Conversations with arts and cultural workers.

See How We Run! is an original Below the Radar podcast mini-series looking at local arts collectives and organizations, highlighting conversations about creation, spacemaking, accessibility, and self-determination within the framework of Vancouver’s cityscape. The series is hosted by SFU VOCE staff Julia Aoki, Kathy Feng, and Samantha Walters.

Throughout the series, we speak to artists, consultants, administrators, and advocates at various stages in their career about how art and culture is made and sustained in Vancouver. Tune in for insights on organisational governance, policymaking, community building, and more, directly from people working through these questions everyday.

These conversations are inspired by the long history of artist-run centres in Vancouver, as well as the affordability crisis that threatens to make the city one without art. See How We Run! provokes ongoing conversation about the urban conditions under which interdisciplinary creativity and inclusive communities thrive.

Full series details:
https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/series/see-how-we-run.html

See How We Run!

On this episode of See How We Run! we’re joined by Neworld Theatre’s managing director Alen Dominguez and consultant Caitlin Jones to talk about Progress Lab 1422’s Backstage Spaces report. Progress Lab is a building in East Van that is a dedicated performance creation space and home to a collective of renowned theatre and dance companies, who collaboratively run the space with their nonprofit tenants’ board C-Space. 

The Backstage Spaces report provides an understanding of the issues performance creation spaces face in terms of affordability, city zoning, and property-tax, that threaten not only the companies tenancies but their creative capacities.

This episode is hosted by SFU VOCE program assistant and interdisciplinary performance artist Samantha Walters.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/series/see-how-we-run/228-backstage-spaces.html.

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/228-backstage-spaces.html

Resources:
Progress Lab 1422: https://c-space.ca/
Backstage Spaces Report: https://c-space.ca/backstage-spaces/
Neworld Theatre: https://neworldtheatre.com/

Bios:
Alen Dominguez (He/Him) is a Mexican-Canadian theatre artist who trained as an actor at the University of British Columbia. He has since expanded his work into producing and arts management for several award-winning companies across Metro Vancouver. He's currently the Managing Director at Neworld Theatre and the chair of C-Space, which runs Progress Lab 1422. He's so lucky to get to work in that building surrounded by the coolest cats in town. He’s also worked with Tara Cheyenne Performance, Royal City Musical Theatre, Electric Company, The Chop, City Opera Vancouver, Bard on the Beach, Ruby Slippers, Arts Club, Citadel, Chemainus and Western Gold. Alen is a co-founder of the Canadian Latinx Theatre Artist Coalition (CALTAC) and an active member of the Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency (SCALE).

Caitlin Jones is a long-time cultural worker, curator and writer—working with and within a range of independent and institutional contexts. As Executive Director of BCA (formerly BC Artscape) she was responsible for the development and operations of multiple affordable real-estate projects for the cultural community. As the Executive Director of the Western Front Society in Vancouver, in addition to her directorial and curatorial duties, she spearheaded programming, policy and dialogue around issues of equity and urban development, and the roles of artists within it. Prior to her move to BC she held a combined curatorial and conservation position at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, was the Director of Programming at the Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery and was a writer and advisor for Rhizome.org. Her writings on contemporary art and new media have appeared in a wide range of exhibition catalogues, periodicals and other international publications including The Believer, Documents in Contemporary Art series, among others.

Cite this episode:
Chicago Style

Walters, Samantha. “See How We Run! Backstage Spaces — with Alen Dominguez and Caitlin Jones.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, November 28, 2023. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/series/see-how-we-run/228-backstage-spaces.html.

See How We Run! Backstage Spaces — with Alen Dominguez and Caitlin Jones

On this episode of See How We Run! we’re joined by Gallery Gachet’s executive Director Demi London and artistic director Moroti George to talk about the evolution of Gachet’s approach to supporting artistic creation and exhibition, in ways that are accessible to and supportive of people facing systemic barriers and social marginalization. We speak about the ways the gallery’s programming and operations changed over time in response to shifts in funding, space and the needs of the community, and we discuss their personal entry points into their work at the gallery. 

This episode is hosted by SFU VOCE program manager Julia Aoki.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/series/see-how-we-run/229-art-as-agency-autonomy-and-community.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/229-art-as-agency-autonomy-and-community.html

Resources:
Gallery Gachet: https://gachet.org/
Dion Smith-Dokkie, This Will Be The First Of A Thousand Worlds: https://gachet.org/current-events-and-exhibitions/dion-smith-dokkie
Black Art Centre: https://theblackartscentre.ca/
VANDU: https://vandu.org/
Open Space: https://openspacearts.ca/

Bios:
Demi London
Traversing through the fields of art, culture, education, and parenting, Demi March London has become attached to experimental emergent spaces and the dialogical aesthetics of administration. Figuring out what ideas look like, and how to talk about them, is an integral part of progressing critical discourse; Demi finds encouragement and hope by advocating for different ways of knowing and being. 

Galleries and museums have a tendency to be ceremonial spaces for the performance of authority, and Demi has always admired artist-run centres for challenging this and interrogating notions of power and place. As Executive Director at Gachet, Demi aims to foster a reflective and inclusive culture of ideas, discourse, critique, and community – a safe space for creative experimentation and articulating vulnerability.

Moroti George
Olumoroti (MorotiI) Soji-George (he/they) is a curator, writer and educator based in Vancouver, BC. He is the curator at the Black Arts Centre in Surrey, BC and the artistic director of Gallery Gachet in downtown Vancouver. Olumoroti's curatorial practice primarily involves unravelling and demystifying the ways Blackness is embodied and codified in our shared milieu and conceptualizing the works of Black Contemporary artists and their contributions to the Black cultural lexicon and our understanding of the state of  Blackness.  His research and curatorial practice also involve envisioning accessible and community-centred art spaces and highlighting the stories of individuals and communities who construct new ways of being that challenge the Western status quo. At the core of his practice is the belief that space could be used to reflect the agency and lived experiences of individuals whose bodies and identities are not typically valued, respected and represented in traditional art and academic settings.

Cite this episode:
Chicago Style

Aoki, Julia. “See How We Run! Art as Agency, Autonomy and Community — with Demi London and Moroti George .” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, December 5, 2023. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/series/see-how-we-run/229-art-as-agency-autonomy-and-community.html.

See How We Run! Art as Agency, Autonomy and Community — with Demi London and Moroti George

Welcome to See How We Run! An original Below the Radar mini-series featuring conversations with arts and cultural workers in Vancouver. In this first episode, co-hosts Julia Aoki, Kathy Feng, and Samantha Walters introduce the series and what’s to come. In each episode, they’ll speak to artists, consultants, administrators, and advocates about how art and culture is made and sustained in Vancouver.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/series/see-how-we-run/227-see-how-we-run.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/227-see-how-we-run.html

Resources:
Gallery Gachet: https://gachet.org/
Hives for Humanity: https://www.hivesforhumanity.com/
Progress Lab 1422: https://c-space.ca/
Backstage Spaces Report: https://c-space.ca/backstage-spaces/
Contemporary Art Gallery: https://cagvancouver.org/
Powell Street Festival: https://powellstreetfestival.com/

Bios:
Julia Aoki is an administrator, writer, researcher, and advocate. She is the Program Manager at SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement. She has served as the Executive Director of Megaphone magazine, General Manager of VIVO Media Arts Centre, and General Manager and Programming Director of the Powell Street Festival, where she prioritized developing community centred programs. Julia currently sits on the board of 221A Artist Run Centre Society, and has volunteered with advocacy organizations such as the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres and DTES SRO Collaborative. Her writing on cultural expressions and community formations that are overlooked and underserved by commercial and political mechanisms and practices can be found in TOPIA, Space and Culture and a collection by Lexington Books.

Kathy Feng is an interdisciplinary artist, born in Guangzhou, China, and is a guest living and working on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. As an immigrant and child of immigrants, she grew up between cultures in a constant process of learning, unlearning, and relearning. This framework informs the central themes to her work: in which memory and nostalgia are expressed through images, text, and the aesthetics of the temporal. Kathy holds a BFA in Visual Art with a minor in Art and Performance Studies from SFU's School for the Contemporary Arts. She began working at SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement January 2020 as a Research Assistant for the Below the Radar podcast.

Samantha Walters is an emerging interdisciplinary performer, writer, and creator. She has been the Program Assistant at SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement since 2022. They are based on xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) lands. As an artist, she mostly works between contemporary theatre, directing, and video making. Their most recent works examine ecological relationships and post-human spiritualities, with a heavy favour towards the weird, the dark, and the camp. Collaboration within communities and alongside the non-human lies at the heart of her process. She grew up in England and Hong Kong and holds a BFA honours in Theatre Performance with a minor in English and a certificate in Performance Studies from SFUs School for the Contemporary Arts

Cite this episode:
Chicago Style

Aoki, Julia, Feng, Kathy, and Walters, Samantha. “See How We Run! Conversations with Arts and Cultural Workers.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, November 21, 2023. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/227-see-how-we-run.html

See How We Run! Conversations with Arts and Cultural Workers

On this episode of See How We Run!, we’re joined by two cultural workers: Asia Jong, an emerging curator, arts facilitator and who was one of the co-organizers of Ground Floor Art Centre, a collectively-run DIY gallery, studio and project space with a focus on supporting early emerging artists; and Vitória “veto” Monteiro, an emerging visual artist, arts facilitator, ​​and current Board President of grunt gallery and Acting Curator of Learning and Engagement at the Contemporary Art Gallery. 

Hosted by SFU VOCE staff member and emerging visual artist Kathy Feng, the three are in conversation about some of Asia and Vitória’s previous work and individual practices. They explore how to create opportunities for emerging artists, and the history of Ground Floor Art Centre and other DIY spaces similar to it. They also talk about incorporating accessibility into the gallery, opening up spaces through workshops and prioritizing access needs, as well as the importance of centering care and joy in arts and cultural spaces.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/series/see-how-we-run/230-from-a-place-of-care.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/230-from-a-place-of-care.html

Resources:
Vitória’s website: https://vitoriamonteiro.ca/
Vitória’s instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vetosea/
Contemporary Art Gallery: https://cagvancouver.org/
grunt gallery: https://grunt.ca/
Asia’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/asiajong/
Ground Floor Art Centre: https://www.instagram.com/groundfloorac/


Bios:
Asia Jong:
Asia Jong is an independent curator, arts facilitator, administrator and writer from Armstrong, B.C. currently based in Vancouver, on unceded and traditional Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh territories. She co-ran Ground Floor, a DIY art space and collective which supported early-emerging artists, operating through the values of care, hospitality, and a positive approach to failure.

Vitória “veto” Monteiro
Vitória "veto" Monteiro (b. Brazil) is an arts worker, facilitator and visual artist. In their art practice, they explore the intricacies of language abstraction, the anti-archive and the reprocessing of information. Navigating the fields where information dwells, veto's work provides a new realm for knowledge to co-exist that is silent, inarticulate, and abstract. veto works as the Acting Curator of Learning and Engagement at the Contemporary Art Gallery, along with serving as the Board President at grunt gallery. Their community practice centers accessible, joyful, and more tender approaches to existing within art and cultural spheres. As a facilitator, they reimagine office culture and modes of productivity, shifting towards cultivating workspaces that prioritize care. By exploring ways of incorporating play, stimming, and self-expression into office culture or the day-to-day, veto roots these shifts as powerful acts of resistance.

veto is based on Skwxwú7mesh, xʷməθkʷəy̓əm , and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ lands or so-called “Vancouver”.

Cite this episode:
Chicago Style

Feng, Kathy. “See How We Run! From a Place of Care — with Asia Jong and Vitória Monteiro.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, December 12, 2023. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/series/see-how-we-run/230-from-a-place-of-care.html.

See How We Run! From a Place of Care — with Asia Jong and Vitória Monteiro

On this episode of See How We Run! we’re joined by Hives for Humanity’s co-directors Sarah Common and Cait Hurley to talk about the history of the apicultural organization, its evolution from a supportive prevocational training program to a Community Supported Apiculture model, and the ways they are centering their relationship to the plants and soil in the Hastings Folk Garden in their work.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/series/see-how-we-run/231-learning-from-fireweed.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/231-learning-from-fireweed.html

Resources:
Hives for Humanity: https://www.hivesforhumanity.com/
Hives' Community Supported Apiculture: https://www.hivesforhumanity.com/onlineshop
SOIL: A Transformative Justice Project: https://www.soiltjp.org/our-work/resources
CARFAC: https://www.carfac.ca/tools/fees/

Bios:
Sarah Common 
Sarah is a community weaver, gardener and sometimes beekeeper; she is passionate about fostering vibrant, healthy community through empowerment and education; they believe in the profound impact of connecting individuals and communities to their land, food, plant medicine, and spirit. They are of Irish Settler descent, a guest on these shared, ancestral, and occupied lands of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) peoples.  Practicing care and connection through healing gardens, shared story, and slowing time, Sarah volunteers on the Board of Grounded Futures; and with Ancestral Food Ways.
As Time & Times Sarah plays accordion and works with plant fibres - weaving protective spells into adornments towards truth.

Cait Hurley
Cait  (they/them, co-director of Community Care & Growing Governance) is a queer care worker of Doukhobor and Irish descent, based on the ancestral and occupied lands of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) first peoples.
Graduating from Simon Fraser University with a BA Geography, they are curious about community encounters that transform us and the durational care necessary to persist while considering the geographies of their utopian-commune settler ancestors. Composing small studies and time-based questions on the edges with Gentle Geographies, - an embodied, land-based research praxis grounded in a study of relationships and conditions - composing with plants and the elements, primarily orbiting through the Downtown Eastside and remote frontlines.

Cite this episode:
Chicago Style

Aoki, Julia. “Learning from Fireweed – With Sarah Common and Cait Hurley.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, December 19, 2023. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/series/see-how-we-run/231-learning-from-fireweed.html.


This episode is hosted by SFU VOCE program manager Julia Aoki.

See How We Run! Learning from Fireweed — with Sarah Common and Cait Hurley

Amplifying ideas that fly below the radar. We talk environmental and social justice, arts, culture, community-building and urban issues with featured guests.

This podcast is produced by SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement as a part of our Knowledge Democracy Project @ 312 Main — encouraging the meaningful exchange of ideas and information across communities.

Hosted and currently produced by:
Am Johal
Joey Malbon
Julia Aoki
Kathy Feng
Samantha Walters

Visit our website for archived audio and video recordings of our public events: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/library.html