Herb Varley led an exciting theatre workshop at Gallery Gachet, engaging participants in creating tableaux vivants (“living pictures”) and vignettes. The method was based on a storytelling process where participants describe a human rights experience that has occurred in their lives, here in the Downtown Eastside.
As the experience was being told a note taker (see below) captured elements of the event to be used later in the process to create Human Rights ‘vignettes’. The experience was then recreated by “sculpting” workshop participants into a scenario that told the story. These sculptures were also photographed.
Using these elements – flipchart notes, photos and human sculptures – the next phase was to collectively sketching out a short story or vignette that reflected multiple experiences of Human Rights in the DTES. The whole group used the notes captured from the story to create the vignette, and the human sculptures/“human clay” was a great physical jumping off point, or inspiration.
This workshop stood out in that the medium was performance rather than visual, and while participants (and the RRCF team) were enthusiastic, we are still working through ideas to support extensions of this process in the future.
Taking Our Place: still images & video clips with Quin Martins
Date: August 21, 2014
Time: 1:00 PM
Location: Interurban Gallery, 1 E. Hastings St
By Quin Martins
In this workshop, participants were asked to express their human rights experiences by picking a location in the area surrounding the gallery to shoot a photograph or take a video. The location that they chose needed to hold some kind of significance for the participant, whether it be positive or negative. Perhaps the location had a special memory attached to it, maybe it was in some way symbolic, or perhaps there was something about the location that was troubling.
One of the requirements of the workshop was that participants needed to feature themselves in the photo or video in some way, and then write a short paragraph that described the location’s significance to them. Workshop facilitators were on hand to assist participants with the photography and writing, as well as any other aspects of their project.
It was enjoyable for me to see people getting excited about the workshop. I was so impressed that so many participants saw their ideas through to completion. The finished pieces from the participants are all very meaningful in their own unique way.
Right to Remain Workshop at the Powell Street Festival
Date: August 1 & 2, 2014
Time: Noon-3:00 PM
Location: Powell Street Festival, Alexander Street
From Andy Mori’s reflection on the Powell Street Festival/Oppenheimer Park Tent City Postcard Project:
In a “Revitalizing Japantown?” arts team brainstorming session for its upcoming participation at the Powell Street Festival we hit upon an idea. Why not have the festival participants write postcards of encouragement to the Oppenheimer Part Tent City and visa versa? This would be an actual bridge between communities across the divides of history showing the common concern about human rights.
I did the graphic design of the postcards choosing images from the boys team of Asahi Baseball, a local legendary Japanese Canadians baseball program before the war. A second set of postcards designed with a photo of the tent city occupying the very area of the baseball diamond what are the boys one stood was used as well to lend a bridge across time in the same location. Once implemented at the festival, the postcards were written by festival goers who signed over 30 of them supervised and encouraged by myself and arts team members Ali Lohan and Quin Martins. Using a rapidly obsolete medium reinforced its performative aspect of replicating historic communication practises. Varley and arts team member Karen Ward were assigned the task of taking the Tent City postcards to Oppenheimer Park for its occupants to sign and send back to the festival. This process is still ongoing as there are formalities, obstacles and issues of trust in order to get those postcards signed and sent back but it is still being carried on.
I want to consider this postcard project to be a great success as avenues of history lessons, hand writing support as petitioning and acknowledgement of human rights were touched upon all at once. It also reminded how festival was originally a call of activism and Japanese Canadian redress, and that historic apologies still hang in the air waiting to be said still and their attendant responsibilities.
Our second workshop was produced on July 24, at Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU). Overall this workshop was also a creative success with interesting dioramas being made with captivating titles like, “Homeland Security” and “Aboriginal Healing and Wellness Centre”.
Everyone seemed invigorated when during the workshop we received the news of the Powell Street Festival’s announcement to support the Tent City camp at Oppenheimer Park. The announcement seemed to strike a chord in many of us. The link between the RRCF project vision and the current climate in the DTES of people protesting and using their voices to speak out against displacement seems to be part of a growing historical and current awareness around ‘the Right to Remain’.
In spite of this, we have to acknowledge and learn from certain challenges. Even though this was a larger set up, with more space and supplies, this particular workshop seemed to hold less capacity and had fewer participants than the first. This may be because VANDU is a very active space, and we encountered many distractions that were out of our control at the time, such as participants actively using and coping with mental health and other health issues.
Displacement Inside and Out, Storyboards with Andy Mori
Date: July 17, 2014
Time: 2:00 PM
Location: Aboriginal Front Door, 384 Main St. The RRCF team that includes workshop facilitators Karen Ward, Herb Varley, Quin Martins and Andy Mori, as well as filmmaker Greg Masuda and Research Assistant Trevor Wideman and Coordinator Ali Lohan has developed in an organic but cohesive way. A good working relationship has formed between the core team and to some degree these links are testament to the new alliances being formed within the larger context of the project. Promotion for these workshops has used various strategies: word of mouth, postering handbills, the RRCF button/logo, personal verbal invites, the front cover of the Carnegie Newsletter, emails, social media. All of these grassroots methods have successfully brought attention to RRCF and are also in alignment with the spirit of the project and neighbourhood. Despite some logistical delays in finalizing the workshop dates and venues our first Human Rights Art Workshop facilitated by Andy Mori at Aboriginal Front Door on July 17 went well. Ten core participants were actively engaged and about 20 participants joined the button making outside on the Art Cart. Artistic outcomes of the workshop were excellent and they included the production of fifteen storyboards with interesting and relevant titles such as, “How did we get from “Everyone is invited” to No One is Allowed” and “Colonized 3 Times”. All the storyboards and buttons were digitally documented. Some challenges existed, which were: supporting participants responding to workshop content, space logistics, and protocol regarding filming; but the elements to bring together a well executed workshop were in place (i.e. facilitators, supplies, food, RRCF reading materials and project information, signs regarding filming, access to washrooms, disability access, designated areas for art making, documenting, and observing/not participating).
As published in “Spacing Vancouver: Canadian Urbanism Uncovered“, August 2014
By Trevor Wideman and Aaron Franks
Stylized image of a Social Justice Zone presented at a Carnegie Community Action Project consultation meeting; used by permission of the artist, Karen Ward.
Describing Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES) as the city’s heart has consequences for the city planning and community organizing that will shape the area’s future for decades to come. The neighbourhood is often described by both its defenders and detractors as being central to the city, geographically and otherwise. It’s been called “a resilient community with heart” and “the heart of the city”, and simultaneously “an epicentre of human dysfunction,”[1] calling to mind Vancouver’s bowel or liver – the urban equivalent of the grease trap for wastes and toxins.
Language like this is also increasingly being used to refer to the area known as the Downtown Eastside/Oppenheimer District, or DEOD, which has become a sort of “ground zero” in the fight between developer interests and social justice advocates. With rapid change happening in such a concentrated space, it is important to reflect on the potential impacts of red circling city spaces as ‘hearts’. While the heart image is urgent, emotional and implies that the area is critical for sustaining the city, the use of such imagery without looking at the intent behind it can create the impression that the community is little more than a space of crisis, on life support and in need of a transplant. Consequently, this can cause segregation, either by signalling spaces of emergency that require immediate change, or by building walls that alienate the community and its struggles from the rest of the city.
There is little doubt that the DTES plays an important and central role as a current and historic centre of Vancouver. The area, located on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations, has historically provided affordable lodging for resource and transportation workers and enabled immigrants since the 19th century to form networks of mutual support. However, generic stories about the community are now being used to re-brand the area, re-writing its important economic and social history while erasing the value of its current residents. At the centre of this generalization is the city’s recent Local Area Planning Process (LAPP), which has promoted a generic ‘heart’ image of the DTES to erase alternative ways of thinking about community, housing, and residents’ right to remain.[2]
In May 2013, the Carnegie Community Action Project (CCAP) proposed that the Downtown Eastside/Oppenheimer District be re-imagined as a “Social Justice Zone” where community assets and social housing could be maintained at the exclusion of market rate development.[3] Here, as seen in the headline image above, a community heart was presented in the form of a stylized map that affirmed the importance of the DEOD as a space of support for people who have nowhere else to turn.
Clearly the “Social Justice Zone” shows how meaningful the heart image is to the low-income community and their advocates. Fittingly, ‘the heart’ of the Downtown Eastside also leaps off the pages of the new Local Area Plan (LAP), which outlines what will happen in the neighbourhood over the next 30 years.
The Downtown Eastside Oppenheimer District becomes a Community Based Development Area; City of Vancouver, 2014.
While many have criticized the LAP as a dispersal plan[4] that simply enforces the municipal government’s idea of what is appropriate in the DTES, in reality the process was more tactical, with city planners engaging the public in a series of committee meetings, round table sessions, and workshops over almost two years. During that time, community input was used within the limits of what was deemed reasonable (with much of this input being confined to the ‘narrative sections’ of the plan), then reproduced in a way that fit with a free market agenda.
This is apparent when you look at how the city and community residents both used the idea of ‘community heart’ during the planning process, to show how particular places (for example, the Carnegie Community Centre, or Oppenheimer Park) were important to the neighbourhood.
But only one version of ‘importance’ came out on top.
“Community Hearts” mapped in the “Our Places” planning workshop, August, 2012; City of Vancouver, 2014.
While the Local Area Planning Process could have been an important way of reflecting and respecting the historical and contemporary importance of the DTES as the heart of the economic and social diversity of the city, instead one unified ‘heart shaped’ story of the DTES emerged to justify a singularly market-friendly re-scripting of the heart’s purpose. Take, for example, the city’s creation of a “Community Based Development Area” (CBDA, complete with extra-thick dotted red line) in the Local Area Plan [see image above]. Within, the area has many “critical assets” and is a “key area supporting [the] low-income community.”
Community map gets transformed in the draft Local Area Plan; City of Vancouver, 2014.
Such ideas are also reinforced by the map of “community hearts” created by participants during the LAP “Our Places” community mapping workshop in August 2012 [see images above]. This map was eventually transformed into a more general map for the final draft, and notably, many of the special places that were identified became contained within the CBDA. So far so good: these visions don’t sound incompatible with CCAP’s “social justice zone” located in the DEOD. But according to the plan, the Downtown Eastside/Oppenheimer District – which occupies the same space as the Community Based Development Area – is also destined to be a “rental housing district” requiring “Revitalization of Japantown & Aboriginal heritage” instead of a 100% social housing zone. Though they have different goals, the low income community’s vision and the City’s plans for market housing can both claim to be protecting the heart of the city.
How can one document affirm two different visions for the same space? In reality, it doesn’t. It merely uses one ‘heart’ to serve the other, with a vision presented by the community used to reinforce a for-profit vision of what should happen. Both activists and the City have embraced the DEOD as a heart requiring special attention, yet they are marking this space for very different reasons – one to protect people’s right to remain in their homes, and the other to prime the real estate market.
Does the heartening of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside make it stronger?
Hearts may be a powerful source of strength, but they can also be a target. Many interventions can be justified as life-saving, but for those concerned about the rights of low-income and vulnerable people in the DTES, it is more important than ever that the story of Vancouver’s heart be distanced from those used by planners, the city, and the mainstream media.
Furthermore, by continuing to represent the DTES, and in particular the DEOD, as the heart of the struggle for housing and rights in Vancouver, there is a risk that similar instances of displacement and change in other parts of the city will be glossed over, losing opportunities to build coalitions. The ‘problems’ of the DTES are not entirely unique, they are reflected in the city at large and in wider society as well. It is up to those working for positive change in these many different locations to find common ground from which a more equitable city can be built.
Trevor Wideman is an MA student in Geography at Queen’s University, and Research Assistant with the Centre for Environmental Health Equity. He currently lives, works and studies in Vancouver.
Aaron Franks is the “Revitalizing Japantown?” project coordinator and a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the Centre for Environmental Health Equity in Geography and Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen’s University. He currently lives in Kingston.
What’s in a name? This is a question being posed by a team of Vancouver-based community leaders and university researchers that has been actively engaged in conversations with Downtown Eastside (DTES) residents, both past and present, about their experiences of human rights in the neighbourhood.
Many readers of The Bulletin will have heard that low-income residents in this area are being evicted and displaced from the neighbourhood at an increasing pace as rising land values have prompted developers to upgrade the many affordable, if often derelict, buildings into condominiums. Most readers will also know that this neighbourhood includes the area that Japanese Canadians have called Powell Street, Powell Grounds, Nihonmachi, or Poweru gai – names going all the way back to the beginning of the 20th century. Our purpose is to try to understand and to harness the power of names and naming as a way to support the right of DTES inhabitants to remain in their neighbourhood. The point here is that no matter what name this neighbourhood is referred to by, there are powerful emotions and histories that are brought to mind.
So, why do we think that names are an important topic for research? It is easy to understand that to name something is to say that one has a relationship with it. Parents name their children out of love and often commemoration of ancestors. We also name things that we revile – we call a person a crook if they have cheated us of things we value. We can perhaps think of names that are not fit to print for those who have offended us or treated us unfairly.
Places can also have names, and these names are often thick with history and meaning. Streets and buildings, or whole neighbourhoods can be named for famous people or for important events that have taken place in the past. By naming a place, you say, “I have an interest in that place.” But these interests can sometimes have positive or negative effects.
Japanese Canadians call the Downtown Eastside “Powell Street” because that is what their ancestors knew the neighbourhood by. Residents today call the neighbourhood the “Downtown Eastside” (or the “East End”) because decades ago when most people called the area “Skid Road” (or worse) people who lived there thought it deserved a better name.
Today, we continue to see negative names given to the Downtown Eastside. For example, just two months ago, Rex Murphy called this neighbourhood “Vancouver’s most squalid and threatening area.” Imagine how you would feel if someone described your home as “squalid.” This type of labeling denies this place a name, and is a way of saying, “this place has no value,” or perhaps more ominously, “this place needs value.” It erases or ignores any value that the place has for the people who actually live there.
Sometimes, names are given to a place to add economic value, perhaps to generate profit by attracting customers. In academia, this has been called “place branding.” For example, the name “JapaGasRailtown,” found in the promotional material of the new restaurant Cuchillo (located on Powell Street) makes people think of this neighbourhood as trendy, cool, and a place they want to go. It helps businesses to thrive by importing or inventing a new identity, but perhaps at the risk of losing the place identity that is already there.
What is worse, it has recently been shown by University of Victoria researcher Katherine Burnett that many people are attracted to these restaurants to participate in a phenomenon called “adventure dining.” They want to see the ‘authentic’ grit of the poor people from the window while they dine on their tapas – close, but not too close. Known as “poverty tourism,” such practices are at best an insult to people’s dignity and at worst can be directly harmful to their community.
This is because when branding is successful it encourages landlords to drive up people’s rents, forcing people out of their homes as lower-income housing gets replaced with higher-income apartments and condos. The rate at which property values are increasing and low-income residents are being literally evicted from the neighbourhood is accelerating each day, with little to no foresight on the part of governments at any level as to the consequences of such displacements. One long-time Downtown Eastsider we interviewed expressed the dire situation:
They’d be putting them in Surrey, in Richmond, you know all these different places, but they don’t have the help that you get down here so a lot of them come back, but then they’re homeless!
In the views of many, such instances are an infringement of people’s right to housing, which is embodied in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Putting people out of a home because they are poor is also a violation of their right to be protected from discrimination, a right that is supposed to be upheld by the City of Vancouver as a signatory to the Canadian Coalition of Municipalities Against Racism and Discrimination. These rights are fought for daily in many cities around the world by activist groups, through organizations like UN Habitat and gatherings like the World Urban Forum.
As another case in point, take the name “Japantown.” The City, developers, and many Vancouverites are becoming very interested in this name, because, like Gastown, Railtown, and Chinatown – other ‘branded’ neighbourhoods in Vancouver –,this name gives the Downtown Eastside a certain kind of value. In fact, the idea of Japantown goes all the way back to the early 1980s, when the City of Vancouver, in its 1981 Downtown Eastside/Oppenheimer policy plan, set out to create a “Japanese Village” Powell Street with “Japanese-theme decorative treatment,” complete with “lantern-style pedestrian lighting, Japanese banners, street signs, and some plantings.”
Sketch showing possible “Japanese Village” beautification of 300-4000 blocks of Powell Street. Downtown-Eastside/Oppenheimer policy plan City Planning Department, City of Vancouver. PUB-: PD 1371. 1981. City of Vancouver Archives.
Proponents of “Japantown” may think they are acknowledging the history and heritage of this neighbourhood as the Japanese-Canadian community that lived here in the first half of the 20th century. Giving this neighbourhood a different name than the “notorious Downtown Eastside” will, in the views of many planners and politicians, bring more affluent people to the neighbourhood who will “mix” with the locals and help them to find employment, opportunity, and a higher quality of life.
But for many Japanese Canadians, “Japantown” means something more than just heritage. It reminds them of the fact that City Council once supported the sale of their properties after their forced removal from the West Coast. Governments at all levels at the time used the War as an excuse to rid the West Coast of the “Oriental Menace,” a reflection of strong racist attitudes toward working class Asian Canadians held by many powerful people in BC.
It goes without saying how ill conceived the idea is of re-decorating “Japanese Village” with faux-Japanese lanterns, Japanese gates, rising sun banners, and other references to a foreign “other.” Such a scheme would in no way resemble the very Canadian working class neighbourhood, replete with Coca Cola ads and art deco architecture, built from the ground up by a community that in many ways was trying to “out Canada” their fellow Canadians (although minus the vote and other benefits of citizenship).
200 Block of Powell Street, pre-1945. NNM 2010.23.2.4.238
Such misrepresentation borders on outright prejudice and is not unlike the many discriminatory attitudes placed upon people in the DTES today, many of whom deal with mental health, addictions, or other health issues resulting from childhood traumas, homophobia, racism, and other life experiences. It seems quite ironic that many of these properties that Japanese Canadians lost 70 years ago, properties that have profited landlords since, are now the same properties in which people are once again being evicted from in the name of another coming “Japanification” of the Downtown Eastside.
For Japanese Canadians, the liquidation was nothing less than an act of state sanctioned cultural genocide that led to the witting vandalism of a neighbourhood that has never quite recovered, even 70 years later. For its part, the Federal Government apologized for its treatment of Japanese Canadians in 1988. In its agreement with the National Association of Japanese Canadians, those who lived through the experience were awarded $300 million in individual and collective redress compensation. This apology also led to the creation of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, an organization that is committed to the elimination of racism and protecting the human rights of Canadian Citizens. Notably, the BC Government didn’t apologize until 2012, and the City didn’t until just last fall, and neither of these governments has yet provided any compensation for participating in the acts from which they have benefited politically and financially.
It is also interesting to note that in its own apology to Japanese Canadians, the City pledged “to do all it can to ensure such injustices will not happen again to any of its residents, thereby upholding the principles of human rights, justice and equality now and in the future.”
Yet, just two months later, released this last December, the City released its draft report of the Local Area Planning Process (LAPP) – a process that is supposed to usher in a new, community-centred approach to planning in the DTES. While there is much to be lauded in the report in terms of ambitious plans for the future, there is not a single mention of racism and discrimination in its many other forms that are well known to infringe on the health and wellbeing – and rights – of Downtown Eastside residents every day. It is all the more ironic then that throughout the draft report, “Japantown” is mentioned no less than 22 times.
But the real problem is not just how many times the name Japantown is used, but how such a name has come to be largely detached from the historical contexts (i.e. traumas) of the people whose lives it signifies. In all of the public communications coming out of LAPP to-date, plans for “Japantown” amount to little more than an effort to reclaim the bricks and mortar once built by a community that is no longer there. They refer to this as heritage “assets.” This is certainly a measure of improvement over the stereotypical “Japanese Village” of previous designs. But it falls a good deal short of a meaningful acknowledgement of the history of dispossession that is held in the memories of former residents and generations of their descendents. In this sense, the DTES is not just a local phenomenon, it is a critical component of our national psyche.
But the LAPP document is completely silent about this important legacy. Yet the singular act of liquidation was a direct antecent to the marginalization of the neighbourhood that has only deepened over the ensuing decades – the very phenomenon that LAPP seeks to resolve. It seems logical to us that efforts to resolve a problem should at the very least acknowledge the conditions that have led to the problem in the first place – including, and especially the role of the City of Vancouver (and governments at all levels) in creating that problem.
The potential hypocrisy of the rush to Japanify the Downtown Eastside, both within and beyond LAPP is not going unnoticed by many Japanese Canadians who see similarities between what happened to them or their ancestors, and what is happening today amidst the rush to revitalize this neighbourhood in the latest wave of urban gentrification. One prominent Japanese Canadian elder we interviewed emphasized how the annual Powell Street Festival not only memorialized her own experiences as a child who once lived on Powell Street, but also reminded her of her responsibilities to the community that occupies the area today:
We don’t live there anymore but we are coming to have our festival, commemorate our lives there but at the same time remembering that there are people living there and that they must be brought into our community.
Bringing Downtown Eastsiders into our community – this is a profound departure from the prevailing agenda to impose ourselves in their community. Yet, we are witnessing this happening everyday as more and more individual researchers, artists, activists, and leaders of Japanese Canadian organizations are joining up with local efforts to demand more of government and supporting those organizations that are committed to protecting the rights of DTES inhabitants.
To them, the legacy of their history is not something that can be found in a trendy restaurant or preserved in a piece of old tile or stone. Their priority is to work alongside the inhabitants of the Downtown Eastside as an assertion and celebration of human rights for all Canadians. The liquidation and internment was the grist for the landmark redress settlement of the first generation of Japanese Canadian human rights activists 25 years ago. To Japanese Canadian activists today, fighting for the rights of today’s DTES inhabitants honours this legacy.
Just take the Powell Street Festival as an example. Every year, this festival is a celebration of the value of this neighbourhood – many attend to remember and celebrate what it once was – the cultural hearth of all Japanese Canadians. For others, the festival is also a celebration of what the DTES continues to be – a place where people of all ancestries and relations who have been targeted by an often hostile and uncaring society have always come to find refuge, protection, support, and community.
For us, the task ahead is to unify the efforst of our partners to make the case for a better recognition of the importance of the DTES in achieving human rights in Canada, ever since the creation of Vancouver over a century ago. Our aim is to mobilize the rich and living history of the neighbourhood in order to compel governments not just to propose solutions for the neighbourhood (as they have been doing for years), but to put into practice their responsibilities – in this case not just as human rights champions, but also as perpetrators of the ‘causes’ of the many hardships that affect people’s lives in the DTES today.
Japanese Canadians working in the DTES– like many in the wider community – see the neighbourhood as a sacred space. The local allegiances they are forming are one reflection of their own responsibilities as Canadian human rights leaders, a legacy that itself was forged in part in the crucible of DTES neighbourhood activism going back to the 1970s and the first Powell Street Festival.
In the last year, our research team has been contributing to this effort by documenting the rich history of human rights in the Downtown Eastside, as well as collecting stories of people’s human rights experiences in relation to housing, food, health care, and other social rights. By showcasing the power of names and naming, we hope to point others, including Japanese Canadians, Chinese Canadians, First Nations organizations, and others human rights leaders locally and Canada-wide to assert their own names for this nationally significant neighbourhood as an intervention to proclaim people’s right to remain in the DTES. In this way, human rights can be a Canadian story that can continue to be lived in the real world, not just a relic to be placed on a museum shelf.
If you would like to learn more about this project or contribute to our partnership, please contact us at info@revitalizingjapantown.ca.
Jeff Masuda, PhD is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Manitoba and Director of The Centre for Environmental Health Equity.
Aaron Franks, PhD is a Research Associate with The Centre for Environmental Health Equity
“Revitalizing Japantown?” Toward a unifying exploration of human rights, branding, and place is a three-year Partnership Development Grant funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Current partners include Gallery Gachet, the Japanese Canadian Citizens’ Association Human Rights Committee, the Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre, Potluck Café Society, the Powell Street Festival Society, the Vancouver Japanese Language School and Japanese Hall, and the Strathcona Business Improvement Association
Revitalizing Japantown? is a research project which engages Downtown Eastside (DTES) residents, organizations and artists who are working with a team of researchers with grassroots experience in the community. The goal of the project is to recover the long Human Rights history of the neighbourhood while doing our part to ensure that the rights of current DTES residents remain a public priority. To accomplish this we’re working with the 5 founding communities of the DTES: Coast Salish people, the Low-Income community, Chinese Canadians, Japanese Canadians and African Canadians.
The project is funded by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada and will run from 2012-2015.
Our Past Work in the DTES
Dear DTES Community Members and Project Partners
We last met in person on August 8th 2012 when many of you were able to join us at the Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre.
For those of you who are less familiar with Revitalizing Japantown?, you might remember Jeff Masuda’s previous DTES research project. It took place from 2007-2011, in partnership with the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House (DTES NH) and focused on Environmental Justice in the DTES. Rebecca Haber was the face of that project, screening Environmental themed films and facilitating Community Conversation Circles at the DTES NH while working with 17 low-income residents who were paid as Community Researchers. They used photographs to demonstrate what they thought was both healthy and unhealthy about the community and then compared the DTES to Vancouver’s more affluent neighbourhoods. The photos were shown across the DTES in venues like Oppenheimer Park and at community events such as the Alley Health Fair. When the project came to an end in 2011, the DTES NH hosted a Showcase which was attended by +/- 85 people, including residents, workers from sister organizations and City Planners.
Since August 2012 Since last August, the Research Investigators, (Jeff Masuda – Associate Professor, University of Manitoba; Sonia Bookman – Assistant Professor, University of Manitoba; Joyce Rock – Co-leader, DTES Kitchen Tables Project; Beth Carter – Director-Curator, National Nikkei Museum & Cultural Centre; and Audrey Kobayashi -Professor, Queen’s University), have been working behind the scenes with the project’s staff (Greg Masuda – Project Filmmaker & Artistic Mentor and Aaron Franks – Research Associate, Centre for Environmental Heath Equity) to find funding for the film and arts portions of this project and to plan our upcoming activities in the community.
The Project’s Arts & Film Portions The arts portion of the project is Parallel Visions: Dispossession Legacies in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, which funds DTES artists to work alongside residents to create 4 works of art that reflect the complexity of the DTES community as it struggles to resist those who would just as soon erase its legacy. The film portion is Repossession, a film that documents the experiences of DTES residents during the City Of Vancouver’s ongoing Land Use and Planning Process (LAPP), all against the backdrop of gentrification.
Our Presence in the DTES With the Research team spread across the country for most of the year (Jeff, Sonia and myself – Aaron – at the University of Manitoba, Audrey at Queen’s University and Joyce in Montreal), it’s Greg Masuda who’s our day-to-day point person in the community. Aside from participating in community meetings and events, Greg documents as much as he can on film, already collecting footage for Repossession.
Beyond April 2013 We are now starting the next step in the project, which is to set up interviews with +/- 50 DTES residents who represent a cross-section of the community. Our first interviews will be in May and then at regular intervals through the summer and Autumn
As was the case in August 2012, Revitalizing Japantown? will again this year be at the Powell Street Festival on August 3rd and 4th. Most of the Research team will be there, using the time to do more Community Consultation by inviting feedback from residents as well as asking for their participation in a Mapping exercise which further demonstrates their DTES history and sense of belonging.
In the meantime, if you’ve any questions about the project, please don’t hesitate to contact me by commenting on this website.
Thank you.
Aaron Franks Research Associate Centre for Environmental Health Equity University of Manitoba
