Kodak Portra 400
Essay
NEIGHBOURHOOD MAGIC The Vancouver Parks and Recreation Board’s Fieldhouse Activation Program
words by sarah bakke photography by andrea fernandez that which too often goes unnoticed, and on community activation: how can artists engage with and enhance a community’s existing relationship to a space? “Instead of deciding something for the neighbourhood, what I’m attempting to do is function as an amplification of what already exists here,” Owen says of her practice. “I’m finding things and maybe aestheticizing them a little bit, but they were here beforehand.” Her fieldhouse projects include Odd Jobs, which has Owens asking the neighbourhood residents what tasks need doing while also maintaining the park grounds; the Collaborative Embroidery Society, an earlier project brought into the fieldhouse, meant as “a flashpoint to get people together and talking about their neighbourhood” within feminist discursive space; Window Gallery, which aims to connect artists with community members by hosting exhibitions inside peoples’ homes; and research into an East Van phenomena known as the “parking ladies”—older women who offer their front yards as parking space for PNE-goers (a practice that has managed to change city by-laws). Owens’ work as part of the Fieldhouse Activation Program does more than just activate the old park structure, it also sends waves out into the surrounding collective. “I think that my job as a settler artist is to amplify other people’s perspectives,” Owens says. “Being an artist who’s asked to enter public space as an agent of the municipal government [means] asking difficult questions… and amplifying the already really active communities in this neighbourhood, to find out what the specifics of this space are that are allowing them to thrive.” In the past, these park fieldhouses may have stood empty—wasted space, unknown territory. But through an investment in arts and culture, they now hold the potential to invigorate a neighbourhood and foster connections between its history and its people.
What if I told you that close by, in your neighbourhood park, there is a dedicated artist working away inside a tiny fieldhouse, creating art pieces for you to enjoy? Perhaps my description would lead you to think of these artists as fairytale figures, gnome-like in their penchant for solitude and enchanting in their ability to transform your local park space. Well, your imagination would bring you pretty darn close to the truth, because all over Vancouver there are artists and collectives using previously empty public structures as studios, working to create art and cultural communities within them. Magical! Over the past few years, Vancouver’s Parks and Recreation Board has placed all kinds of community-based initiatives in park fieldhouses—small dwellings located on public park grounds that might have once served as caretaker homes or storage. Many fieldhouses around the city have previously been left vacant and unused, so the Fieldhouse Activation Program aims to re-purpose these small spaces into hubs for artistic and neighbourhood engagement. The initiatives aren’t limited to just arts and culture, either; there are fieldhouses being used for sports organizations, environmental studies and involvement, and local food growth. All great ways of using public space, but there’s just something special about art’s ability to enhance cultural knowledge, and the role that artists can play in energizing a community and the neighbourhood it calls home. To get a better understanding of what the Fieldhouse Activation Program involves, I met with artist Lexie Owen, who has been working out of Burrard View Park for the past three years. Her practice is focused on the dynamics of labour, especially
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