This weekend in Metro Vancouver, Miss604 is a sponsor of the Chinatown Festival which is free on Saturday and Sunday, as well as the free performances at Burnaby’s Classical Weekend with the VSO and Vancouver Opera in Deer Lake Park. Keep cool at local spray parks and beaches, and enjoy this these events and more things to do around Vancouver:
For the last two years I have participated in the “50 Women” campaign for Options Community Services in Surrey which raised over $1.5 million for Habitat@81st, a mixed income affordable housing building with onsite supports. Its 100 units are now home to many individuals and families in the community. Now, 50 Women are at it again and this time on the Sunshine Coast.
50 women are raising $1.5 million to ensure every Sunshine Coast resident is nurtured and supported.
50 Women for Sunshine Coast Community Services Society
Sunshine Coast Community Services Society (SCCSS) is the largest community based nonprofit organization providing supportive programming and services to Sunshine Coast residents. As the organization celebrates fifty years of delivering critical community services, they need help closing the funding gap for a vital 6-storey development in the heart of Sechelt. This will help to create a program-rich community hub with safe and affordable housing for single women and women with children.
Of the estimated $34 million required for this project, SCCSS has secured 90% of the funds. The 50 Women for SCCSS aim to raise an additional $1.5 million to help with a portion of the remaining gap in funding.
For the campaign, 50 Women from across the Sunshine Coast, and beyond, have united with a common goal of supporting the health and wellbeing of vulnerable residents. Comprised of women from various professions, of all ages, and each with a unique life experience, all share a vision of contributing to an engaged, healthy, and thriving Coast.
The new building will have 35 safe, secure, and affordable housing units (the top four floors of the new 6-storey building) for single women, and women with children, who have experienced, or are vulnerable to experiencing violence. Two lower floors of the new development will introduce a community hub that provides flexible meeting spaces, food solutions, crisis response, and support and prevention programs—all in one place.
59% of children living with single parents on the Coast are living below the poverty line—that’s 1,100 children and their families, struggling every day. Single mothers, children, and women over 50 are most at risk. Often they struggle to meet the fundamental needs of safety, food, and housing.
The 50 Women for SCSS include: Linda Curtiss (Coordinator, Outreach Healthy Meal Program); Keely Halward (artist); Jennifer Oke (photographer); Deb Mealia (Retired, founding member of Yew Transition House); Jessica Silvey (Coast Salish Weaver and Fibre Artist); Susan Doyle-Ingram (CEO of Prominence Publishing, Inc); board members, volunteers, business operators, realtors, and more.
SCCSS will also be at the Sechelt Farmers and Artisans’ Markets and Gibsons Night Market this season if you have any questions or want to show your support in person:
Sechelt Farmers and Artisans’ Markets
When: Saturdays – July 6, August 10 and 31, and September 21
Small groups of audiences will be led on various paths through the theatre. As they travel, they’ll be greeted with live performances, recordings from hidden speakers, projections, lighting, audio-and-optical illusions, and more. “The ultimate aim is to pull audiences into a ‘strange new world’ and challenge their very definition of what a music performance can be,” says Artistic Director David Pay.
Inspired by the themes that have made Shakespeare’s Tempest such an endearing work, the world premiere experience will use music to access motifs of revenge and forgiveness, freedom, betrayal, and redemption. The diverse ensemble of musicians and creators developing the project bring their insights as an intercultural collective to these explorations, imbuing the project’s layers of meaning with their own lived experiences.
Enter to Win
I have a pair of tickets to give away to the performance on July 17th, here’s how you can enter to win:
The Vancouver Art Book Fair returns in person this month as Canada’s longest-running international art book fair. It will feature more than 80 exhibitors from across the country and around the world, and include a day-long publishing symposium at Emily Carr University.
Vancouver Art Book Fair at the Roundhouse
Dates: July 26-27, 2024 and symposium July 28th
Location:Roundhouse Community Arts & Recreation Centre
Admission: Free and open to all!
This year’s list of exhibitors includes: 51 Personae (Shanghai), e-flux (NYC), Femme Art Review (London, ON), Hotam Press (Vancouver), and Norsk Risoforening (Oslo), among many others. There will also be performances by Julian Yi-Zhong Hou and more.
Additional programs include a special reading by Cathy Busby of excerpts from Garry Kennedy’s new posthumously produced publications. The Vancouver Art Gallery will co-sponsor a special panel discussion on zines, as an extension of their current exhibition Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines. Outside of the hall, the Roundhouse Turntable Plaza will feature a food truck and DJs providing music throughout the fair.
The new symposium at Emily Carr University on Sunday, July 28, from 10:00am to 5:00pm, will focus on the development of publications. The symposium will offer time and space to foster essential conversations and collaborations. Panels will focus on magazines and art criticism, distribution and funding, and more. Speakers include Anton Vidokle and Brian Kuan Wood, co-founders of e-flux Journal; Blair Swann, executive director of Art Metropole (Toronto), one of the world’s earliest artist-run bookstores; Emmy Catedral, curator of public programs and bookstore for New York’s Center for Art, Research and Alliances; Vancouver-based writer Jacquelyn Zong-Li Ross, and more.
Words, photos and videos by John Biehler and Elena Nast for Miss604
Summer is finally here and that means one thing for many people: music festival time. FVDED 2024 once again takes place at Holland Park in Surrey and the lineup this year was off the charts for Western Canada’s largest in-city music fest. Many of the acts booked have literally taken off in the last year so there was no shortage of talent to choose from across the three stages. Unfortunately, we couldn’t be everywhere but here’s our highlights:
diplo – FVDED in the Park 2024 – John Biehler for Miss604
