Filmed and edited by artist Israel Seoane, this short documentary series reflects on the creativity, resilience, and richness of artists, and community working together in difficult times.
Come explore activities at fieldhouses located in our parks.
Vancouver Park Board's Fieldhouse Activation Program transformed former care-takers’ suites in parks or underused facilities across Vancouver into active spaces for community engaged creative practices.
In each cycle artist collectives, local food, and environmental groups are given access to these spaces in exchange for engaging neighbours, colleagues, and curious visitors in imaginative, collaborative work in parks.
These inspiring projects lead communities into deeper conversations about living in the urban environment.
Applications for fieldhouse residencies are now closed
Check back in fall 2027 for details about the next call for applications.
Mark George is a Tsleil-Waututh Nation member who grew up along the shores of the səlilwət (Burrard Inlet). He has been carving for more than 40 years and is a certified carving instructor. His work reflects the artistic expression of Tsleil-Waututh histories and the natural environment. His artwork includes small to very large carving projects, including masks, paddles, welcoming posts, large totem poles, picture frames, chocolate, and jewelry carvings.
He envisions his projects as opportunities for sharing cultural teachings with Tsleil-Waututh community members, including youth, and the public. He holds "Open Bench" hours at the A-Frame most Saturdays from 2pm to 4pm where guests can observe the carving process, learn about Tsleil-Waututh history, and hear the oral traditions associated with each carving.
This cultural residency supports a community member from the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), or səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations to work in a creative, activated, and community-engaged space in a part of their unceded territory currently known as Stanley Park. This residency previously welcomed Chrystal Sparrow from 2018 to 2022 and T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss from 2022 to 2026.
Everyone is invited to the Adanac Fieldhouse for tea, snacks, music, and art-making including needle felting, mandala painting, and stitching of all sorts.
The focus of the residency is on The Art of Everyday Life: building relationships while making useful, sometimes beautiful items including clothing, textiles, baskets, lanterns, and other functional objects.
Engagement with neighbours is the top priority as is hearing what they’d like to co-create. Expect a schedule of weekly, free public art-making sessions and workshops, plus Amy will be available as a ‘maker’s helper’ to assist with your own projects as appropriate.
Amy ‘Biker’ Walker is a multi-faceted maker who has a particular love for cycling transportation. She was a co-founder of Momentum Magazine in 2001, and since 2018 operates a mobile art activation service called Makemobile with the help of a big, red cargo bike. Her favourite scenarios are designing and bringing to life collaborative, hands-on activations in public spaces, and making cool, useful things out of discarded scraps.
Community Arts Council of Vancouver (CACV) provides a free and low barrier space for artists in Vancouver to connect with community through the arts. Artists are invited to activate the Fieldhouse as 3 types of spaces (artist studio space, exhibition space, and public projects/ workshop space).
Earthseed Sanctuary is increasing community climate resilience, biodiversity, and food sovereignty through culturally-rooted arts programming on the shared, ancestral, and unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
Together with the community, they will steward the Moberly Medicine Garden and build a community medicine and seed library, and medicine maker space. Join them for land-based events and eco-arts workshops like natural dyeing, weaving, writing, music, among others.
/ˈmaSHˌəp/ noun, "A mixture or fusion of disparate elements"
El Mashup Collective is an eclectic mix of personalities and artistic disciplines à la Latin-style. The Collective is excited to offer skills and vibes to surrounding communities and beyond, working and creating on unceded Coast Salish lands and in the specific context of the Clinton Park Fieldhouse.
Made up of emerging and established artists Adrian Avendaño (sound, experimental music), Daniela Rodríguez (experimental film, creative writing), Dora Prieto (poetry, interdisciplinary), Brenda Torres (multidisciplinary, animation, performance), and Valentina Acevedo (performance, cooking, curator), El Mashup Collective draws inspiration from multiple layers of identities, interests, and dreams of creating worlds of care and collaboration through the power of art and community.
With their beginnings in 2021 as a hybrid media arts and creative writing workshop for Latin/e/x youth in Vancouver, they are now growing and transforming. Moving to the Clinton Park Fieldhouse will allow them to expand their programming, deepen connections, reach even more youth in the region, and work with elders and communities they can’t even imagine yet.
They are thankful for the incredible support of their partners—The Cultch, Vancouver New Music, and Echo Park Film Centre North—as well as everyone who has been part of their journey, helping them establish a much-valued dedicated space where the spirit of El Mashup can thrive and shine brightly for the next 3 years! Ahí nos vidrios ;)
Enoki Knoll is the new satellite mushroom structure emerging from Hypha Artists’ Association. Located at Hadden Park fieldhouse, Enoki Knoll facilitates events and workshops that invite the public to actively engage in emergent happenings.
Following the principles of relational aesthetics,this art is created through interaction and social engagement. Through active play and improvisation where the ocean meets the sand and the mountains smile upon us, they live to honor the land with the art that emerges from within.
The Fig Tree Palace is a project of the New Page Foundation whose aim is to support formerly incarcerated people through art, culture, and food justice as they come back into outside society. The Fig Tree Palace hosts arts workshops such as screen printing, beading, and writing. Food justice projects such as gardening, processing, cooking, and eating. Community events such as poetry readings, drum circles, and other cultural events. Their work builds community through art and food justice for formerly incarcerated friends and the community at large. Collaborators include the Vancouver Prison Justice Day Committee, Joint Effort, and the Stark Raven media collective.
Foolish Operations’ creations welcome babies, toddlers, preschoolers, and all the generations in their circles of support in performances and workshops filled with irresistible invitations to participate. They collaborate with artists, educators, and specialists to spark inspiration between communities, disciplines, and fields of knowledge, using play as the glue.
Foolish Operation's current creative inquiry is inspired by "moving", "resting", and "nesting". They research creative physical expression (moving), mindfulness practices (resting), and attachment theory (nesting). This includes finding ways to discover and respectfully interact with our environment, birds, and trees in particular.
Foolish Operations’ primary creative incubator and learning platform is “Dancing the Parenting”, a program for children 0-5yrs and their caregivers. They explore moving, resting, and nesting through extensive community engaged creative processes. This includes mentorships, performance creation, presentation, conferences, and workshops with communities of various origins in French and English with the support of artists, guest specialists, and knowledge keepers.
Foolish Operations' team is excited to grow roots and become good neighbours in Riley Park/Little Mountain.
Giihlgiigaa Tsiits Git’anne, also known as Todd DeVries, from the Haida Nation is a cedar bark weaving instructor dedicated to community-based teaching. “Giving everyone a hat by teaching the skills to weave one and sharing the values that go with it.” This guiding quote serves as his personal mandate, reflecting his commitment to sharing both the practical skills and the cultural teachings of Haida weaving.
Since 2010, Giihlgiigaa’s work has combined cedar bark weaving with Haida storytelling, drawing inspiration from his teachers, master weaver Holly Churchill and the late storyteller Gaagii Woody Morrison, BA, JD. Giihlgiigaa has led numerous workshops and artist residencies, including a six-year residency at Britannia 55+ Community Centre through Healthy Aging Through the Arts.
His teaching spans all ages — youth, adults, and elders — in elementary and secondary schools, community colleges, and First Nations outreach programs. Through weaving and storytelling, he empowers participants to connect with culture, creativity, and each other.
The Oak Park Fieldhouse cultural residency continues this work by offering workshops that provide a safe, welcoming space for community members to connect, learn, and be empowered through creative expression.
Join the Oak Park Fieldhouse for cedar weaving, storytelling, and community-building.
Patchbay is a station where people of all ages and abilities may gather to play music together, learn and share skills in music technology and creative expression, discover new ways of listening, and experiment with music and sound in a supportive environment.
Stewarding the fieldhouse are Charlie Cooper and c. o. valenza—composers, performers, and close friends who collaborate on collective sounding and listening practices. We hope to bring folks together over a curiosity for music and the sounds of the neighborhood.
Repairia is committed to fostering a culture of repair and design.
Their mission is to empower the community through hands-on workshops, skill-sharing events, and accessible resources. Projects include DIY mending nights, community art installations, and large-scale group events that are inspired by people who walk through their doors.
By centering repair in everyday lives and art practice, Repairia promotes sustainability, reduces waste, and builds stronger social connections. Its work prioritizes equity and accessibility, ensuring all community members have opportunities to learn, share, and contribute to a resilient, sustainable future. Repairia collaborates with community members to bring forward new ideas, skills, and workshops, supporting ongoing learning and teaching.
Vancouver Urban Food Forest Foundation is an inclusive, intergenerational, cross-cultural knowledge sharing community physically manifesting as an Indigenous food forest called Chén̓chenstway Healing Garden in Oxford Park, a small Indigenous food forest in the Hastings and Kamloops plaza and a fieldhouse community activation space in Burrard View Park that promote gathering and mutual aid as a way to address social cohesion and food justice in our neighbourhood.
We provide space for mental and physical well-being that allow people to come as they are in order to transform deeply rooted social systemic issues.
XINEMA [zin-em-a] is an artist-run experimental film series founded and based on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and the Tsleil-Waututh Nations (Vancouver, BC). They strive to deinstitutionalize experimental film practices through alternative, low-barrier settings, and engagement structures.
XINEMA's main priorities are to remain low-barrier by accepting free, ongoing, and unlimited submissions regardless of year or premiere status; to prioritize underrepresented artists and media forms; and to connect filmmakers and film-lovers of various backgrounds, disciplines, and career levels.
Their fieldhouse residency is a hybrid non-traditional curation project, which supports the responsive exchange between artists of varying disciplines and experience levels to collaboratively create new artistic works, such as films, workshops, and curated screenings.
Parks and people: Innovative participation in public urban green space
In 2016, Sue Palmer was awarded a Winston Churchill Travel Fellowship to undertake research into innovation in participation in public urban green space in three cities: Berlin, Germany, Portland, Orgeon, and Vancouver.
Parks offer a gateway to nature in the city. As a community, we can care for parks together and use these spaces to get closer to nature and each other.
Host community meetings to discuss food literacy and education programs
Facilitate workshops
The educational workshops held in the space will reflect our garden groups’ core vision to improve food security, ecological sustainability, and community development.
How we'll implement our vision
The space is located close to the Riley Park Community Garden where our vision can be implemented by:
Supporting food literacy programs
Using public spaces for skill development
Creating a hub for discussion
Ensuring that the garden green space is community-based
Working with local artists and groups on multicultural art displays and community celebrations
The Fieldhouse and Community Garden projects are supported by Little Mountain Neighbourhood House.
The Potting Studio is used to:
House garden tools and supplies
Host community meetings to discuss food literacy and education programs
Facilitate workshops
The educational workshops held in the space reflect the garden groups’ core vision to improve food security, ecological sustainability, and community development.
Cloudscape Comics Collective, a diverse collective of over 60 members, takes advantage of Kensington's cultural diversity to promote cultural cross-pollination with sharing stories.
Stories created in workshops are incorporated in the community comics library.
Echo Park Film offers an open invitation for a convening around community film, food, and garden.
Through an ongoing series of free public workshops and screenings, neighbours and friends will use organic materials grown in the community garden and surrounding area as ingredients to create eco-friendly films that celebrate growing, community, and connection to the urban landscape.
An important part of Echo Park’s mandate is their focus on marginalized communities becoming active participants in the creation and dissemination of experimental and documentary film in order to truly share the many powerful voices and visions that make up the fabric of contemporary life.
Experiments in Living is a project designed to question our surroundings and better understand the things we take for granted in our daily lives.
We hope to re-imagine objects and activities found within a typical home through a series of dynamic collaborations with artists, community members, recreation centres, and local businesses.
Girls Rock Camp Vancouver is a non-profit society that builds self-esteem in girls and non-binary children and youth through collaborative song writing, music creation, and performance.
By providing workshops, technical training, and space to create, experiment, rehearse, and perform, they build leadership opportunities, cultivate a supportive community of peers and mentors, and encourage social change and the development of life skills.
Creativity, positivity, and community are key elements of personal and collective empowerment and transformation.
Opera Lirica is a Vancouver-based opera company founded in 2014 by artistic director Trudy Chalmers.
Opera Lirica aims to bring a wide range of musical events and activities for the communities of Marpole and Oakridge, including free concerts, workshops, opera screenings, masterclasses, a community opera chorus, and more.
They hope to bring people together, help them build confidence through singing and movement, break social isolation, and challenge the perceived social and financial barriers of this art form.
Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House has been part of Vancouver Park Board’s (VPB) Fieldhouse Activation Program since 2019. The Clinton Park Fieldhouse is now an intercultural hub. It holds Indigenous plant workshops, decolonizing dialogues, and art programs, which are all guided by a land-based approach that invites us to explore our personal and societal connections to living on the unceded territories of the Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), sə̓lílwətaʔɬ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh), and xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations.
This fieldhouse was given a Salish name by elder Shane Pointe; P’ipa:m Lelum, which means Frog House. In Indigenous culture, the call of the frog in the springtime is a call to action. It signifies that the dormancy of winter is ending and the time for work is beginning anew. Our work aims to motivate the community to take action and make the changes they want to see in themselves and the community.
Built through the lens of Indigenous principles and leadership, the Clinton Park Fieldhouse has become a place to honour Indigenous history, peoples, and the land; a place of song, art, nature, and connection, and where we turn ideas into action.
Led by George Rahi and Robyn Jacob, Publik Secrets is a team of musicians, fabricators, and visual artists who re-imagines public spaces as participatory gathering places.
The team works to spark wonder and play through multi-disciplinary, community-driven arts projects and events, with a focus on participation and re-uniting art with the daily life of the community.
The Alder Eco-Arts Hub offers eco-art projects, workshops, space, and, teaching to the East Vancouver community.
We create a safe welcoming environment for neighbours to gather and learn from Indigenous Knowledge Keepers, artists, youth, scientists, and each other. Connecting across cultures, generations, and disciplines, to appreciate nature and respectfully create with natural materials, while fostering belonging in nature and community.
Workshops and events give participants knowledge of natural systems and awareness of traditional and contemporary Indigenous knowledge. All programs are low cost, have subsidies, or offered free.
This Village Vancouver residency will have a food, gardening, and environmental focus.
Happenings in the community will include:
Seed sharing libraries
Plant swaps
Pollinator and indigenous plant walks
Events about producing, preserving, and preparing food
Neighbourhood village potlucks
Other park activations will include partnerships by artist collectives like Loco Moto Art whose work has an ecological focus. Their hope is to create positive local responses to our climate change and food system challenges.
Village Vancouver has a long history of inspiring individuals, neighbourhoods, and organizations to build sustainable communities while having fun.
Vines Art Festival is Vancouver's only eco-arts festival. They are committed to capturing the imaginations of new audiences and inserting creativity into everyday Vancouver spaces.
This residency will create platforms for culturally diverse local artists, performers, and community participants to create with and on the land, steering their creative impulses toward work that focuses on the environment – whether a deep love of nature, sustainability, or climate justice.
The Merakos Fieldhouse is a collective of social entrepreneurs and creative Vancouverites hosting a variety of projects.
Find anything from yoga mat recycling to weekly drop-in tutoring.
Merakos fuses together traditional community building with innovative problem solving.
Our events
Join us at the fieldhouse for events such as:
Photography shows
Salsa nights
Community dinners
While you're visiting, check out how green products are made, or see the newest ideas emerging from our business incubator program.
Keep up to date on our happenings by popping in for a cup of tea during our opening hours, or visit our blog by selecting 'Read more'.
The Merakos Fieldhouse is a collective of social entrepreneurs and creative Vancouverites hosting a variety of projects. Find anything from yoga mat recycling to weekly drop-in tutoring.
Media artists in Iris Film Collective create, screen, and exhibit film-based artworks, seeking to increase the visibility and accessibility of experimental media arts.
Their key interest is in working in community with celluloid film, at a time when this medium is shifting from an industrial model to an artisanal one.
Iris will host regular screenings of film work by local, national, and international artists, and offer hands-on workshops and projects for community members of all ages.
By working with citizens and community partners, and utilizing existing assets in the neighbourhood (spaces to practice, youth as coaches, existing resources), the Moresports strategy creates the conditions to provide sports for all.
Moresports responds to the needs and diversity of the community because it’s developed and run by the community.
Written on the Body represents a way of working, practicing, experimenting, creating, and collaborating between Elisa Thorn (harp & composition) and Dayna Szyndrowski (percussive dance) at Written on the Body.
"Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights, the accumulations of a lifetime gather there.” Inspired by this text from Jeanette Winterson, the concept began as a collaborative performance between Szyndrowski and Thorn and has since developed into a larger artistic practice that navigates the intersections of music and dance, tradition and innovation, and composition and improvisation.
Through creative work and play with community members of all ages, the pair aim to develop methods to look within in order to look outwards in art and beyond.
Dance Troupe Practice is a movement based performance collective, creating work that combines dance, voice, video, and installation.
Committed to a deep exploration of the moving body and creative collaboration, they look forward to connecting community needs and interests to their own practices, to explore the connections between dance and everyday life in unexpected places.
Lexie Owen is an interdisciplinary artist interested in sculpture, craft in the expanded field, social practice initiatives, and curatorial projects. She explores the way new understandings form when different systems of recognition collide.
From back alley walking tours with botanists to community sewing circles stitching maps and text, Owen investigates by making objects, forming societies, and intervening in public space.
Projects like the Collaborative Embroidery Society will serve as a jumping-off point for community engagement.
Lexie Owen is an interdisciplinary artist interested in sculpture, craft in the expanded field, social practice initiatives, and curatorial projects. From back alley walking tours with botanists to community sewing circles stitching maps and text, Owen investigates by making objects, forming societies, and intervening in public space.
Vancouver Society of Storytelling (VSOS) at Slocan Park
VSOS has a strong history of community engagement, bringing diverse groups of people together through the power of stories, from folktales and fables to personal narratives.
Over their 20+ year history they have worked with First Nations communities, schools, seniors groups, environmental organizations, and others to seek out and celebrate story exchange.
VSOS preserves the ancient art of oral storytelling while embracing opportunities to reach new audiences through community engagement.
The Vancouver B Movie Factory at Moberly Park Fieldhouse
Led by film producer Jimi Stewart, The Vancouver B Movie Factory works in communities to co-create imaginative social encounters that foster participation in the film and television arts.
The Vancouver B Movie Factory looks forward to creating community-based films in the studio and the surrounding park, bringing participants movie making dreams to life.
Germaine Koh used the fieldhouse both as a studio and as the home base for the community-based project League.
League hosted weekly gatherings for people to come together to play sports and games they invented. It was problem-solving as play.
Mark Haney at Falaise Park Fieldhouse (2013 – 2015)
Mark Haney, composer and double-bassist, used the fieldhouse for daily practice and rehearsal, and welcomed the public into his creative processes of both performing and creating.
Re-Invent Project at Moberly Park Fieldhouse (2013 – 2015)
The Re-Invent Project, with social artist and painter Melanie Schambach, explored participatory art processes with local community, businesses, and service providers to create new narratives of belonging, inclusion, and health.
The Art House in the Field Collective at Slocan Park Fieldhouse (2013 – 2015)
The Art House in the Field Collective joined Renfrew-Collingwood-based arts groups to build community through cultural, artistic, and inclusive experiences.
ten fifteen maple at Hadden Park Fieldhouse (2013 – 2015)
The collective of Rebecca Bayer, Justine A Chambers, Josh Hite, Billy Marchenski, and Kristen Roos collaborates with the community on works investigating psychogeographical relationships between local histories and forms of mapping through:
Urban Weaver Project at Maclean Park Fieldhouse (2012 – 2015)
Eco-based community artist Sharon Kallis and Haida cedar weaver Todd DeVries explored with community the creative repurposing of invasive plant species as a substitute for traditional weaving materials that are difficult to harvest sustainably in the city.
Something Collective at Moberly Park Fieldhouse (2012 – 2015)
The Something Collective developed a community-mapping project, We Are Here, that interacted with the public using all the collective's artistic media.
These community maps drew out narratives from residents, asking what they value their neighbourhood and how they want it to grow and change.
Filmed and edited by artist Israel Seoane, this short documentary series reflects on the creativity, resilience, and richness of artists, and community working together in difficult times. 
In 2016, Sue Palmer was awarded a Winston Churchill Travel Fellowship to undertake research into innovation in participation in public urban green space in three cities: Berlin, Germany, Portland, Orgeon, and Vancouver.
Follow us on Instagram
