The Official Opening Ceremony of Asian Heritage Month and explorASIAN 2017 is taking place on Saturday, April 22nd at 10:00am at the Fei & Milton Wong Experimental Theatre – Goldcorp Centre for the Arts at Simon Fraser University (149 West Hastings Street, Vancouver).
To download the program, please see here: Opening Program
We hope you will come out to celebrate explorASIAN 2017! May is Asian Heritage Month!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Vancouver celebrates contributions of Canadians with mixed Asian heritage during national Asian Heritage Month
Media are invited to join the official festival kick-off on Saturday, April 22, 10:00AM, at Fei & Milton Wong Experimental Theatre, Goldcorp Centre for Arts, Simon Fraser University, 149 West Hastings Street, Vancouver. Please contact Ken McAteer or Patricia Lim at media.vahms@gmail.com.
APRIL 3, 2017, VANCOUVER, BC – The Vancouver Asian Heritage Month Society (VAHMS) is pleased to focus on the growing community of Canadians with mixed Asian heritage during the 21st annual explorASIAN festival, celebrating national Asian Heritage Month in May. Each year the festival puts the spotlight on a different Asian Canadian community to raise awareness for the contributions of multicultural communities to Canadian society. The decision to highlight the community of Canadians with mixed Asian heritage during explorASIAN 2017 was the result of a unanimous vote by the VAHMS Board of Directors to celebrate the changing dynamics of Canadian identity during the country’s 150th anniversary.
“We are very excited to be working with the mixed Asian heritage community because they literally embody the Vancouver Asian Heritage Month Society’s vision to celebrate the hybridization of all arts and culture in Canada,” said VAHMS President Ken McAteer. “explorASIAN 2017 stands to be one of our most inclusive festivals yet as it seeks to highlight those cross-cultural and cross-generational stories that are so common among all Canadians.”
VAHMS has organized an advisory panel of distinguished members from the Canadian mixed heritage community including award-winning filmmaker, Jeff Chiba Stearns, writer/editor, Anna Ling Kaye, and writer/editor, Brandy Liên Worrall-Soriano, to assist with special programming features related to their unique community. The May celebrations will include many free family-friendly arts and cultural activities for communities of all cultures and backgrounds in Metro Vancouver. For more information about specific festival events and activities, please visit www.explorasian.org.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Advisory Panel Biographies
Jeff Chiba Stearns is an Emmy® nominated and multi award-winning animation and documentary filmmaker. Born in Kelowna, BC, of Japanese and European Heritage, he graduated from the Emily Carr University with a degree in Film Animation in 2001. Soon after, he founded Vancouver based boutique animation studio Meditating Bunny Studio Inc. where his many films including One Big Hapa Family and Mixed Match have broadcast around the world, screened in hundreds of international film festivals and garnered over 35 awards. In 2011, Jeff was awarded the Cultural Pioneer Award from Harvard University for advancing the dialogue on multiracial identity through his work. In that same year, Chiba Stearns co-founded the Hapa-palooza Festival to raise awareness, explore and celebrate mixed heritage and hybrid cultural identity.
Anna Ling Kaye is a writer, editor and 2015 Journey Prize finalist. Her fiction has appeared in Prairie Fire, emerge and Culture magazines, and her journalism has appeared in The International Herald Tribune, The Tyee and subTerrain. Her translations have been set to music by contemporary composers. Kaye is co-founder and a director of Hapa-palooza Festival, former prose editor at PRISM international magazine and former editor of Ricepaper magazine. The Vancouver-based writer identifies as Taiwanese and Jewish-American.
Brandy Liên Worrall-Soriano is author of What Doesn’t Kill Us, a groundbreaking memoir about growing up in the din of her Vietnamese mother and American father’s trauma from the Vietnam War, and how it related to her breast cancer experience as a young adult. She is also the author of eight collections of poetry (the podBrandy series), as well as having served as editor of numerous magazines, journals, and anthologies. She is the owner and editor of Rabbit Fool Press, a small publishing company that specializes in mixed race and Asian North American writing and art. In 2015, Rabbit Fool Press published a wide-ranging anthology, Completely Mixed Up, which features over 70 Asian North American writers and artists of mixed heritage. Worrall-Soriano received her MA in Asian American Studies from UCLA in 2002 and her MFA in Creative Writing from UBC in 2012.
About the Vancouver Asian Heritage Month Society
Founded in 1996, the Vancouver Asian Heritage Month Society (VAHMS) is a non-profit society that is dedicated to recognizing Asian Canadian participation as an integral part of Canadian society. VAHMS organizes explorASIAN, an annual festival celebrating national Asian Heritage Month, to promote understanding and appreciation of Asian Canadian arts and culture in the month of May. The festival includes programs, activities and events produced in collaboration with various partners from the diverse communities in Metro Vancouver.
Media contacts:
Ken McAteer or Patricia Lim
media.vahms@gmail.com
www.explorasian.org
Facebook: /explorASIAN
Twitter: @explorasian
BC Artscape is excited to launch the for BC Artscape at the Sun Wah Centre at 268 Keefer Street.
The Call for Tenants explains explains how professional artists, not-for profit arts, cultural and community organizations, and community groups can apply to rent at the BC Artscape space at 268 Keefer Street. BC Artscape is offering units on the lower level, 3rd floor and 4th floor for, but not limited to: production, exhibition, education, social service provision, programming and administrative space. BC Artscape will also have the rooftop available for programming and parking. Occupancy is expected for October 2017.
For those that submitted an Expression of Interest, the Call for Tenants process will confirm your interest and ideas.
For new applicants, the Call for Tenants application confirms the amount of space you need, what you want to do in the space, and what you need to make that happen.
The deadline for applications is Friday, March 24th at 3PM.
BC Artscape’s goal is to inform applicants by March 31st if they have been selected as tenants, and have lease agreements signed by May 15th, 2017.
Read the Call for Tenants document & submit your application!
Please note that the Chinese version of the Call for Tenants document will be available by end of day, Friday March 10th, and we will send it out as soon as it is available.
You’re invited!
Beyond 150 Years: An Acknowledgement of Cinematic Territory (Beyond 150)
Welcome Reception
Join us on Sunday, March 5th, at 7pm PST at VIFF Vancity Theatre for a Welcome Reception, hosted by Indigenous multimedia artist Ronnie Dean Harris. Cultural leader Bob Baker will deliver the welcoming speech, followed by a performance from Spakwus Slolem (Eagle Song Dancers), and audio/visual projections and visual art by artist Bracken Hanuse Corlett.
Sunday, March 5, 2017, @7pm
Vancity Theatre
Vancouver International Film Centre
1181 Seymour St.
Vancouver, BC V6B 2E8
http://beyond150reception.eventbrite.ca/
REEL CANADA introduces Beyond 150 Years: An Acknowledgement of Cinematic Territory (Beyond 150), celebrating the impact of Indigenous cinematic stories and highlighting particular works and filmmakers that have created, and continue to create, shifts within the larger cinematic landscape.
The concept of “Poetic Dance of Ink” originated ten years ago from artist June Yun’s idea on an art installation that combines ink, water, dance, music and photography. After years of incubation, this project is now realized with orientalist Dr. Paul Crowe.
explorASIAN celebrates national Asian Heritage Month each May by building bridges between mainstream and Asian Canadian communities in promotion of multiculturalism and diversity. This year, the explorASIAN will place a special focus on the legacy, culture and accomplishments of the growing community of Canadians with mixed Asian heritage for the 150th anniversary of Confederation.
BC Artscape is hosting an Open House on their 268 Keefer project for the Chinese-speaking community in Chinatown and Metro Vancouver, from 1-4PM on Saturday January 14. Presentations will run at 1PM and 2:30PM, followed by Q&A and tours of the space. Conducted in Cantonese, Mandarin and English, as needed.
Lipont Place is a recently-opened commercial art space located in downtown Richmond. Located in a former automobile showroom across from the Aberdeen Canada Line Station, it is being converted into a combination of professional art exhibition spaces, artist studios, office space, a café and a bar.
Lipont Place is currently holding Open Houses for potential clients. Tickets are available at the following link
Diversity represents one of Canada’s greatest strengths, and we strive to ensure that all Canadians have the opportunity to reach their full potential and participate in Canada’s civic life.
Over the last two centuries, immigrants have journeyed to Canada from East Asia, Southern Asia, Western and Southeast Asia, bringing our society a rich cultural heritage representing many languages, ethnicities and religious traditions.
The people of this diverse, vibrant and growing community have contributed to every aspect of life in Canada — from the arts and science to sport, business, and government.
Asian Heritage Month offers all Canadians an opportunity to learn more about the history of Asian Canadians and to celebrate their contributions to the growth and prosperity of Canada.
Thereby, we declare May as Asian Heritage Month in Canada.
