January - July 2021
Living Description is an education initiative convened by Aislinn Thomas who is working with other contributors to create non-visual ways of experiencing the life and growth of a garden. The project works to build a visual description that offers a range of options as a starting point to conceptualize access not as an accommodation, but a relational process that is an opulent component of the whole
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.
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.
November 2020 - May 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.
August 2020 -->
This crowd-sourced project, led by The Toronto 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 communities, both past and present.
2017–2020
Other Colours was conceived in response to the Vancouver Heritage Foundation’s True Colours, a program that offers grants to incentivize homeowners to restore heritage homes to their ‘true’ Victorian, Edwardian and War Time era (1880–1930) colours, with paint swatches such as “Oxford Bluff” and “Edwardian Pewter”. Canada’s colonial history is a violent history that must be questioned, not ceremoniously replicated. The True Colours program has been deployed largely in support of the gentrification of inner city neighbourhoods, particularly those with a history of immigrant struggle where homes were painted colours that represented diverse cultural backgrounds and experiences of the city. 221A led a Research Initiative with 10 contributors who were asked to provide a swatch for an “Other Colours palette” that would offer alternatives to the True Colours program based on the contributors’ lived experience, cultural traditions and artistic practices. Each Other Colours palette selection is detailed by the contributor with an original text or artwork. This collection of short prose, poetry and social history, printed by Brick Press as an Artist’s Book, offers a more pluralistic account of the city’s built environment and identity.
2019 – 2022
A three-year digital strategy initiative by 221A that researches, develops sectoral capacity, and implements blockchain technology for cultural, social and ecological use-cases. Blockchain technology will be the next layer of the internet, connecting data and information to new forms of mutually-agreed value. Seen as a new institutional technology, the blockchain could potentially be as crucial as electricity and the internet itself. The programming is based on distributed ledger cryptography, never stored in one central reserve, but replicated and simultaneously updated across networks of server nodes. These distributed systems provide transparency as well as security for transactions and value recognition on the peer-to-peer scale, without mediating authority from third-party and legacy institutions.
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.
(2014–2024)
271 Union Street
Closed Until Further Notice
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
(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.
(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.
(2015–)
1654 Franklin Street
Artist Studios
1654 is a 21,515ft² industrial leased property that provides space for over 30 cultural organizations, small businesses and an intergenerational mix of artists. The building was previously leased in part by Bombast Furniture, where it produced furniture for two decades.
(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.
(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.
