It seemed like such a good idea, and so many people got involved in the fight beginning back in the eighties. The cause? It was artists demanding that the city create an area that could be both residentially and commercially zoned. Artists wanted to be able to practice/make their art and sell their work where they lived. The result of all the hard work of that time was the creation of a double-zoned area for artist live/work studios in Vancouver, an area north of Broadway and just east of Main. I moved into the first one that opened-the Brewery Creek building.

When I bought it, I had to qualify for residence and part of my purchase involved defining how much space was to be "commercial"-that is, what percentage of my square footage was devoted exclusively to professional practice, and what percentage of my square footage was residential. At the time, I was required to pay GST only on the purchase of the residential square footage and not for the purchase of the professional space. I had to provide a notarized statement about my professional practice in order to move into a live/work studio.

Several years after moving into my studio, I was contacted by Revenue Canada. I was informed that an audit was to be undertaken. I told them that I had recently been audited and that it seemed odd to me that I was to be audited again. I had been found to be completely and accurately compliant in my first audit but it, they told me, was about my income tax returns and this new (second) audit was to be about my GST filing. It turned out that many people in my building were being audited because Revenue Canada suspected that many residents of my building were either not working artists or that they were artists but they had other studios where they did their work. The GST Police, as I called them, were really only interested in the GST payment on our studios and not, it turned out,in our regular quarterly filings that were based on our product sales.

The auditors were thorough, professional and courteous. They came to my studio and asked me to justify the percentage figures attached to my purchase document. I had declared that 40% of my suite was used for professional practice. I got through the audit just fine but several of my neighbours did not. And they shouldn't have because I knew many residents of artist live/work studios who had misrepresented themselves in order to get into a "cool" living space and to avoid payment of some of their GST on the purchase price of their studios. (As all the studios were built new or newly renovated and we were all first-time buyers, we all had GST applied to our purchases.) I had lawyers, sales people, civil servants and advertising executives in my building at the time.

The great idea of artist live/work studios was hard to make work in the real world. Few of the artists I was so eager to support could afford the studios that were offered for sale or rent. Only artists running successful commercial or professional careers could afford to buy the suites, and the changing circumstances of people's lives made enforcement of the principle of housing only working artists in this newly zoned area impractical. I look around me and I like my neighbours, and there are quite a few artists around, but a substantial percentage of my neighbours are studio owners with no professional connection to the arts at all. I have seen, I believe, a great idea fail.

On the other hand, it seems to me that those people who are not technically eligible to be owners of suites in this double-zoned area are, at least, creative people who like this "alternate" form of urban living. And these people, plus all the artists who moved into my neighborhood have given this part of the city a new lease on life. It has changed considerably in the 10+ years I have been here. There are trendy new restaurants, many new and hip retail stores selling fashion and art and a zillion cool little cafes. The change in zoning revitalized a dormant area of the city. So although the artists' live/work zone failed in one way, it succeeded incredibly in another.

A LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

While it would be important to acknowledge the passing of Artropolis, to paraphrase Mark Twain, "rumours of its demise have been greatly exaggerated." The organization may be at turning point, but is certainly not dead.

The new Artropolis board is composed of both veterans and capable newcomers working steadily to fulfill our mandate of support and exposure for artists in BC vialarge-scale exhibitions, and public education in the arts. There are many successes to build on, from the October Show (1983) to Artropolis 2001 and 2003, and most recently, the Artropolis Road Show which toured the province last fall.

Currently Artropolis has made application to the City of Vancouver for office space; in the future there may be potential for a small gallery. Additional proposals are pending for an exhibition site at the P.N.E., with an eye towards the end of 2006. The website is being updated and the board is actively engaged in obtaining support through grant initiatives and private funding.

In the face of ongoing cuts, support for the arts in BC will require very creative thinking indeed, yet we must keep an eye to the future and not dwell on vanished subsidies of the past. New cultural funding has been committed between now and the 2010 Olympics. As artists we all have had to find creative means to survive in this province; this is the energy and dedication we bring to Artropolis.

So throw off your mourning veils and join us in re-inventing Artropolis once again, not in death but in life, because Artropolis is very much alive.

The Artropolis Board of Directors are:
King Anderson, Virginia Baldwin, Nicole Dextras, Kiku Hawkes, Lenore Rowntree, Elizabeth Russell
And Kriss Boggild - advisor & former executive director,
Ed Varney - advisor & former president of the board (who asked to no longer be referred to as: "Mr. Artropolis")

For further information contact Artropolis at info@artropolis.bc.ca