Join artist Lou Sheppard for Tide Change, False Creek: a series of workshops exploring and responding to the False Creek Flats. Supported by our Place-Based Field School and the Audain Faculty of Art, these workshops are part of the public art project for the Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Skytrain Station, currently under construction next to Emily Carr.

All workshops are free & open to all.

Operations and Infrastructure
Walk and Site Visit to Recycling Alternative
Thursday, February 24, 2022 – 12:00 – 2:00 pm
Meet outside the south-west entrance of Emily Carr (next to Libby Leshgold)

This walk traverses the False Creek Flats industrial zone, along Industrial Avenue, to visit Recycling Alternative, a city-serving sustainable waste management company and recycling facility. Co-founder Louise Schwarz will take the group on a tour of the bustling warehouse floor, providing insight into some of the operational infrastructure moving organic waste, plastics, metal, fibre and other waste around our city. 


Tide Walk
Participatory Performance with Lou Sheppard
Friday, February 25, 2022 – 9:00 am – 1:00 pm
Meet in front of Science World – 1455 Quebec St.

Join Lou as he traces the historic movement of water in and out of the False Creek Tidal Flats, timed with high tide in False Creek. Beginning at the head of False Creek (in front of Science World at 1455 Quebec St.) Lou will keep pace with the tide to the corner of East 1st and Clarke Ave and back to Science World, reflecting on the changes and histories of the False Creek Flats. Lou will cover approximately 5km in about 4 hours. You are welcome to join in for any portion of the performance. We will be traveling east from Science World, along Terminal Avenue to Clarke Drive and back. 

Schedule: Leave Science World at 9:08 am, Leave East First and Clarke at 11:08 am, Return to Science World at 1:08 pm 


Watering Cracks 
with Xinwei Che and Lou Sheppard
Saturday, February 26, 2022 – 1:00 – 3:00 pm
Limited space: RSVP to xche@ecuad.ca

“We sometimes talk about the edge of the sea, where the ocean stops and land begins. But there is no permanent edge. Twice a day, the sea moves up and down as it is pulled by moon and sun.” – David Denning, The Intertidal Zone
 
Water, alongside other forces of nature, weathers cracks into the skin of concrete and asphalt we have built on the soft earth below. The edge of False Creek, which was once a shifting intertidal zone of cyclical movements, is now larged delineated by the hard line of Vancouver’s urban waterfront. In this group gesture, we gather water from False Creek to trace the cracks slowly fissuring the embankments and pavements at the creek’s edge.

Xinwei Che is an artist exploring how we might slip from the grip of capitalist time, to experience the hours more expansively through material-centered performance.


Sharing Circle: Water
Aaron Nelson-Moody/Splash (Tawx’sin Yexwulla) and Meagan Innes
Thursday March 3, 2022 11:30 am – 1:30 pm
In Person at the Aboriginal Gathering Place or Online

Aaron Nelson-Moody, or “Splash”, lives and works in the Capilano Village on the North Shore of Vancouver, British Columbia. These days he is working mainly on jewelry engraving and repousse, and still carves the larger houseposts and panels on commission. While Aaron is his English name, he also has his Squamish Nation name, Tawx’sin Yexwulla, which translates as: Splashing Eagle, so most people know him simply as “Splash”. He also carries the name, Poolxtun, from his adopted father Gerry Oleman, which he translates as, ‘the spreading ripples from a splash of water’. He has worked with community groups and students in a number of schools in the Squamish and Vancouver areas since 1995, as well as sharing in Japan and Scotland.

Meagan Innes is from Xwmélts’tstn úxwumixw (Capilano Village). She is a Sḵwx̱wú7mesh slhánay̓ (Squamish Woman), an Educator and a multidisciplinary Artist who completed her MEd around examining connection to place, kinship and to spéńem (plant) s7eḵw’í7tel (siblings) péńem (plant things). She is an emerging artist who is waking up her Ancestral skills and practicing the ways of her Ancestors. She is interested in exploring and reshaping pedagogy to embody traditional ways of knowing and being, more specifically Sḵwx̱wú7mesh traditional ways of learning, knowing and being.

Zoom Link
Meeting ID: 653 6961 2418
Passcode: AGP

Interchanges
Digital forum
February 25 – March 3, 2022

Interchanges is an ongoing practice and digital forum that allows participants and passers-by to contribute to a growing archive of gestural responses to the ever-changing site for Tide Change, False Creek. Interchanges will be facilitated by Marcia Higuchi and Angela Dione at each of these events.

About Tide Change, False Creek:

The Great Northern Way-Emily Carr station is being built on the historic False Creek Flats, 450 hectares of reclaimed tidal flats at the head of False Creek looking out to English Bay. Before they were filled in and reclaimed for urban development these tidal flats were a significant ecological feature, and important fishing grounds for Coast Salish communities. The original False Creek flats would have encompassed a significant portion of Vancouver’s South Eastern downtown, including historic Hogan’s Alley- what is now the Georgia and Dunsmuir Viaducts, and parts of the Strathcona neighbourhood. It would have covered the rail yard north of ECUAD and the future Great Northern Way station, likely reaching the edges of these buildings as well. The indeterminate space between high and low tide- area that is neither fully dry land, nor ocean, is a distinct ecological zone, home to plant and animal life that have adapted to the constantly changing environment. 

The development that has occurred in False Creek since it was infilled echoes the indeterminacy of a constantly changing environment- racial, cultural and economic diversity, busy commercial areas, residential streets, highways, industrial yards, and universities. The displacement of Hogan’s alley, and the ongoing gentrification of the area all echo this change. Tide Change (False Creek) explores these changes against the backdrop of the tide, asking commuters to re-imagine and remember what has changed in this adaptive and diverse neighbourhood.