Sean Bickerton

View from the NPA tent

First published on Citycaucus.com on Tuesday, August 3, 2010, reprinted here with additions:

The crowds were massive at Pride this year, circling half of the downtown, stretching from Robson and Jervis down Robson, Denman and all along Pacific and Beach to the Burrard Bridge.

I was proud to be part of the NPA outreach team for the event. Our booth was in a great spot up on the hill above Sunset Beach. We gave away nearly 600 NPA balloons that day until we had exhausted two tanks of helium, and have never had so many people come up to us to say how glad they were to see us. Pride organizers even helped us find additional ribbon for the balloons when we ran out.

People that signed the email sheets were getting more involved in local politics for the first time, and while we talked to people from every corner of the city, many of the first-timers were from the West End. Quite a few expressed regret after voting for Vision in the last election.

Bill McCreery and Sean Bickerton

We received a number of heated comments on the ad-hoc nature of the STIR program, the lack of meaningful consultation around development decisions and recent comments by the Mayor that many found shocking.

Others mentioned the spending priorities of this council, and were particularly incensed at what they saw as the lack of consultation and costs involved in transportation infrastructure taken away from vehicles and devoted to bikes, although many favored bike lanes that met those concerns.

I’m on record as supporting a network of linked and protected bike lanes and pedestrian pathways. But the process has not been inclusive, consultation was spotty at best and used to support preconceived notions.

Others in the team reported a number of conversations hoping the NPA will be more proactive in its opposition to Vision, more visible, more free of infighting, and eager to see fresh faces brought forward for office.

NPA tent at Pride 2010

Shortly after the last election, I met former Mayor and Premier Mike Harcourt for the first time. Having learned I had run and lost my race for Council, he said the kindest thing to me. He said:  ”Oh, don’t worry about that (loss), Sean. That was an outgoing tide, not an incoming tide …”

I now believe that tide has turned. The overarching feeling of the crowds attending the parade was one of welcome. Far more adults asked for NPA balloons at this event than at any events we’ve done over the past two years, and we had an exponentially higher number of people sign up for our email list than ever before.

It was a beautiful day, a great parade and a proud moment to be an out, gay member of the NPA. Kudos to the organizers for making it happen.

Dave Pasin gives an NPA balloon to a new supporter

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.

Mayor Robertson at UFC Press Conference Day Before Fight

The UFC came to Vancouver on Saturday, flooding the International Village with drunk fans most of that sunny afternoon and long into the night.

Their cries from the street were audible from our apartment from noon onward. Roving gangs of intoxicated young men menaced residents and created an atmosphere of drunken lawlessness in our streets.

I know of four separate incidents involving confrontations between drunk fans and residents of the area – people pushed off sidewalks, confronted, anger when someone refused a high-five, a mother and baby hassled, etc., in addition to the horrific gay-bashing of our good friends that night.

We’re used to the boisterous noise of passionate hockey fans and other sports, win and lose, and we’ve enjoyed and celebrated right along with them. And we’ve seen far larger crowds throughout the Olympics.

But the UFC atmosphere of drunken menace on our streets Saturday was clearly palpable and something very different.

Making matters worse, we didn’t have the visible police presence normal for large major sporting events, and that lack of visible uniforms on the street proved provocative to alcohol-addled, violence-prone males freely using our public streets as urinals and intent on trouble.

Glorifying UFC Violence In Front of Vancouver Art Gallery

That menace metastasized Saturday night into a violent, hate-filled gay-bashing against two residents of our community, who were left beaten, bruised, and suffering from concussions, one with staples in his skull to bind together the wounds he suffered.

This horrific attack occurred two blocks from the UFC event at 10:45 pm after a day of the same kinds of drunken behaviour, evidence enough of the violent atmosphere the UFC created in our neighbourhood.

Mayor Robertson lobbied very hard and publicly for this event, and attended the fight, yet unfortunately did not provide the necessary police presence or security for the residents of the area who warned of just this kind of violence in opposing the license.

According to The Province:

In Robertson, the UFC has an unlikely champion. And if you doubted that for a moment, you just had to listen to its president, Dana White, as he cheerfully lauded hizzoner for his work in securing Saturday’s card for GM Place.

“There were a lot of people who were instrumental in bringing this here,” said White, during a wildly entertaining presser at the Canucks’ home on Thursday.

“But there was one man who — when it came to the last minute and looked like it wasn’t going to happen — pulled the trigger, killed it and made it happen.”

Which, given the UFC’s image in some sectors, was an interesting choice of words. But even if Robertson might have expressed it differently, he wasn’t exactly trying to distance himself from White or his organization.

“My sense is they’re interested in doing more events in Vancouver,” Robertson said afterwards.

“We’re certainly interested in hosting more events. It’s likely we’re going to see more events in the next two years.”

Today on CKNW and in The Vancouver Sun,  our Mayor stated that the event went smoothly and incredibly stated he’s looking forward to the next fight. He also mentioned the fighting got a little rough, neglecting to mention it sent five fighers to the hospital – but he was glad it was in a safe environment and not on the streets …

But it did spill out onto the streets.

So the Mayor has a special responsibility to answer for the abdication of his prime responsibility to maintain public order after approving the most violent spectactor event in the city’s recent history.

The Mayor had plenty of security inside the stadium protecting him. We understand the place was flooded with plainclothed anti-gang officers. Yet where were the provisions to protect the residents forced to play host to the gangs of intoxicated “fans?”

Not making sure there was a strong, visible presence was a mistake. And because of that mistake, there will not be another UFC event in this neighbourhood again.

————

UPDATE I

I’m not casting any blame on the police, who did an extraordinary job under far harder circumstances throughout the Olympics and for the many other large events we’ve hosted over the past two years. Those that promoted this event had the responsibility for ensuring a safe environment not just for their guests but for their neighbours.

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?

Click on the image below for a photo essay of Vancouver as a Olympic Village:

Robson Square in Vancouver, BC

Four years ago, Tom and I were still living in New York, and we watched in amazement as the Mayor we had been reading about in the New York Times rolled up onto the stage in Turino, Italy and accepted the Olympic flag on behalf of all Vancouver. Watching Mayor Sullivan parade that flag across that Olympic stage for the City of Vancouver made us so proud of my hometown city. It literally brought tears of joy to my eyes.

It was a great moment for Vancouver, and he became an instant international icon of a progressive city where anything was possible. So it will be with great pride that we watch this morning as he carries the torch in Vancouver as that great symbol of peaceful international competition makes its final journey to the torch-lighting ceremony tonight.

As with all human endeavour, there are things to criticize. With something this big, it would be impossible to avoid in fact.

But now that the Opening Ceremonies are upon us this evening, it is time for all Vancouverites that love their city and all Canadians to cheer our athletes and give our enthusiasm and support for the most peaceful, successful games in the history of the Olympics. Here’s to Owning the Podium!

Go Canada! Go!

Waiting with Sam Sullivan before he carries the Olympic Torch (Photo: Tom Hudock)

The lighting of Sam's torch - one Olympic runner to the next! (Photo: Tom Hudock)

Sam carrying the torch down 1st @ Commercial Drive (Photo Credit: Tom Hudock)

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.