BC Living
Recipe: How to Make Pie Crust from Scratch
Valentine’s Day Drink Recipe: Hy’s Love Is Love Cocktail
Recipe: Pork Belly and Asparagus
Nature’s Pharmacy: 8 Herbal Boutiques in BC
How Barre Enhances Your Flexibility
Top Tips for Workout Recovery
Inviting the Steller’s Jay to Your Garden
6 Budget-friendly Holiday Decor Pieces
Dream Home: $8 Million for a Modern Surprise
Local Getaway: Hideaway at a Mystical Earth House in Kootenay
9 BC Wellness Hotels to Relax and Recharge in This Year
Local Getaway: Enjoy Waterfront Views at a Ucluelet Beach House
B.C. Adventures: Things to Do in February
5 Beautiful and Educational Nature and Wildlife Tours in BC
7 Beauty and Wellness Influencers to Follow in BC
11 Gifts for Galentine’s Day from B.C. Companies
14 Cute Valentine’s Day Gifts to Give in 2025
8 Gifts to Give for Lunar New Year 2025
The City of Vancouver holds two open houses as it seeks to reform clunky, outdated regs on live performance venues.
The City of Vancouver’s current Live Performance Venue regulations are onerous and out of step with the city’s broader goals of fostering a sustainable, diverse cultural environment, says a report issued this week from the municipal Cultural Services office. As a result, new venues are forced underground where they operate unregulated, sometimes in inappropriate, unsafe locations, or are sent outside city limits.
But change could be afoot. The City of Vancouver Cultural Services is hosting two open houses Monday and Wednesday, January 17 and 19, 2011, inviting the public to weigh in as council continues its multi-phase review addressing clunky, outmoded bylaws affecting the arts, culture and creative sectors.
Monday, January 17, 2011
4–7 p.m.
Mt Pleasant Community Centre, Vancouver
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Salons, Queen Elizabeth Theatre, Vancouver
The report, entitled “Regulatory Review for Live Performance Venues,” identified key barriers to the cultural sector in creating and operating live performance venues, including cost, availability of space, outdated and inconsistently administered regulations, and archaic liquor licensing and safety requirements, among other obstacles.
As well, the “Cultural Facilities Priorities Plan 2008–2023,” which was adopted by council in January 2008 and identifies strategies and tactics for enabling the creation and operation of cultural spaces, outlined regulatory structures as one of the key barriers for cultural facilities development and operation.
City staff have already completed the first of three phases of the Live Performance Review, and on February 3 will take a report to the mayor and council recommending the first phase of implementation.
Read January 2010 Council Report [pdf] for full list of key issues and recommendations.
Irwin Oostindie, executive director of W2 Community Media Arts Society, says the open houses offer the opportunity for “clear and direct response from promoters and peeps who struggle to deliver culture for our friends and neighbours but face barriers from the regulatory forces of the City and [its] outdated ‘risk mitigation’ policies.”