Dearest Discorder Reader:
This month has not been one full of good news. With the closures of Hoko’s and the Cobalt our city is losing some of the best venues for small bands to play. On a much larger scale though, the B.C. provincial government has made drastic cuts to arts and cultural organizations. Because of this you can expect there to be fewer festivals and cultural events throughout the province, as organizations that run them start scaling back. The lack of grants for arts and cultural organizations is going to affect a lot more than the groups who applied for the grants. The effects of these cuts are going to trickle down to all the people who worked with them and all of us who enjoy the myriad works of the arts community. The effects can already be seen. Organizations, who are seeing large portions of their budgets disappearing, have to lay off employees or even shut their doors because they are no longer able to pay rent.
For now, at least, there are still some wonderfully creative people in Vancouver who have yet to be driven off by the unfriendly cultural climate provided by our lovely local government. You can read about some of them in our pages: the Kidnap Kids are putting out some adorable folky pop music; our reporter Shaun Stander explores artists relationships with their gear by interviewing PrOphecy Sun, Collapsing Opposites, the Greff Band and Red Cedar; CiTR’s Thunderbird Radio Hell is celebrating it’s anniversary this year by bringing bands into the studio for 24 hours of live music; the employees at the Vancouver International Film Festival are bringing us some great films this year and we reviewed four of them (on a side note: any funding problems VIFF was concerned with are probably over now that they’ve received nearly a half million dollar grant from the federal government as a marquee program).
This issue looks a bit different now that its appearance is now looked after by Lindsey Hampton, who is taking over as art director and promises to keep our magazine looking wonderful. You may recognize her work from previous issues of the magazine and countless show posters around town. We would also like to welcome David Stansfield, our new ad manager, and Jamie Anstey, our new distro guy. Soon we will also have a new person looking after our Under Review section as Melissa Smith has taken a job in another city. We wish her all the best.
You will see us again next month,
Jordie Yow