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Eastside Cultural Crawl
Nov. 21st, 2005 06:14 pmEvery year around this time, this part of Vancouver has the Eastside Cultural Crawl, a weekend where artists on my side of town open up their studios and display and sell their work. It is a fun and interesting event. My mother, sister and I spent four hours or so on Sunday visiting all the studios near my house.
( Cut for my recollections of art seen )
Besides enjoying an afternoon of gazing at art and sharing impressions with my mother and sister, the Cultural Crawl got me thinking about art and culture.
In Vancouver, a lot of the culture is created on the Eastside - the "poor" side, where all the artists hang out. Besides the individual studios in homes or garages, and the buildings full of studios, we also have community gardens and The Public Dreams Society putting on Illuminares and the Parade of Lost Souls and other events. The concentration of art and culture created on the Eastside means that many of the consumers of the culture are from outside of the community. This can be seen at the Cultural Crawl in particular, where we saw lots of people who obviously don't know Strathcona, my nieghbourhood, at all.
One of the great things about the Eastside's culture generally is that it encourages participation. The Public Dreams Society is particularly great about getting people involved: people make lanterns and pieces of art and they show up in costumes. They drum and dance and parade.
Of course, even in the most active community, not everyone is an active participant; not everyone is equally talented or puts in equal effort. There are also the passive consumers, who come only to consume the culture created by others. In the case of Public Dreams events, the proportion of participants to consumers must remain high in order to preserve the vitality of the event. As the proportion shifts, there's a risk that Eastside culture will become commodified.
The Cultural Crawl has a different feeling. It is about selling art, after all, so we want to attract people from all over the city who are prepared to consume art and culture. The only participation needed is to follow a map from studio to studio, looking, commenting and admiring. You can talk to the artists and connect with neighbours, so there's a community-building aspect, especially for those who actually live in the neighbourhood.
I like the event, but I wish it had more participatory options, so it would be about creating culture and not just encouraging the consumption of it. I imagine a studio dedicated to the consumers creating: sketching and finger painting, maybe a little clay sculpture. An area for musicians to jam in, so once it caught on, people could bring along their instruments. Some places to write. People would leave their creations behind for others to see and be inspired by.
A website could display the results, play the music live, and message boards and blogs could connect all the creators and consumers to each other. The art made could be auctioned off after the weekend, via the website, to pay for the art materials and the web hosting.
I think everyone should create art. Not everyone can make things that anyone else would want to have, nor should they expect to. But participating in the act of creating encourages appreciation for those who create truly beautiful and interesting things. And it means that people participate in some small way in the creation of their community.
( Cut for my recollections of art seen )
Besides enjoying an afternoon of gazing at art and sharing impressions with my mother and sister, the Cultural Crawl got me thinking about art and culture.
In Vancouver, a lot of the culture is created on the Eastside - the "poor" side, where all the artists hang out. Besides the individual studios in homes or garages, and the buildings full of studios, we also have community gardens and The Public Dreams Society putting on Illuminares and the Parade of Lost Souls and other events. The concentration of art and culture created on the Eastside means that many of the consumers of the culture are from outside of the community. This can be seen at the Cultural Crawl in particular, where we saw lots of people who obviously don't know Strathcona, my nieghbourhood, at all.
One of the great things about the Eastside's culture generally is that it encourages participation. The Public Dreams Society is particularly great about getting people involved: people make lanterns and pieces of art and they show up in costumes. They drum and dance and parade.
Of course, even in the most active community, not everyone is an active participant; not everyone is equally talented or puts in equal effort. There are also the passive consumers, who come only to consume the culture created by others. In the case of Public Dreams events, the proportion of participants to consumers must remain high in order to preserve the vitality of the event. As the proportion shifts, there's a risk that Eastside culture will become commodified.
The Cultural Crawl has a different feeling. It is about selling art, after all, so we want to attract people from all over the city who are prepared to consume art and culture. The only participation needed is to follow a map from studio to studio, looking, commenting and admiring. You can talk to the artists and connect with neighbours, so there's a community-building aspect, especially for those who actually live in the neighbourhood.
I like the event, but I wish it had more participatory options, so it would be about creating culture and not just encouraging the consumption of it. I imagine a studio dedicated to the consumers creating: sketching and finger painting, maybe a little clay sculpture. An area for musicians to jam in, so once it caught on, people could bring along their instruments. Some places to write. People would leave their creations behind for others to see and be inspired by.
A website could display the results, play the music live, and message boards and blogs could connect all the creators and consumers to each other. The art made could be auctioned off after the weekend, via the website, to pay for the art materials and the web hosting.
I think everyone should create art. Not everyone can make things that anyone else would want to have, nor should they expect to. But participating in the act of creating encourages appreciation for those who create truly beautiful and interesting things. And it means that people participate in some small way in the creation of their community.
