A majority of Vancouver councillors voted to stop funding a local drug user group’s art table project on Tuesday, overturning a city staff recommendation.
The Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) had received $7,500 in grants to run an art table for vulnerable drug users during the pandemic.
It saw a few events each week where Downtown Eastside residents would be led by a facilitator to learn and practice art, creating works like banners and murals commemorating people lost to toxic drugs.
However, Coun. Brian Montague of the ruling ABC Party successfully passed an amendment to the annual city grant report, denying VANDU the funding for 2023. It was the only grant, out of 84 recommended by city staff, that was not approved by the council.
The VANDU Art Table is running today. <a href=”https://t.co/0k1tqBxDGG”>pic.twitter.com/0k1tqBxDGG</a>
“I’ve got serious concerns about the granting system and its process, and in general, I do think it’s flawed,” he said at council Tuesday. “I personally don’t have confidence that they would deliver the program and service.”
Sarah Kirby-Yung, an ABC councillor who seconded Montague’s motion, cited a previous $320,000 VANDU contract devoted to a street stewardship program as the reason she voted to cut the grant funding in 2023.
That contract was ended by the city prematurely, with officials saying the group was not focusing enough on street cleaning and devoted money to empowering residents instead.
“I think it is incumbent upon us, as stewards of public funds, that the principle of responsible use of public money is upheld,” Kirby-Yung said.
Montague’s amendments also mean that city staff will look to redirect the $7,500 in grant money to an “alternate and appropriate organization for Indigenous-led and/or Indigenous-based programming”.
VANDU exec promises to soldier on
However, VANDU had previously told CBC News it had fulfilled its commitments under the street stewardship program.
Brittany Graham, executive director of the group, said the city was playing politics and “making an example” of VANDU due to political disagreements.
“It felt very pointed when councillors were saying uninformed opinions about us using funds that were misappropriated,” she told CBC News. “We’ve never used funds from the city, or anywhere, that were not supposed to be used for the granting process.”
The three non-ABC councillors — Pete Fry, Adriane Carr and Christine Boyle — voted against Montague’s motion.
Fry noted that VANDU had done “some political things” — alluding to incidents like the group releasing video of violent police incidents and others — that made the council see them through a different lens.
Still, he said the art table was a valuable project for those affected by the poisoned drug crisis, and that art was a form of personal expression.
A photo of an in-progress mural piece by Maddy Andrews made at the VANDU art table. The organization says Andrews has been working closely to memorialize people lost to toxic drugs, and the city’s funding cut would leave the project in jeopardy. (Submitted by Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users)
“I think it would be a mistake to deny this $7,500 for folks to express themselves in the midst of this disastrous overdose crisis,” he told council.
Graham said that in addition to drawn art like murals, craftsmen were also invited to the art tables to help participants — including, in a previous iteration, an Indigenous elder and knowledge keeper who taught cedar weaving.
“This money was going to Indigenous artists and would have supported Indigenous-led programming,” she said. “When people would like to work on things, we encourage them to find those spaces.
“When it’s deterred by the system because of politics? More than anything, it feels really disheartening.”
Graham said they would try and continue a version of the art table through community donations, with the group receiving support from other grant recipients like the DOXA documentary festival. A fundraiser by advocate Karen Ward has also raised over $4,600 for the project as of 4 p.m. PT Wednesday.
“Drug users have widespread public support, because everyone uses drugs,” Ward said in an email.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
