By: Alex Bloom and Eva Zhu
Growing Room: A Feminist Literary Festival comes back to Vancouver
Growing Room: A Feminist Literary Festival will be hosted by the West Coast Feminist Literary Magazine Society from March 1–4; the society also publishes the journal Room. The intent behind Growing Room is to bring to the forefront voices that aren’t heard as often. The event’s pamphlet states that “. . . a festival such as this plants the roots for creating, maintaining, and growing equitable spaces for the future.” There will be an opening night party on March 1 to begin the festival. Admission is $15. It will feature music by Too Attached, a band consisting of siblings Vivek Shraya and Shamik Bilgi, and will take place at The Fox Cabaret from 6:30 p.m.–11 p.m. Following open night, there will be an assortment of panels, readings, workshops, and special events offered from March 2–4.
The multitude of events will cover just as many topics. For example, the workshop Making Visual Poetry: Translating Written Form into Graphic Content examines the nature of poetry and the interaction between written and visual art. Another workshop, Writing White*: Seeing Privilege as a Writer focuses on how a writer’s identity can affect their work. In addition to the workshops, the panels, and the readings by various writers, professional manuscript consultations will be available at the cost of $35. These manuscript consultations are offered only for manuscripts of 10 pages or less, so don’t bring the seven-part series you’ve been working on for the past 15 years. That said, it is a valuable opportunity for anyone working on a shorter piece.
Admission prices for workshop vary depending on length, but all panels and readings are by donation. Events are held across several locations in Vancouver. More information regarding specific events, registration, and locations can be found on the festival’s website.–AB
WePress art collective offering free workshop at SFU Woodward’s
WePress is not only a collective of creative minds ranging from artist, to typesetter, to drummer, but it’s also a community artspace in the Downtown Eastside. Every month they host various events and workshops, such as bookbinding, quilting, and box-making which aims to contribute to a sense of community empowerment in the Downtown Eastside. As stated on their website, WePress hopes that through making art, these people will be able to “build community capacity and resilience.” Events hosted by the collective are safe spaces for queer identifying people, so creatives of any kind can be part of the fun.
Making Art in the Neighbourhood is a FREE workshop that lets participants make their own block print. It’s a perfect opportunity to meet other creatives from the Lower Mainland while learning how to carve a linoleum block. WePress will also host a presentation on the Sketchbook Project, a public art exhibition showing sketchbooks created by participants from the Downtown Eastside and professional artists. The exhibition is a partnership between Gallery Gachet (which is run by artists who make it their goal to empower other artists) and Powell Street Festival Society (whose goal is to celebrate Japanese-Canadian arts and culture). If you have nothing to do the night of, I highly suggest you attend the event. Getting to create art while socializing with potentially like-minded people? I call that a win-win.
The workshop and presentation will be held at the Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre in Goldcorp Centre for the Arts on March 1 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. The Sketchbook Project exhibition will be at Gallery Gachet from March 9 to March 18. –EZ
