Sean Bickerton

Kicking over the traces with good friends Didi & Lil!

“Out with the Old and In with the New!” has never rung more true for me than it does with the advent of 2012!

It’s only been five years since I moved back to Vancouver after twenty years away in New York. It’s taken that long just to find good Mexican!

So it was a complete  accident when I got caught up in local politics during efforts to improve my building.

When Peter Ladner came over to ask me to run, I spent the first half hour pointing out to him how unsuited I was then to be a candidate, having just moved home, with so few connections, etc.

But I’m incapable of doing anything half-heartedly, especially when it comes to underdogs, and what should have been a brief political detour ended up consuming the next three years of my life.

Some have taken exception to my post-campaign public renunciation of local politics and the demands of public life, thinking it originates from pique or is just a bruised ego talking.

Bruised ego aside, something I readily own up to, this last campaign left me in debt and it’s out of necessity that I must turn my attention to the responsibility I owe first to my family, as well as to the cadre of internationally-celebrated, grammy-award-winning clients we serve through our business, ArtistManager.Net: Talented Websites For The Most Talented People In The World!

I have spent my entire life involved in the performing arts and entertainment and had the privilege of working at the top of that profession internationally, first as a VP with Columbia Artists Management and with my own agency IAG, and now producing state-of-the-art websites that renowned artists use to communicate with the world.

I love Vancouver and the hundreds of remarkable people we’ve had the pleasure of meeting through politics since moving back, and I’ve grown immensely through the experience.

But I believe after three years of intense service that I’ve more than discharged any obligation I ever had to the NPA – twice over in my own estimation.

Now I must – and am eager to – focus my energy and attention on the re-imagined, reinvented, next-generation incarnation of our business that we will be launching next month.

The importance of community remains one of my fundamental values though, as does the prime importance in life of the arts. So I continue as Strata Chair of my building – Paris Place – continuing efforts to improve quality of life for our residents and for my neighborhood, in cooperation with the Crosstown Residents Association and False Creek Residents Association.

I also remain Chair of a Strategic Task Force for the Langley Community Music School co-founded by my sister Linda, third-largest music school in BC and one of the largest in western Canada.

And I will continue to write and speak out on issues I believe are important to a Canadian way of life I see as increasingly threatened.

Tom and I end 2011 a little leaner but much greener and even keener than ever before to meet the challenges of trying to invent a small but excellent slice of the future, an adventure we’ve been involved in conducting together since we first met in 1986, my first year in New York.

To everyone chasing their dreams, I salute you and share your passion for what comes next!

Here’s to a fabulous 2012!

Vancouver City Council is considering a staff report today allowing the Vancouver Art Gallery to move to 2/3 of Larwill Park. This could be a wonderful development if they incorporate a concert hall on the other 1/3 of the land. As this has come up again, I’m reprising my original article about Larwill Park.

I’m also pleased to note that Michael Geller has recently come out in favour of my proposal to close Cambie Street between Dunsmuir and Georgia Streets, in order to provide restaurants and bars that can animate this area at night.

In its heyday, Larwill Park was a centre of life in the city, home to games of baseball, lacrosse, football and cricket; the site of political demonstrations, rallies, fairs and concerts; and a marshalling field and drill ground for troops. Parades, carnivals, Ferris wheels, sports and politics animated a site once dedicated to fun in a city not well known for it.

By contrast today it sits dark, covered in asphalt, used as a parking lot, and the blocks along Dunsmuir and Georgia Street east of Homer are dead at night, bereft of the street-level commercial activity that’s the life-blood of any urban setting.

Read more…

The sad truth is that our public consultation process appears to be broken, leaving little trust on any side of the equation:

• Residents that dare express an opinion on new development in their neighbourhoods are regularly derided as NIMBY no-nothings …

• The developers that built the extraordinary city we see around us and provide the daycares, rec centres and libraries we need are regularly decried as barbarians intent on destroying every last vestige of everything held sacred …

• City planners are unfairly defamed as incompetent, uncaring or corrupt. and often in the breath …

• And the public’s overall opinion of politicians is unprintable …

We’re told the overarching concept for our city’s future is ‘Green Capital,’ yet eco-density has become so loaded with partisan invective it has become a stand-in for “I want to destroy your neighbourhood” on the one side and “I would rather die than see one new building in my community” on the other.

Unfortunately, the very solutions that might help – neighbourhood plans or visioning exercises – are reputed to be too expensive, time-consuming, complicated or beyond the city’s resources.

What to do?

I have a suggestion.

2011 is the 125th Birthday of the City of Vancouver. A much-belated and reluctant effort by the city to embrace a year-long celebration envisaged by the previous council has led to a tepid, half-hearted effort, and the community and arts groups charged with staging the celebration are left uncertain of funding.

Perhaps we should take advantage of the oversight to propose an entirely different kind of birthday present for our city. What if we celebrated this anniversary by engaging in a four-year planning process to lay out a broad neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood City Plan for the next 125?

In that four year period – the life of the next council – we could take the time to do the following:

1) Reinvent and reinvigorate the planning and consultation processes.
2) Prepare a thorough analysis of what assets each neighbourhood has, those it lacks and a vision or plan emphasizing its unique character.
3) From the neighbourhood study, prepare a comprehensive list of assets the city needs.
4) Develop a new CityPlan taking into account the individual plans and needs of each neighbourhood along with the needs and future growth of the entire City.
5) Implement broad-based zoning based on that plan.

I realize the best-laid plans can easily end in quagmire, but if we actively involved city planners, area residents, businesses, schools, social profit organizations and the developers in creating a meaningful consultation process, and if we allowed each community to participate in the horse-trading surrounding density and needed amenities in their community, we might find more commonality than is thought now to exist. False Creek North is a classic example I’ll write more babout later.

One final thought. I think transit-based density is the key. If we focus density where it already exists and along major transit arterials, and if our plans provide enough street-level commercial to animate streets and provide needed local services within walking distance of each community, we could manage the change coming to our city as we continue to add residents in the most environmentally responsible way possible.

One thing is certain. If we don’t take this opportunity to plan the future of our city for the next 125 years, that spot-rezoned future will plan itself.

But it won’t be pretty.

On Saturday, April 24, 2010,  we staged Vancouver 2050: Creative City, a forum called to envision the city of Vancouver as a creative city in the year 2050. Moderated by Max Wyman, the forum featured addresses by Maestro Bramwell Tovey, Music Director of theVancouver Symphony, Norman Armour, Artistic Director of the PUSH Festival, Amber Dawn, Director of the Queer Screen Film Festival and Hank Bull, Executive Director of Centre A.

A panel consisting of Miro Cernetig, columnist with the Vancouver Sun; Howard Jang, Executive Director, Arts Club Theatre; David Lemon, Executive & Artistic Director, Health Arts Society; Bernard Magnan, Chief Economist, Vancouver Board of Trade; and Vanessa Richards, Director of Community Engagement Through The Arts, Simon Fraser University; discussed those presentations with the speakers and then the floor was opened up to the audience for a lengthy debate of the ideas presented.

Our programme as downloadable PDF:  Vancouver_2050_Programme

The session lasted four hours and was well-attended by more than a hundred leaders of arts and culture from Greater Vancouver and the Lower Mainland. In the words of Impresario David YH Lui, the most important accomplishment of the event may be that it took place at all. According to Max Wyman, 1969 was the last time so many of the city’s arts leadership had gathered in one room for this kind of collaborative discussion. (A partial list of organizations attending appears at the bottom of this post.)

Opening Remarks to Moderator, Speakers, Panel & Audience. Photo: Tom Hudock

I’ll be writing more about the event later this week, but in the meantime, here are my introductory remarks at the opening of the meeting:

Good morning! It’s great to see so many friends in the theatre – it’s truly appreciated, especially at this ungodly hour. My name is Sean Bickerton and on behalf of the organizing committee it’s a pleasure to welcome you all to Vancouver 2050: Creative City.

I’m very much a product of the arts institutions gathered in this room. I played violin in the Vancouver Youth Orchestra, performed in joint concerts with the Vancouver Symphony, studied theory and piano at the Langley Community Music School, bused in with my drama class to plays at the Playhouse, competed in Friends of Chamber Music, went to my first Opera, Carmen, produced by the VOA at the QE, saw Rubinstein thanks to Hugh Pickett, the National Ballet thanks to David YH Lui, and Jesse Norman thanks to Leila Getz’ recital series among many other highlights.

It was that rich cultural background which made it possible for a kid from Cloverdale to end up in New York as a Vice President of Columbia Artists producing tours for great artists and ensembles. That experience in New York wouldn’t have been possible without the organizations represented in this room.

So I’m sold! I’m a total fan!

But what about the general public? What, to badly paraphrase one of our panelists, Vanessa Richards, would it take to transform the public perception of local arts and culture in the same way that people’s perceptions of BC wine and local produce have been transformed in recent years?

BCs wine industry, like every industry,  needed an infrastructure put in place before it could start to thrive. Do the arts in this city have the basic infrastructure they need?

In addition to considering infrastructure in 2050, we also asked the speakers to address the issue of sustainability and enrichment of programs if possible.

Some people have asked why the year 2050? Because it is far enough away to allow us to think past our day to day existential battles and imagine something better. And because the future we don’t plan is already planning us.

Before I go, many thanks to the Arts Club Theatre, which has generously provided this Theater, a very helpful Staff & the sound system for today’s forum; to Max Wyman, for agreeing so kindly to moderate today’s proceedings; to our four amazing speakers for sharing their visions; our distinguished panel for adding their insights; our audience for lending their keen minds; my great partners on the organizing committee for their hard work and generosity of spirit; the Borealis String Quartet for their poetic beauty; and my husband Tom, who’s busy photographing and videotaping the proceedings.

Thanks are also due to Tourism Vancouver for sponsoring the transcription of the proceedings; Kulture Shock Media for the website and printing of programmes; and Sean Farrell of NG Farrell Sports & Culture Marketing for helping out today.

Thanks to you all!

Today’s moderator needs no introduction, but deserves a good one. He is widely admired as a man of integrity and one of our country’s great cultural thinkers and commentators. It’s both an honour and personal pleasure to introduce as our Moderator, today … Max Wyman!

Organizations attending: Community Arts Council of Vancouver, Vancouver City Council, Diane Farris Gallery, Independent Times, Vancouver Symphony, Vancouver Su, Ballet BC, Langley Community Music School, Health Arts Society, UBC Arts Umbrella, Vancouver Pro Musica, Vancouver Board of Trade, Centre A, Arts Club Theatre, Alliance for the Arts, Vancouver Chamber Choir, Vancouver Queer Film Festival, Play Creative Design, Vancouver Symphony, SFU, UBC, City of Richmond, Neworld Theatre, 42nd Street, Tyee, Heritage Vancouver, City of North Vancouver, Roede House Museum, explorAsian, City Opera, Arts Advocacy BC, Eastide Culture Crawl, Writers Festival, Vancouver Cantata Singers, 2010 Legacies Now, Canadian Heritage, Vancouver Biennale, Bard on the Beach, PuSh Festival, Metro Vancouver, Knowledge TV Network, VanCity, International Centre of Arts for Social Change, Art Space Action, False Creek Residents Association, Music on Main, Out Film Festival, Electric Company, Vancouver Opera Association, Vancouver Playhouse.

Please join us tomorrow, Saturday, April 24 at the Arts Club Granville Island Stage at 8:30 am for Vancouver 2050: Creative City! – a public Arts & Culture Forum moderated by Max Wyman and featuring addresses by Maestro Bramwell Tovey, Music Director of the Vancouver Symphony, Norman Armour, Artistic Director of the PUSH Festival, Amber Dawn, Director of the Out On Screen Film Festival and Hank Bull, Executive Director of Centre A. Admission is free, although we’ll gratefully accept donations to cover basic costs.

Our four arts leaders will each present their vision of what Vancouver as a Creative Capital would look like in 2050, with a view to infrastructure, sustainability and the kind of innovation and enrichment of activities that could energize broader community engagement.

After those presentations, a high-level panel drawn from the arts, business and social profit sectors will discuss with the speakers the concepts they’ve presented, and then open the discussion up to include invited arts, business & community leaders and members of the public.

Our goal with this discussion is to bring leaders from the arts and business communities together in order to fully imagine Vancouver as a 21st-century Creative City with a correspondingly vibrant creative economy.

I am totally and completely a product of the arts institutions of this city and Province. I grew up in rural south Surrey in the 60s and traveled into Vancouver every week by Greyhound bus for violin lessons and rehearsals of the Vancouver Youth Orchestra. Every month my high school drama class attended plays at the Vancouver Playhouse Theatre and I spent summers up at the Courtenay Youth Music Camp.

Later I played violin in the Victoria Symphony, worked as a summer intern for the Vancouver Recital Society, worked in the Vancouver Symphony subscription sales room and managed the Vancouver Youth Orchestra and Courtenay Music Camp I’d attended as a boy.

It was that broad-based arts experience that made it possible for me to go to work for Columbia Artists in New York, first as an Assistant and eventually as Vice President, managing careers and producing tours for dance companies, orchestras, choirs and chamber ensembles in Europe, North America and Asia.

As a result, my commitment to these arts institutions and to the artists and artisans that make Vancouver such an engine of enlightenment is total, and I want to help ensure the same opportunities are here for the next extraordinary generation of talent our city is now producing.

Many thanks to David Lemon, Executive & Artistic Director, Health Arts Society, Howard Jang, Executive Director, Arts Club Theatre and Paul Sontz, Director of Business Development for Tourism Vancouver and Tickets Tonight, for serving with me as the organizing committee for this event.

Please join us on Saturday, April 24, 2010 at 8:30 am in the Arts Club Revue Stage for a glimpse of Vancouver 2050: Creative City!

Juho Pohjonen, Piano

This Sunday, April 18, at 7:30 pm at the Vancouver Playhouse, Finnish pianist Juho Pohjonen will perform Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit, the sublime piece of music responsible for his re-appearance on the Vancouver Recital Series stage just two years after his debut here during the 2007-2008 season.

During his visit for that first recital, VRS Artistic Director Leila Getz heard Mr. Pohjonen practicing Gaspard backstage for an upcoming concert in a different city. It was so brilliant she immediately re-engaged him to perform the work here in Vancouver – before he’d even played his first concert.

When I worked at Columbia Artists in New York, I was thrilled to be part of the team managing Andras Schiff’s concert career. His Bach even inspired me to write a poem I’ll append to the bottom of this post. I was and remain a huge fan of Andras as one of the great pianists of our day. On learning that he chose Juho Pohjonen for the 2009 Klavier Festival Ruhr Scholarship, I knew this must be a rare young artist and how fortunate we are to have someone of his artistry here in Vancouver.

According to The New York Times:

If we needed proof that exciting new talent is in the pipeline, there was the marvellous American debut of Juho Pohjonen at [Carnegie’s] Weill Recital Hall.  Mr Pohjonen, offered a formidable mixed program, topped by thrilling accounts of two fiendishly difficult works by a fellow Finn, Esa-Pekka Salonen.

On Sunday, you can hear for yourself what all the fuss is about, as Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit is the first piece on Juho’s programme. Tickets are available through Ticketmaster.

The poem that Andras inspired?

I’m excited to be leaving Thursday for NYC to speak at a forum at the Association of Performing Arts Presenters Conference in New York on Saturday. The forum is part of an International Global Cultural Exchange co-sponsored by the U.S. State Department and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.

The program seeks to provide professional development opportunities to emerging performing artists, managers and presenters between the ages of 19-30 from developing countries, in this case seven performing arts presenters from Russia, Palestine, Syria and Pakistan. They will be in New York to meeting with arts professionals from January 6 – 20, 2010.

The overall goal of the Cultural Visitors program is to energize the work of emerging international artists, presenters and managers in their own countries by bringing them to the United States and providing them with:

After a week in New York, they will go on to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. All of the participants have some background and work experience in the performing arts. They have expressed interest in learning more about best practices of and challenges facing U.S. presenters, development and management of new works and festivals, marketing and promotions initiatives and advocacy.

The arts confer on its initiates a shared language and ethos that transcend national boundaries and any narrow sense of contemporary tribalism. Those lucky enough to participate are imbued from a young age with a respect for other cultures and for new kinds of creativity and expression.

The arts and culture are the ultimate response to the nihilism of militant extremism and extreme militarism. The State Department should be commended for the initiative and urged to undertake more such exchanges, fostering international understanding and worldwide support for peaceful forms of free expression. I’m honoured to be one of many chosen to take part.

My New Years Resolution for 2010 is to try and be more temperate.

I’m passionate about the issues I care deeply about, and while diplomatic by nature, sometimes I get a bit heated in pursuit of those causes, particularly when I feel there is an underdog in need of defense.

I feel I erred in this regard in my recent post – A Potemkin Olympics – (since amended) regarding the contretemps that erupted between VANOC and organizers of the Opening Ceremonies on one side, and the Vancouver Symphony and Vancouvery Youth Symphony on the other. I regret the way I characterized those involved on the Olympics organizing side and the lack of respect I exhibited for the producers of the Opening Ceremonies.

More particularly, I wish to apologize – in Memoriam, as Bob Ransford points out – to Jack Poole, head of VANOC in this regard. I never criticized him, but having criticized the organization he ran so successfully, i feel compelled to also note on the same page that he is universally praised by those I look up to as someone who was one of the great Vancouverites, with highly admirable values and deeply committed to this city.

And to acknowledge, as Rod Mickleburg pointed out recently in The Globe & Mail, that many of the events tarnishing the Olympic image were out of VANOC’s control.

While I disagree with some of the decisions taken by VANOC and the Opening Ceremonies, I wish to state categorically that I do so with full respect for the internationally-celebrated team chosen to showcase our city to the world. We are all looking forward to a unique spectacular that magical day.

I give the organizers of the Olympics and Paralympics, and the producers of the Opening Ceremonies full respect for their extraordinary achievements so far, and my full support for their efforts to bring honour to our city, province and nation next month. We will all be watching with pride. And in the year to come, if ever disagree I must, I will endeavour to disagree more respectfully.

Here are ten heartfelt wishes for our city in 2010:

1. That we host one of the most successful Olympics & Paralympics in history; that credit is shared with everyone that did the heavy lifting to make it happen; and that Canada owns the podium throughout!

1000 in a park

2. That the city recognizes its mistake and restores the decades-old Vancouver minimum standard of 2.75 acres of parkland for every 1000 residents for all new development.

3. That we take simple steps to make Vancouver a more pedestrian-friendly city.

4. That the Mayor releases a comprehensive and credible plan to match his promise to end homelessness in the next five years.

Deteriorating Pantages Theatre

5. That the entire city comes together in order to develop the badly missing infrastructure necessary to sustain the vibrant arts sector of our economy.

6. An end to STIR-type corporate giveaways with no public benefit just to build market-rental housing instead of subsidized or stabilized rentals.

7. The restoration of regular order, courtesy and an atmosphere of respect in City Hall.

8. That the viaducts come down, a thousand parks bloom in their place, and Chinatown is completely revitalized.

9. That the City of Vancouver starts to play its expected role in leading Metro Vancouver  into the future and begins by repairing damaged ties with the UBC Endowment Lands.

10. That the Blue Moon that ushered in 2010 heralds a booming, broad-based economic recovery lifting all boats!

Artwork by Jesse Corcoran

UPDATE 1/2/10:  (Revised)

NEWS UPDATE ADDED 12/21/09 2:01 pm

I’m pleased to report that VANOC has issued a formal apology to Maestro Bramwell Tovey and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra for “putting it in an ‘untenable’ position” according to today’s report from The Globe and Mail by David Ebner.

Nonetheless, it remains deeply troubling that our own grammy-award winning orchestra and internationally celebrated Music Director Bramwell Tovey will not be featured during the Opening Ceremonies seen around the world.

We were told the Olympics would showcase our city and province to the entire planet. So why are they missing this opportunity to showcase one of our greatest cultural crown jewels, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra?

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(POSTSCRIPT ADDED BELOW ON 12/21/09 11:01 AM)

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ORIGINAL ARTICLE 12/19/09

Today The Globe and Mail published an article by Marsha Lederman and Rod Mickleburgh entitled The Day The Music Died, which begins:

As the Winter Olympics near, the Games are being hit by defections from the opening and closing ceremonies.

The Grammy-winning Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and its celebrated conductor Bramwell Tovey walked away from the opening ceremonies this week after being asked to prerecord music that would then be mimed by others during the live, lavish spectacle. Yesterday, Mr. Tovey called the plan fraudulent, likening it to Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson’s “faux gold medal” at the 1988 Summer Olympics. Mr. Johnson was stripped of his medal when he tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. “In our field, for you to plagiarize somebody else’s recording – to mime it and pretend that it’s you – is absolutely on a par with Ben Johnson’s fraud. … It’s non-Olympian in spirit and VANOC really should have known better.”

Mr. Tovey, meanwhile, said VANOC’s plan to have an orchestral segment mimed during the opening ceremonies reminded him of the furor over lip-synching by a young girl at the 2008 Summer Olympics. “I said ‘no’ to VANOC, because I felt it was dishonest. I thought it was fraudulent. It’s promoted with public money, and I didn’t want anything to do with this kind of dishonest practice.” After the Beijing lip-synching controversy, B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell vowed there would be no lip-synching during Vancouver’s opening ceremonies.

But that was then. Now we learn that instead of setting a new low, the 2008 Olympics set a new Olympic standard for muzzling dissent and the Milli Vanilli-style faux-performance embraced by those producing Vancouver’s opening ceremonies.