, massacres, family feuds, addiction, and interracial marriage. Growing up under a nuclear cloud on a continent shaped and influenced by Aboriginal ideas and a host of cultural influences, we inherited from our ancestors a profound belief in the golden rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The narrative of our history emerges out of all of these intersections with the community in which we’ve been planted for thirty years—a spit of land on Burrard Inlet known as the Downtown Eastside. The tipping point of this history was our 1973 move into this, Vancouver’s oldest neighbourhood—and most misunderstood. Its historic borders were the waters of Burrard Inlet on the north, tidal streams flowing through gullies east and west (today’s Campbell and Carrall streets), and the tidal flats of False Creek on the south. Overlapping mini-communities of Gastown, Main and Hastings corridors, Chinatown, North of Hastings (Japantown), and Strathcona rest on unceded Coast Salish territory. This is the place that gave birth to our company, Vancouver Moving Theatre, and its interdisciplinary and community-engaged art practice. Shift forward thirty years to the critical tipping point that moved us onto an entirely new level of engagement with the Downtown Eastside. In 2002, all of our experiences of the previous thirty years—and our history of living and working in this place—led to an invitation from the Carnegie Community Centre to partner to produce a community play for, with, and about the Downtown Eastside: one that would celebrate its struggles and triumphs in a process that built bridges between groups within the community. As artists within our community, we would become truly artists of the community. So how did we get from there to here? When Terry and I arrived in the Downtown Eastside back in the early 1970s, we encountered a very different world than it is today. Back then we saw a residential community with a dynamic retail strip centered around Woodward’s retail and grocery store, lots of mom and pop stores serving the mostly low-income locals, and long-standing cultural centres. No visible homeless were evident, nor were illegal drugs used openly on the streets—in fact, locals were concerned about bars over-serving beer to their patrons. Our arrival coincided with a whole slew of local victories, in particular, the defeat of a plan to wipe out the neighbourhood with an eight-lane freeway. This victory changed national housing policy, turned around years of civic neglect, and resulted in innovative social and cooperative housing and new, revitalized community and cultural centres. But we didn’t know any of these stories when we arrived. We only knew we had found an affordable home and rehearsal space, a community that welcomed and respected diversity, and a steaming stew of cultural aromas. Ancestors of today’s Coast Salish people have used this spit of land for thousands of years. There’s still a strong First Nations presence here; the Downtown Eastside is called the largest urban reserve in Canada. It’s also home to North America’s second largest historical Chinatown. Almost half of the area’s population is a visible minority, and it’s been home to cultural festivals, feasts, celebrations, and ceremonies—Chinese New Year’s Parades, Japanese Bon dances, taiko drumming, rhythm and blues, gospel, and Coast Salish, pan-Indian, and Ukrainian cultural events. The seeds of our artistic practice were planted in this stew: our fascination with interdisciplinary creation; our commitment to bridging barriers between cultures; our desire to connect artistic practice with community. Our home community in turn shaped our practice and who we are. Witnessing the annual return of Chinese Lion Dancers on the streets of Chinatown, for instance—who arrived to bring blessings to the community and frighten away evil forces—inspired us to take our work into the streets. When Terry and I began our lifelong partnership, our shared love of music and dancing set in motion a long line of collaborative interdisciplinary explorations in companies we co-founded: two years of the Mime Caravan (with Doug Vernon); seven years of Terminal City Dance (with Karen Jamieson and others) and over twenty-five years of Vancouver Moving Theatre. From day one, we strove to break down boundaries between music, dance and theatre; bridge artistic disciplines and cultural traditions; create accessible art; step through imaginary fourth walls to interact directly with spectators and communities; take theatre out of the studio and into the streets and community; participate in places of celebration where people gather in a spirit of peace and hope for the future. Blown north to Vancouver’s inner city by the winds of the Vietnam War, I blended personal passions with local inspiration. I researched Asian practices of combining dance, live music, and mask with European popular theatre practices (from masques, mumming, and Commedia Dell’Arte to seventeenth-century fool literature). Inspired by Korean and taiko drum dancing and studies in Afro-Caribbean percussion, Terry developed his own style of drumming and moving at the same time. Out of these fusions emerged productions we toured around the world. “Drum Mother,” an audience-interactive character who danced and played music on large drums built into her red hoop-skirt, was launched at the Chinatown New Year’s Parade. She then led 30,000 people in the 1984 Vancouver Peace March, before touring across Canada with the Festival Characters. Samarambi: Pounding of the Heart, a non-verbal street drama that enacted a ceremony of conflict and resolution between forces dangerously out of balance, premiered during a six-month residency at Expo 86 on the fringes of Chinatown. We incorporated space for audience-interactive improvisations into the tightly composed structure performed by masked archetypal characters—two danced on stilts, one utilized extra vocal techniques on a portable sound-system built into her costume, and all performed live music. Three blocks from our home—in tandem with drum dance training we provided for dance students in the Main Dance performance training program—we created “Blood Music.” The choreography of this drum dance, which premiered in Korea, was inspired by the very simple rhythms of life without which we would all die: our hearts beating and pumping waves of blood, our lungs breathing, and the ebb and flow of the sea. Combining research on the physics of sound with long-standing interest in Asian performance forms, we developed an introduction to drum dancing—a global approach to performer training in which physical, musical, mental, and spiritual exercises cultivate total presence, impelling participants beyond their preconceived limitations. In these workshops for young and old, we applied equal attention to process and product to create warm, supportive atmospheres—an important building block for the community-engaged projects in our future. All these creations grew out of the soil of the Downtown Eastside, were shaped by its cultural winds, and shared locally before taking off around the world. For fifteen years, we continuously departed from this neigbourhood to tour Canada and the world. Along the way—earning a living by the skin of our teeth—we learned our craft as artist-producer-performers and worked with a series of ensembles. Our work was originally funded as a dance company, but as it began to develop, Canada Council dance juries could not see enough of the dance component and cut us off (1984). We supported ourselves touring BC schools and international festivals. For a brief renaissance, we—and a few other companies who didn’t fit the disciplinary corrals—were jointly funded in a special initiative supported by the Dance and Theatre Offices of the Canada Council (1989-1991). This enabled us to develop The House of Memory for the small city of Nelson, our first community residency prototype combining performance, teaching, and community feeling. We brought an original script to the community with “baskets” for local participation and provided two weeks of skill-building workshops for fifty community members, young and old, who were integrated into a production featuring archetypal characters, stilt and drum dancing, and clowning. By the early 1990s, we’d been off on tours for so long that we’d fallen “off the radar.” Most of our Vancouver peers and home community didn’t know what we did. The funding scene was changing. As interdisciplinary artists, we were never easy to assess—dancers called us actors and actors considered us dancers. Arts funding was shrinking as the federal government’s debt load soared, so disciplinary camps were “circling their wagons.” We didn’t fit established categories. By 1991, Canada Council’s Dance and Theatre Section’s joint support for interdisciplinary companies was drying up (and soon discontinued); so did support for national touring ensembles of physical theatre, dance, and mime. The City of Vancouver discontinued support towards the touring activities of local companies. We could no longer afford to maintain and train a year-round ensemble. Like peers across Canada, we developed new survival strategies, turning to one-man shows and projects. Partnerships allowed us to pursue cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural, and inter-provincial collaborations, such as The Good Person of Setzuan (staged in parks with Ruby Slippers and Touchstone Theatre), Tales from the Ramayana (with Mandala Arts), and Luigi’s Kitchen (with Alberta’s Trickster Theatre)—all rehearsed and/or performed in Vancouver’s East End. Over the course of our art-making journeys on the margins, we encountered criticism from a variety of directions. Some of it made sense; we agreed with it. But sometimes we were mystified. Slowly we realized that redefining the arts is a political act: we can measure the strength of our visions by the strength of the resistance we arouse. We stumbled into high art taboos against popular entertainment; assumptions that accessible art is second class fare for second class minds; biases that expensive concert venues determine artistic worth; fears that collaborative script development dilutes artistic standards. We encountered distrust of the human capacity to think and create in images; devaluation of ancient art forms in favour of fast, new, disposable art; bias against non-linear narrative structures. The act of naming forces that devalued us and our practice was empowering. Because we didn’t fit into other categories, we’ve carved out our own identity, located artistic ancestors, and educated bookers and audiences. Like other artists on the margins, we’ve wrestled with “soft” censorship imposed by governmental, marketing, and corporate forces who decide which images, stories, and ideas deserve support. Labelling, censoring, dismissing, dividing, and erasing—these are deadly techniques to silence our voices and paralyze our courage. During these challenging transition years, our home community was transforming. During the 1980s, over a thousand SRO hotel rooms were converted as landlords geared up for Expo 86. In Expo’s aftermath, our community gained a reputation as Canada’s poorest urban postal code. During the 1990s, Woodwards—the main social and shopping area—closed. Globalization of the illegal and legal drug trades, downsizing of the mental hospitals, the loss of resource industry jobs, cuts in corporate taxes, off-shoring work to third world countries, welfare reduction policies, loss of affordable housing—all of these correlated with the emergence of visible and extreme poverty, a swelling survival sex trade, addiction and property crime, and a new open-air drive-by drug market. Our Downtown Eastside home continues to be a vital, functioning, culturally and socially diverse, stable neighbourhood. Unlike the media portrayal, most of its 16,000 residents are hardworking and honest, struggling to survive with dignity. But we face the same huge problems faced by inner city and rural communities all over the world. Residents are displaced as the gap increases between rich and poor; globalization moves jobs and resources from our home communities and fractures local connections; rapid gentrification and externally imposed development threaten the distinctive heritage, character and scale of communities. As our six-year-old son’s passion for history led to homeschooling, a new “apprenticeship” began: learning to listen, to be life-long learners, to guide while being led.  During our years of raising Montana Blu in this neighbourhood, we looked for opportunities to nourish local connections and plant deeper roots. Terry started a percussion ensemble for local kids and a community marimba ensemble. We taught drum dancing every season at Main Dance school down the street. We volunteered to perform in local events. Finally, in 1999, we initiated the Strathcona Artist at Home Festival. This festival opened a huge and very rich vein: the history, culture, struggles, and story of the Downtown Eastside, Vancouver’s original townsite. The more we learned, the more we participated in local events, the more involved, connected, and committed we became. The Downtown Eastside is our home. We live here because we like our neighbours’ compassion, courage, and diversity and the neighbourhood’s values, history, art forms, and cultures; its human scale and character; the physical beauty of its buildings and bits of green space. To build healthy communities, we’re all needed. Over the last ten years, Terry and I have taken small steps we know how to take—creating art that excites us, involves and engages people from our community, and challenges negative stereotypes. We learn about the neighborhood and share what we learn. In contrast to community-engaged artists who view themselves as social engineers working to create a more perfect society, I see myself as joining other Downtown Eastside gardeners to cultivate a healthy garden that grows a variety of healthy plants. I do it through art because I’m an artist. Because of my family’s history of civil war and internal feuds, my childhood exposure to racist and Communist-phobic values, my dislike of coercive child-rearing techniques, I distrust goals to manipulate or change other people for “their own good”—no matter how praiseworthy the intentions. I believe the roots of hatred, poisonous pedagogy, and totalitarianism are firmly planted in the soil of coercion. For me, it’s a big enough task to respect, take seriously, listen to, and do my best to support those with whom I live and work, regardless of their background and skill level. And so in 2002 came the invitation to celebrate our community—in partnership with Carnegie Community Centre—through a Downtown Eastside community play. This was a project on a scale far larger than any we had ever undertaken. Although we’d produced many interdisciplinary shows, a neighbourhood mini-festival, and small scale educational and community residencies, this would be our first experience of creating a play with community input from start to finish, and which would be performed by as many people as cared to participate. We knew we had experience organizing complex, multilayered collaborations with co-producing partners. We knew our home community has tremendous talent. We knew the community’s challenges have been sensationalized in the media and its great gifts ignored. We also knew the task was too big, the timeline too short, the resources in place insufficient and we would have to “learn on the job.” But the wealth of our shared history within and with the community overcame these doubts. As Downtown Eastside gardeners of the arts, we stepped forward to embrace the opportunity to cultivate and nourish, to give back to our community. Our decision to accept this invitation came down to this: we owed the Downtown Eastside community a huge debt of gratitude. It was our turn to serve to the best of our ability.