In the Way/Out of the Way
Event Information
About this event
Pam Palmater describes reconciliation as “fluff,” so how can redress bring change to the economic dominance of settler culture in Vancouver? Hear from Coast Salish and settler artists and policy workers about their experience navigating this time and space. See how “good intentions” and “performing reconciliation” miss solutions needed to get out of the way of Coast Salish cultural sovereignty. Let’s talk about commitments settlers and migrants can make personally, organizationally, and collectively as a sector. Today’s sessions are structured for deeper learning through a mix of panel discussions and small group discussions. This is the fifth annual session on decolonizing Vancouver’s arts community by Salish Coast LIVE and Vancouver Moving Theatre/Heart of the City Festival.
$10-30 low-income / $30 regular admission / $60 large group rep/ $40 small group rep. Free for Coast Salish. (Click the ticket button and all of these options will appear. If purchasing a by donation pay the amount you can afford $10-30). If you have no access to a credit card email salishcoastlive@gmail.com
SCHEDULE FOR THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2019
- 9:30am registration, bannock & coffee
- 10:00am The State of Reconciliation and Redress with Cease Wyss, David Ng, and Irwin Oostindie. Let's talk about what we see happening and not happening in the arts and culture sector.
- 11:00 Coast Salish Cultural Sovereignty - Ronnie Dean Harris, Brandon Gabriel, Cease Wyss talk about Coast Salish cultural resurgence. Let's ground our placebased work by understanding more about the specific realities of local Coast Salish culture. Tasha Faye Evans will also contribute her case study of bringing back Coast Salish culture and presence to Port Moody.
- 12:30pm healthy lunch
- 1:00 Personal Change: What choices am i making through unlearning and taking action? We'll jump-start our small group discussions with Donna Clark.
- 1:45 Organisational Inventories: How are HR, programming, operations, and budgets best aligned to support redress and Coast Salish sovereignty. We'll jump-start our small group discussions with Heather Lamoureux and Lianne Payne.
- 2:30 Community Change: Moving beyond ourselves and our groups, how can we align our work with others for systemic change? We'll jump-start our small group discussions with Nancy Bleck.
- 3:15 Closing Plenary - Let's come back together and synthesize the work and share committments.
This is the fifth year Vancouver Moving Theatre / Heart of the City Festival and Salish Coast LIVE are collaborating... and this year we're going bigger with a full day! Every year it sells out in advance so don't wait til the last minute.
We believe in decolonizing Vancouver’s arts community and recognize this is both an unlearning process individually, as well as work to inventory our organisations in order to then enable making change as a sector. Last year we realized it takes time to get past the individual work for settlers and migrants, and so we've added time to do more! Just a note of context, this training is of course welcoming (and most importantly) accountable to Coast Salish People, and is framed towards unpacking the settler privilege, not for general dialogue on reconciliation. There are lots of "reconciliation dialogues" in Vancouver already, and this is about redress, and specific to settlers and migrants getting out of the way, not in the way.
Bring your questions, your inventories, your successes, and your challenges!
VIDEOS from previous year's events:
- Making Coast Salish Territorial Acknowledgements Matter (4000 views!)
- We just put this one up! "Reconciliation and the Arts in Vancouver"
Organizer 15th Annual Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival
Organizer of In the Way/Out of the Way
15th Annual
Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival
Wednesday October 24 to Sunday November 4, 2018
Over 100 events at over 40 venues throughout the Downtown Eastside
With a focus on the rich and diverse communities of the Downtown Eastside, the 15thAnnual Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival celebrates the creative and committed artists and activists who thrive in the heart of Vancouver. The 2018 Festival features twelve days of music, stories, songs, poetry, cultural celebrations, films, theatre, dance, spoken word, forums, workshops, discussions, gallery exhibits, mixed media, art talks, history talks and history walks.
To acknowledge, honour and support our home community’s longstanding commitment to social justice, the theme of the 2018 Festival is “Seeds of Justice, Seeds of Hope.” The Downtown Eastside community has an inspiring history of advocacy for human rights and social justice. DTES-involved artists, residents and citizens of Greater Vancouver have much to learn from our community’s history and accomplishments as we move forward to create artistic activity that speaks to today’s vital concerns and burning issues.
This year the Festival is thrilled to present Material Witness, an international co-production between renowned Spiderwoman Theater of New York City, the longest running Native American women’s theatre company in the US, and Aanmitaagzi, an Indigenous multi-disciplinary-arts company from Nipissing First Nation, Ontario. Material Witness brings together three generations of Indigenous women performers who convey their personal stories of violence, healing and renewal told with “energy, strength and goodwill” (New York Times).
This year’s Festival is very excited to present Vancouver Moving Theatre’s hit production East End Blues & All That Jazz at the Firehall Arts Centre. “A true masterpiece” (James Johnstone); this soul-stirring evening of gospel and blues, jazz and memories, celebrates the life and contributions of Vancouver’s East End historic black community. Featuring Candus Churchill and Tom Pickett, two of Vancouver’s finest gospel and blues singers, and the talented Khari Wendell McClelland (The Sojourners/Freedom Singer) as Emcee.
Other exciting Festival highlights include the concert Songs of Justice, Songs of Hope with special guest Geoff Berner; Made in Canada, a play-in-progress by Pedro Chamale with PTC (Playwrights Theatre Centre); excerpts of a new musical The Battle of Ballantyne Pier by Sherry MacDonald and Earle Peach; and workshops, guest speakers and visiting poets at the Japanese Hall Heritage Fair.
The mandate of the Festival is to promote, present and facilitate the development of artists, art forms, cultural traditions, history, activism, people and great stories about Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. A flagship event, the festival involves a wide range of professional, community, emerging and student artists and lovers of the arts: over 1,000 artists participated in last year’s Festival.
