Living Description

Education Initiative

2021 - 2022

Living Description is an education initiative convened by artist Aislinn Thomas that conceptualizes access not as an accommodation, but as a relational process of shared sense-making. Beginning with a series of alt-text and visual description workshops led by Aislinn Thomas and Ramya Amuthan in 2021, the project culminates in the launch of 1-833-SEMI-PUB: a toll-free listening space featuring six commissioned audio descriptions that offer multiple non-visual ways to experience the x̱aw̓s shew̓áy̓ New Growth《新生林》garden as a living system.

Imagining new systems of exchange

Research Initiative

October 2020 - February 2022

Protected: x̱aw̓s shew̓áy̓ New Growth《新生林》 Community Pollinators Program

Education Initiative

The Community Pollinators Program is a long-term education initiative supporting and celebrating the ongoing stewardship of the x̱aw̓s shew̓áy̓ New Growth《新生林》garden by an Indigenous and racialized young cohort. The program is currently based out of the Indigenous permaculture garden at 221A’s Semi-Public 半公開 site located at 271 Union St. in Chinatown/DTES/historic Hogan’s Alley on xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations lands.

“No Pressure” Acupressure Path 足部指壓徑

Education Initiative

2021-

“No Pressure” Acupressure Path 足部指壓徑 is a public reflexology footpath conceived by Community Pollinator Oliver Barnes and collectively designed, hand-built and installed with community members at the x̱aw̓s shew̓áy̓ New Growth《新生林》garden in Chinatown/DTES.

Blockchains & Cultural Padlocks

Research Initiative

2019 – 2023

A four-year digital strategy initiative by 221A that drives research and engages civil society with the challenge of developing a digitally cooperative culture through the advancement of blockchain technologies across cultural, educational and non-profit sectors. The values-led Blockchains & Cultural Padlocks digital strategy works towards recommoning land, data and objects.

countermap.land

Research Partnership

August 2020 -->

This crowd-sourced project, led by The Tkaronto chapter of  The Architecture Lobby, locates tangible spaces and objects within the territory known as Canada, represented by figures and events – be they political, social, economic, or otherwise – that have contributed to the dispossession of life, memory, territory, and resources of BIPOC and Queer communities, both past and present.

Zasha Colah:
The Scorched-Earthly

Fellow

November 2020 - September 2021

Zasha Colah researches contemporary collective forms of cultural production and artistic imagination under prolonged militarized situations; and how acts of imagination become collective. She segues between at least two terrains: the region of Northeast India bordering Bangladesh, Myanmar/Burma and China, and the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. These artificially segmented terrains coalesce in this research to perceive the intersections of law, artistic imagination, constitutions, and the infrastructure of disobedient, ungoverned terrains.

Christina Battle:
Imagining New Systems of Exchange

Fellow

October 2020 - March 2021

Christina Battle is an Artist whose research and work consider the parameters of disaster – looking to it as action, as more than mere event, and instead as a framework operating within larger systems of power. Her Fellowship with 221A seeks to imagine beyond capitalist cycles of economic breakdown and towards new systems of exchange, drawing from strategies of spread observed in plants and fungi, as well as in online spaces.

DOMA

Fellow

November 2020 - December 2021

DOMA is a nonprofit organization that is developing a distributed housing platform intended to bring renters towards ownership structures through the digital token economy, by creating a network of properties across several cities. DOMA leverages the principles of the new token economy to support a model of networked home ownership and it enables a fairer distribution of value for urban living.

Vancouver Cultural Land Trust

Research Initiative

2018 – 2021

221A is developing a plan for an independent Vancouver Cultural Land Trust (VCLT).  The VCLT is conceptualized as an independent charitable non-profit organization that creates a collective response to escalating real estate prices that have placed severe pressure on security of tenure for artists and arts organizations.

Fellows Archive

Research Initiatives Archive

1654

Service

2015-Present
1654 Franklin St.

1654 is a 21,515ft² industrial property with 25 artist studios ranging from 170 to 1,850 square feet.  The tenant community includes non-profit cultural organizations and small businesses and an intergenerational mix of artists. The building is used for a variety of material practices including ceramicists, painters, filmmakers, designers and fabricators. Prior to 221A’s occupancy in 2015, the building was used by Bombast Furniture, where it produced furniture for two decades.

187 E 3rd Artists’ Housing

Service

(2021–2081)
187 E 3rd Street
Artist Housing

Located in Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant neighbourhood, 187 E 3rd features 30 non-market housing units for low and modest income artists and their families. The building is owned by the City of Vancouver and operated by 221A Artist Housing Society in collaboration with the Community Land Trust.

Semi-Public 半公開

Program

(2014–2024)
271 Union Street

Semi-Public 半公開 is a 3,000ft² public art site located at 271 Union Street in Chinatown, Vancouver. Semi-Public 半公開’s programming is informed by the contested spatial politics of its location, and hosts commissions, installations, and processes by artists

Pollyanna 圖書館 Library

Program

(2017–2020)
Closed Until Further Notice

Pollyanna 圖書館 Library operated at 221 E. Georgia from Fall 2017 to Spring 2020. It collected print material, audio, videos, objects, and artworks acquired by the Fellows and Research Initiatives of 221A. For the time being, 221A’s library is not operational because of the questionable safety of the building resulting from neglected maintenance issues by the landowner.

222

Service

(2011–)
222 E Georgia Street
Artist Studios

222 is a 8,000ft² property leased from the Yee Fung Toy Society of Canada, a Chinese benevolent association established in 1904. Since 2011, the 222 E Georgia St property has been used by 221A as a space for collective art production and presentation.

236

Service

(2018–)
236 E Pender Street
Artist Studios

236 is a 9,000ft² property located at 236 E Pender St that provides space for the production and presentation of art.

1265 Howe Street

Service

(2019–2039)
1265 Howe Street
Subsidized Artist Studios

1265 Howe Street is an approximately 10,800ft² purpose-built artist production facility leased by 221A starting in Autumn 2019. The facility is managed based on a cost-recovery model that will set rental rates for artist studios according to the overall cost of operating the facility.