|
Dear Friends,
I trust this message finds you all finding personal wellbeing and social connection while practicing physical distancing and staying safe. We are all slowly adjusting to an altered reality, with new learnings coming in every day! We've seen many examples of community arts sprouting up like Spring blossoms all over the global Internet. It is heartening to notice that our natural urge to create cannot be suppressed and is indeed strengthened by this shift to a home-based existence for many. With an important note that many others remain unhoused in precarious and highly vulnerable situations, and that more and more working people are being recognized as essential services risking their lives for us. We raise our hands to them all.
With all of this in mind, we at CACV are looking at how we can best support artists and other community members now and when this crisis abates. We're meeting online and looking at which programs can move online, and which need to be postponed until we can safely gather again. For those that could be offered through online platforms, it's important that we do this well, and meet community needs. So we're taking our time to reflect, connect, question, and imagine our way forward with our stupendous Board, staff, volunteers, and artists.
It feels like the contributions that the arts make to healthy and resilient and meaningful lives in community are more important than ever. We ask that if you do have the capacity, please consider donating to ensure that the Community Arts Council of Vancouver can continue to offer one of a kind programs like the Vancouver Outsider Arts Festival and Reframing Relations. And develop partnerships like Creative Resilience, bringing artists together with planners, scientists, first responders, and citizens to prepare for, respond to, and recover from emergencies. We want to be there for the recovery from COVID's massive effects, and help neighbours be even more able to take care of each other in the future.
I've also been encouraged to see the many progressive social and policy shifts that have become obvious and urgent in this time. Let's hope that most of them stick!
We hope the following short list of resources may be of use to some of you.
Good luck, stay safe, and imagine onward,
Eric (on behalf of the CACV community of staff and volunteers)
|
