by Ann Cowan
Photo Illustration by Sandra Hanson

GORDON SHRUM WOULD BE PROUD of Simon Fraser University’s latest project, a new home for the School for the Contemporary Arts (SCA) at the site of Woodward’s, one of Vancouver’s historic commercial icons. It will bring to the city five spectacular cultural spaces where a lively arts scene will flourish. The project has its roots in the founding principles of the university and in the passion of the many champions who have fought for what is perhaps SFU’s boldest experiment: partnership in the long-awaited renewal of Canada’s most challenging neighbourhood.

The new building, located at 149 West Hastings,* is nearing completion and opens its doors to the public in January 2010 with a stunning inaugural program showcasing some of Canada’s most innovative performers. Part of the Cultural Olympiad, the program is headlined by Quebec’s Robert Lepage performing his magnificent multimedia Blue Dragon in the Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre. Lepage drew world attention last year with his installation in Quebec City to mark that city’s 400th anniversary.

Alumnus James Sanders <www.realwheels.ca> will perform Spine written by Kevin Kerr and commissioned for the University of Alberta’s theatre school during the Paralympics. SFU will be part of the annual PuSh Festival for the first time with a production of The Show Must Go On choreographed by Jérôme Bel. Machinal, a 1928 Broadway hit, will be directed by SFU faculty member Steven Hill. Imprint premieres three new works by Rudolf Komorous; Linda Catlin Smith; and Henry Daniel and Owen Underhill. The inaugural program was developed by Michael Boucher, recently appointed as director of cultural development and programming for the SFU cultural complex. Sabine Bitter, a new faculty member in contemporary arts, is responsible for programming in the Audain Visual Arts Teaching Gallery. The inaugural show, an eagerly anticipated exhibition entitled First Nations, Second Nature, will be curated by Candice Hopkins.

“Our goal is to present a brilliant inaugural program that builds on the lively and leading-edge arts scene that brought thousands of people to the Burnaby campus in the late 1960s and ’70s,” says Michael Boucher. “Those were the years when Nini Baird and Murray Farr were programming at what was then called the Centre for Communication and the Arts, and they point to the exciting programming Vancouverites can expect in the coming years.”

All partners in the Woodward’s redevelopment project – the City of Vancouver, Westbank Projects Corporation, and SFU to name just three – are committed to ensuring real community participation and engagement. With the support of the Vancouver Foundation and the office of Western Economic Diversification, SFU is exploring educational outreach programs that will benefit the community. These include technical training in multimedia and cultural opportunities such as a community choir directed by SFU’s newly appointed community engagement through arts director, Vanessa Richards. An internationally published poet, jazz musician, and cultural facilitator, she has earned a reputation both at home and abroad for bold arts initiatives and intercultural collaboration.

The search for a new home
This is a 30-year project for the SCA. From the early 1980s the Centre for Communication and the Arts, which became the SCA in 1990, has had a presence downtown. The Perel Gallery housed studios and exhibitions at 112 West Hastings. In the 1990s the Visual Arts Studio at 611 Alexander was established. In 1986 the Praxis Centre for Screenwriters, led by faculty member Patricia Gruben, opened downtown along with Martin Gotfrit’s Centre for Image and Sound Research.

Warren Gill, vice-president of university relations, says the search for a downtown home for the SCA began long before the demise of the landmark store, but when Woodward’s closed its doors in 1993, SFU quickly prepared a rough sketch for converting the historic building. “Although the university had considered other spaces, it always came back to Woodward’s, and when the opportunity arose, we made a strong case to the City of Vancouver that we could make a difference in the Downtown Eastside, and that the expenditure of public funds in the area would benefit the community,” he says.

Meanwhile on Burnaby Mountain, the school’s pedagogy, rooted in interdisciplinary work, was challenged by the physical separation of the disciplines. The six disciplines – art and culture studies, dance, music, theatre, film, and visual arts – were located across the campus and the departmental offices shared “temporary” portables near Strand Hall. When he built the Burnaby campus, Gordon Shrum had insisted on a new theatre in the first phase of the university’s construction, rightly believing that it would be hard to build later as such things were considered “frills.” The original theatre was still in use, but it was increasingly difficult to house the school’s curriculum in it.

Owen Underhill, a composer and former director of the school, recalls touring these inadequate spaces in autumn 2000 with new President Michael Stevenson during Stevenson’s second day on campus. “The president was so appalled by the inadequacy of these temporary facilities that he pledged on the spot to build the school an adequate home – or shut it down,” recalls Underhill.

Stevenson, like Gordon Shrum, had once been actively involved in student theatre. At the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, he participated in student productions, gaining a sense of the value of arts and culture in affecting both the quality of life and politics. As well, Stevenson’s brief stint in a professional company gave him an appreciation of the direct connection between university experience and partnerships to create pathways to cultural industries.

Arts and culture are important to Stevenson. Whenever it’s been time to make a career move and to choose a new university, a major criterion has been the institution’s focus and capacity in arts and culture. When he was considering SFU he was attracted by its reputation as a place where important ideas in the arts were explored, but he was aware that the contemporary arts program, while excellent, had real facility problems, and he made an early vow to change that.

While various options for the school’s relocation had been considered, there was no official plan that included a new building for contemporary arts. Gaining a place on the government’s agenda was another challenge, but it all came together with the Woodward’s redevelopment project of which the SCA was an essential part. The case for the redesign and re-purposing of this historic and troubled city space was so compelling that Premier Gordon Campbell’s support was offered, and the university was granted the $50 million to make the project possible.

“All of our partners, the provincial government especially, but also the federal government, the City of Vancouver, Westbank, and leadership donors such as Fei and Milton Wong, Michael Audain, and Sam and Frances Belzberg, have played a crucial part in this exciting new development,” says Stevenson. “SFU is very grateful to them. It’s going to be very exciting.”

Stevenson was joined in his vision of finding a new home for the school by Chancellor Emeritus Milton Wong, another strong supporter of the arts in Vancouver. “It’s through education and creative expression that people find self-awareness and self-respect,” says Wong. “This is incredibly important for elevating the disenfranchised and building resilience in our communities. It is my hope that this centre for creative discovery, dialogue, and interaction will help to return the Downtown Eastside to its historical place as the heart of Vancouver – the Downtown Eastside that I remember growing up in.”

Milton and his wife Fei committed a lead gift of $3 million, and Milton agreed to chair a fundraising campaign to raise the $30 million required to build the school, complementing the generous donation from the provincial government. There is a growing sense of excitement in the community about this school, but there are still funds to be raised to complete the project in the difficult fundraising climate of the current recession.

A proud tradition of the arts at SFU
The SCA will grow in its new home, building on a strong tradition rooted in the history of SFU. In Radical Campus: Making Simon Fraser University, Hugh Johnston recounts that the original centre “quickly acquired a reputation in the arts community for creative energy; and it won over an enthusiastic student clientele... In its third year it attracted nearly 50,000 people to performances and exhibitions. By the fall of 1968 the centre’s scrapbook included 700 reviews in the public press....”

The theatre was filled with professional and amateur activity including open auditions for the San Francisco opera, SFU choir performances conducted by Phyllis Mailing accompanied by a full orchestra, readings by SFU authors staged by John Mills, high school one-act drama competitions, visits from the American National Theatre of the Deaf, and the performance of new works by composer Murray Schafer and choreographers Iris Garland and Grant Strate. Moe Koffman, Anton Kuerti, the Kronos Quartet, and Olivier Messiaen also all appeared at SFU. The world music of Hariprasad Chaurasia performing Indian classical music and the Ching Won Musical Society’s traditional and modern music on authentic instruments excited audiences. From these early performances and events the roots of the SCA’s interdisciplinary and leading-edge programming is clear.

John Juliani’s Savage God Theatre series began on Burnaby Mountain and was much loved by students (if not the administration). A poster for the series reads “What is Savage God? Simply the Imagination, insatiable, unrelenting, fiercely energetic, wary of categorization, fond of contradiction, and inveterately iconoclastic.”

By September 2010 the SCA will be settled into its new home, and the public can look forward to an annual feast of more than 100 student productions in dance, film, theatre, and music in addition to professional performances with cultural partners. Martin Gotfrit, director of the school, says, “With our focus on contemporary artistic practice, the SCA is a relevant and dynamic art school in
the heart of the city. SFU trains artists and scholars to create the work of the future and to engage audiences on issues of importance today. Our graduates are helping to transform the cultural life of our city, province and country.”

The yang is an architecturally outstanding art school with unsurpassed teaching and performance facilities; the yin is the creative energy that has flourished at SFU and sustained the School for the Contemporary Arts for 30 years and inspired the partners in the community and government who have made this initiative possible. The Tao of this undertaking will be the force for change, the way through the arts to community sustainability that underlies the vision for Woodward’s. aq

To buy tickets for Blue Dragon online go to
<www.sfuwoodwards.ca>

*For those without old Vancouver memories, Woodward’s most famous sale was $1.49 Day.

Included in photo illustration: Woodward’s sign image: Ken Dyck (urbanpictures.com) first construction shot, centre strip: Multivista Construction Documentation Inc. second preconstruction shot, middle strip: Meenu Bakshi (andbeyondmarketing.com) James Sanders portrait: Sandra Hanson Michael Stevenson Portrait: Greg Ehlers/LIDC Shrum Portrait from Gordon Shrum: An Autobiography, with Peter Stursberg, edited by Clive Cocking, UBC Press, 1986 photorealistic 3d renderings, capsuledesigns

SFU WOODWARD’S FACTS

The Woodward’s Redevelopment Community
Two residential towers, day care
Social housing (on the roof of SFU)
Heritage corner occupied by the City of Vancouver,
Aids Vancouver, and W2
National Film Board
Nesters
London Drugs
Architecture: Henriquez Partners Architects, Gregory Henriquez, Peter Wood
Theatre Design: Proscenium Architecture
and Interiors, Kori Chan, Kimberly Dodge
Construction: Westbank Projects, Ian Gillespie;
CEI, Peter Scott; ITC Construction Management
Cost: $71.5 million

Funders and Major Donors
Government of British Columbia
Department of Canadian Heritage, Canada Cultural Spaces Fund
Department of Western Economic Diversification
Fei and Milton Wong
Michael Audain
Samuel and Frances Belzberg
Donald Rix family
Peter Bentley family
Christopher Foundation
Illahie Foundation
Ilich Foundation
Heathcliff Foundation
Paul Heller family
Dave Gadhia family
Dr. Edgar and Dr. Evelyn (Jasiulko) Harden family
Cathy Daminato family
Christine Arnet family

Inaugural Program Cultural and Community Partners
Vancouver Olympic Committee
Vancouver Playhouse
PuSh International Festival
National Film Board
Compagnie La Seizième
EasyPark

Key Dates
Inaugural Program begins January 20, 2010
Students begin classes September 2010

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