News

SEARA FUND INITIATIVE APPLICATIONS OPEN

February 3, 2021

The Sector Equity for Anti-Racism in the Arts (SEARA) is an initiative started by the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres which looks to galvanize sectoral efforts and deliver financial support to BC-based BIPOC Artists currently facing financial hardship.

SEARA FUND INITIATIVE APPLICATIONS OPEN

Summer 2020 in the wake of COVID-19, the Black Lives Matter movement, ongoing fight to uphold Indigenous rights and land recognition, prompted arts organizations across North America to publicly address systemic racism. The Sector Equity for Anti-Racism in the Arts (SEARA) is an initiative started by the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres in response to the current precarity of financial need. PAARC, BC Arts Service Organizations, and other sector leaders called for mutual aid and accountability in the arts. To simultaneously provide COVID-19 support and point to the inadequacies of current arts-funding models, SEARA looks to galvanize sectoral efforts and deliver financial support to BC-based BIPOC Artists currently facing financial hardship. SEARA is led by a BIPOC majority steering committee in the creation and development of the fund.

To date, SEARA raised over $270K across 104 organizations, the general public, and government entities. PAARC continues to support SEARA as their financial lead in handling the outgoing transactions for the initiative while Vancity Foundation and the BC Arts Council seek to support donations and granting cheques.

On January 17, 2021 the SEARA fund applications opened for BC-based BIPOC Artists facing financial hardships to apply. The fund seeks to shift from some of the current granting bodies inadequacies, which includes support of non-Canadian BC residents, teenagers, and multiple application formats.

Application Deadline: Wednesday, February 17, 2021 at 4:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time
https://searafund.ca/apply

Media Contact
Zandi Dandizette, President, PAARC, 778-835-9819 or info@paarc.ca

PAARC MEMBERSHIP APPROVES STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK

January 27, 2021

The PAARC membership came together on January 11 to discuss the Strategic Framework.

On January 11, 2021 the Pacific Association of Artist-Run Centres (PAARC) membership gathered via video conference for their first meeting of the new year. PAARC originally had a visioning session July 2019 in which they developed their new set of mission, mandate, values, and vision. Since then the Strategic Framework Planning Committee developed strategies and tactics to match these new principles. The committee brought back the draft three different times to the full membership and developed it further with feedback. Some key points include a focus on Advocacy Initiatives, Actions of Solidarity, Mutual Accountability, Sharing Resources Between Members, and Internal Work. PAARC thanks all members for their ongoing support and participation.

Media Contact
Zandi Dandizette, President, PAARC, 778-835-9819 or info@paarc.ca

PAARC Membership Appoints New Board Officers

September 25, 2020

For Immediate Release September 25, 2020 On July 27, 2020 the Pacific Association of Artist-Run Centres (PAARC) membership gathered via video conference for their Annual General Meeting. Members received a report on the activities…

For Immediate Release

September 25, 2020

On July 27, 2020 the Pacific Association of Artist-Run Centres (PAARC) membership gathered via video conference for their Annual General Meeting. Members received a report on the activities of the 2019-20 fiscal year, which included the initiation of the organization’s first Strategic Planning, followed by the presentation of the Financial Statements. Furthermore, members agreed to the appointment of Zandi Dandizette c/o The James Black Gallery as President, Katrina Orlowski c/o grunt gallery as Vice-President, Laurie White c/o Or Gallery as Treasurer, Julia Prudhomme c/o Oxygen Art Centre as Secretary, Casey Wei c/o VIVO Media Arts Centre as Membership Secretary, and Manuel Axel Strain c/o Gallery Gachet as ARCA Representative. The new appointments represent a significant shift in the organizational succession. PAARC wishes to extend a special thanks to outgoing Board officers who left the Society with an expanded and engaged membership base, and who will continue to actively participate in regular meetings. PAARC thanks all members for their ongoing support and participation and welcomes the new officer appointees.

The Pacific Association of Artist-Run Centres (PAARC) is a non-profit organization that represents the collective interests and development of Artist-governed organizations based on the Unceded Indigenous territories known as British Columbia through advocacy initiatives, actions of solidarity, mutual accountability and resource-sharing.

PAARC’s Board of Directors (2020-21) include: Manuel Axel Strain, Brit Bachmann, Katie Belcher, Bopha Chhay, Zandi Dandizette, Doug Jarvis, Brian McBay, Katrina Orlowski, Julia Prudhomme, Casey Wei, and Laurie White.

PAARC Letter to City of Vancouver Mayor & Council on Police Abolition

August 13, 2020

PACIFIC ASSOCIATION OF ARTIST-RUN CENTRES August 13, 2020 LETTER TO MAYOR AND COUNCIL Re: Police abolition from the perspective of cultural workers To: the City of Vancouver Mayor and Councillors: Following a wave of public…

PACIFIC ASSOCIATION OF ARTIST-RUN CENTRES

August 13, 2020

LETTER TO MAYOR AND COUNCIL

Re: Police abolition from the perspective of cultural workers

To: the City of Vancouver Mayor and Councillors:

Following a wave of public protest in response to the untimely deaths of Regis Korchinski-Paquet in Toronto, Chantel Moore in New Brunswick, and Breonna Taylor (Louisville) and George Floyd (Minneapolis) at the hands of the police, the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres’ (PAARC) community has been vocal and clear about calls for the City of Vancouver to defund the Vancouver Police Department’s astronomically inflated budget.

Year after year, the Vancouver Police Department’s budgetary appropriation balloons, not in response to a city getting SAFER, but to its increasing militarization brought on by the false rationale that social needs are police work. The 2020 Budget amounts to $315,278,281.00 or 21% of the total operational budget for the City of Vancouver. We call upon our elected officials to question the validity of such a civic expense. Several of PAARCs member organizations who operate in and around the Downtown Eastside witness the risks faced by people who are most in need of social care and material support, risks that are often exacerbated by police presence.

The Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres acknowledges the demands of organizations in the Downtown Eastside who have been organizing to protect communities at risk of police confrontations and the ongoing criminalization of poverty. According to their work and experiences of the City’s most vulnerable citizens, the VPD has consistently failed to protect and serve these communities, yet continues to receive exponential annual increases to their budget to enforce an unaccountable and inherently violent system rooted in upholding white supremacy and settler colonialism.

We are forwarding a non-comprehensive list of demands culled from Black Lives Matter Vancouver and the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre’s Red Women Rising Report that call upon the City to further support the calls to redistribute police budget in order to support policies and actions that will lead to building stronger and safer communities centering lives on the Downtown Eastside.

PAARC Adopts New Membership Principles

June 12, 2020

The Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres (PAARC) is pleased to announce the adoption of a new set of Membership Principles (listed below) as of May 27, 2020. The new Membership Principles make a long anticipated shift in the overall direction of the 27-member Association driven by extensive Strategic Planning work started mid-2019. PAARC’s new principles respond to a variety of challenges articulated in its Strategic Planning process, including stagnant funding conditions between 1990 and 2015, increasing costs of living and housing insecurity in BC as a result of rampant real estate development, and demands by Black, Indigenous and People of Colour within PAARCs member organizations and across the sector for the dismantling of colonialism and white supremacy. The principles also give new energy to the movement first started in the 1960s, departing from its initial successes of a “parallel gallery system” into an interdisciplinary network of values-based organizations that centres on the role of the Artist.