Inside the homegrown fabrication shop that’s grown beyond its theatre company roots

Good morning, 

Nate with you today. Goodbyes are difficult, and for the last few weeks I’ve been grappling with the departure of my beloved sister, who is moving to Boston for school. She just left earlier this week, and I’ve been feeling the whole spectrum of emotions, from excitement and pride to sadness and loss, temporary though it may be.   

As an emerging artist taking the plunge into a specialized training program, I’ve seen, through her, the struggles and joys of being an artist in Vancouver. That includes the difficulties and pleasures of managing a studio space. On the plus side, they serve as an independent creative space separate from home life and as excellent locations to host events. The drawbacks are cost, of course, maintenance, and the churn of less-than-stable sub-tenancies.  

My sister had to give up her cherished studio in the move, but luckily, it looks like it will remain in the friend group and continue to serve some of the many up-and-coming artists around the city who are looking for affordable spaces to practice their craft. 

Speaking of which, today we have a profile on another studio manager and entrepreneur who’s been able to create a thriving business and arts hub in False Creek Flats. 

Let’s dive in!

— Nate Lewis, Vancity Lookout

As always, you can send your tips, leads, and story ideas to Nate at [email protected].

PS - If you find this newsletter valuable, please consider forwarding it to your friends. New to the Lookout? Sign-up for free. 

WEATHER

Friday: 16 🌡️ 14 | 🌧️

Saturday: 19 🌡️ 13 | ☁️

Sunday: 19 🌡️ 14 | ☁️

Monday: 18 🌡️ 14 | 🌤️

PROFILE

Inside the homegrown fabrication shop that’s grown beyond its theatre company roots, while remaining a staunch arts supporter

The Great Northern Way Scene Shop is a huge space, full of machines, lifts, and tools. It’s also bustling with activity, with people working on various projects spread out across different rooms. 

It’s just a taste of everything that CEO and project director Elia Kirby has on the go. Kirby has 35-40 builders working in the shop doing custom fabrication for various non-profit, commercial, and government clients.

“We’re basically professional prototypers… facilitating someone else’s ideas,” Kirby explained.

Founded in 2003, the scene shop was affiliated with UBC’s theatre department, growing and expanding based on a need for smaller theatre productions and the non-profit arts community to have somewhere to fabricate their sets and installations.

“I find the stuff that is most interesting is the community-based work,” like East Van Panto at the Cultch, Kirby said. “That's the stuff that makes me feel really proud,” he added.

In 2012, the scene shop left its original location near what is now the Emily Carr campus in False Creek Flats. They eventually moved across the train tracks to the current location at 281 Industrial Avenue – a former warehouse that’s owned by the city.

Sharing the warehouse alongside the scene shop, Kirby and co-founder Marietta Kozak created the Arts Factory Society, where Kirby, adding to his full plate, is the general manager.

The Arts Factory is a mixed-use arts facility with workshops, studios, and common spaces for emerging and established artists. Vancity Lookout got to visit the Arts Factory portion of the building last November as part of our coverage of the Eastside Culture Crawl.   

Industrial space in Vancouver, whether it’s used by artists, fabricators, or start-ups, is scarce, and also reduces access to industrial services for people in the city. For Kirby, that means there’s a general need to preserve these spaces, often old industrial buildings, where “you can get paint on the walls, you can be dusty, you can do something that’s different.” 

“I think the city does have a responsibility to maintain those spaces and encourage that type of activity,” Kirby said. Just last month, city council unanimously passed a motion for staff to look at allowing mixed-use zoning, including housing, at some “exceptional” industrial sites, including the entire Mount Pleasant industrial area, which sits a few blocks away from the Arts Factory.

Eastside Arts Society executive director Esther Rausenberg told Vancity Lookout late last year that Vancouver has lost about 550,000 square feet of studio space since 2009.

Rausenberg also noticed that the remaining studios have continually gotten smaller. “What's really important for artists is to have that freedom to be able to think and create on a large scale. We're seeing less and less of that and I think that's to the detriment of the art form and the various mediums that visual artists are working in,” she explained. 

“Some people want to make things… we’re not all going to be nurses, lawyers, and doctors,” Kirby said. 

Big clients pay the bills

The client base for Kirby’s scene shop has now expanded far beyond the non-profit community. These days, they work with major cultural institutions in the city like Bard on the Beach, the Vancouver Art Gallery, Arts Umbrella, Ballet BC, and Vancouver Civic Theatres. 

They also work with huge brands like Lululemon, Herschel, and Aritzia, and with developers incorporating public art into their projects. It’s contracts with these commercial clients that pay the bills, allowing Kirby to offer discounted rates to non-profit artists and clients. 

The other piece of the business model for the scene shop and artist space is that the city rents the building to them at below market rates. 

Kirby gave credit to the city for recognizing the work they’re doing, and the need to provide space for arts production and fabrication when the scene shop’s original location was threatened in the early 2010s. 

However, they are still paying “a shit ton of money,” Kirby said, and are currently negotiating a new 10-year lease with the city. The city’s real estate department — which is mandated to create revenue for the city — wanted to raise rent by as much as 110 per cent Kirby said. However, they settled on a much more reasonable 30 per cent increase, in line with what other tenants in city-owned buildings are paying. 

That increase will still factor into their ability to support the not-for-profit arts spaces and clients, Kirby said. 

“We have to start thinking about other forms of capital, and how are we valuing that? There's social capital, there's cultural capital, there's community capital. But at the end of the day, we're letting financial capital determine so many of the values that we are placing on things in our daily lives,” Kirby said of the way the city approaches managing its assets. 

Trans Am controversy signals shift to less challenging public art 

The scene shop also works closely with the city’s cultural services department, installing and maintaining many public art pieces. Kirby’s team was preparing to install the Trans Am Rapture sculpture at the south end of the Granville Bridge, until the project was unexpectedly cancelled by the City Manager’s Office. 

The move came during a time of transition in the department, a week after former city manager Paul Mochrie “mutually agreed” with Mayor Ken Sim to leave the role. 

A local resident had been opposing the installation by way of a petition and media interviews, calling the piece “edgy and really not friendly”. In the days before it was cancelled, the city told CBC that there isn’t usually public consultation about individual public art installations. 

A new petition supporting the choice of the Granville site, launched just after the announcement, gained about 800 signatures while the original petition in opposition had around 250 signees. 

Reflecting on the reversal, Kirby feels that the decision sets a bad precedent for residents to disagree with future decisions around public art in the city. 

“It’s not part of the process because you're not going to get everybody agreeing. [If you did] you're just gonna end up with beige art,” Kirby said. The decision to cancel the Trans Am installation “means that we're going to have less and less art that’s challenging,” Kirby added, because city staff will be less likely to propose a project that could get pushback. 

“[Staff] are then going to choose an innocuous piece of art versus something that is maybe more challenging,” Kirby explained, based on his experience working with staff in the city’s cultural department.

“Art is not a democratic process. It's an individual expressing themselves, and we all have the right to not like something and to disapprove of it, but that's not what art is there for. Art is not there to please us,” Kirby said. 

Kirby’s team has installed other public art pieces that have elicited controversy and strong feelings — like the Golden Tree at Cambie and Southwest Marine Drive and the Spinning Chandelier under the north side of the Granville Street Bridge. 

“They didn't remove just because people disagreed… the conversation around it, I think, was brilliant,” Kirby said of the chandelier. 

THE VANCOUVER NUMBER

50 mm

Get out your raincoats and umbrellas; that’s how much rain is in the forecast for today, according to meteorologists with Environment Canada. Read more. [Vancouver is Awesome]

THE AGENDA

🏠 Marpole, Hastings-Sunrise and Renfrew-Collingwood have the most affordable rents for an unfurnished, one-bedroom rental in Vancouver, according to a new report by liv.rent. Read more. [North Shore News]

⚽ Thomas Müller is expected to make his debut with the Vancouver Whitecaps this Sunday in a sold-out game at BC Place against the Houston Dynamo. Read more. [ESPN]

🌳 Wondering what those roadside planters popping up around town are? New tree pits are being installed on some streets with gravel shoulders as part of the city’s effort to increase the shade canopy. The tree pits are intended to have “enough soil to support tree roots over many decades of growth.” The pits are being installed this summer and the trees will be planted this fall. Learn more. [COV]

💰 Mayor Ken Sim says that when council resumes in September, he will push for details to be released about severance that may have been paid to former City Manager Paul Mochrie. The information was withheld in a Freedom of Information request submitted to the City by Postmedia. Read more. [Vancouver Sun]

🚑 Vancouver Coastal Health and Fraser Health are changing the way healthcare workers book overtime shifts at hospitals in the Lower Mainland. In response, hospital staff are raising concerns about the levels of patient safety and staff well-being, particularly in emergency departments and ICUs. Read more. [CTV]

WEEKEND EVENT GUIDE

Cory Weeds Plays Sonny Rollins | VIFF Centre, 1181 Seymour Street, Vancouver, BC Canada, V6B 3M7 | September 7, 7 pm | Local sax legend Cory Weeds pays tribute to Sonny Rollins' iconic album The Sound Of Sonny, followed by a screening of the acclaimed documentary Saxophone Collosus. | Learn more [Sponsored]

WNBA Canada Game | Rogers Arena, 800 Griffiths Way, Vancouver | Aug. 15 at 7 pm | Atlanta Dream vs. Seattle Storm in first Canadian regular season game | Tickets $35+

GranVino Wine Walk | South Granville, Vancouver | Aug. 16 at 11 am | Wine walk with 20+ stops, tastings, promotions, and local experiences | Tickets $75+

Water Lantern Festival | Town Centre Park, 1299 Pinetree Wy, Coquitlam | Aug. 16 at 5:30 pm | Lantern launch with food trucks, live music, and family activities | $42.99–$67.99

Superflux Fifth Birthday | Superflux Beer Company, 505 Clark Dr., Vancouver | Aug. 16 at 2 pm | Live DJs, new beer releases, wine, and food vendors | Free

Richmond Garlic Fest | Sharing Farm, 2771 Westminster Hwy, Richmond | Aug. 16 at 10 am | Garlic-themed festival with food, music, workshops, and family activities | Free

A History of Motown | Firehall Arts Centre | Until Aug. 17 | Krystle Dos Santos performs hits from the Motown era | Tickets $40+

Monsoon Festival of Performing Arts 2025 | Various venues across Vancouver & Surrey | Until Aug. 17 | South Asian theatre, dance, workshops, comedy, and photo exhibits | Tickets

The Man In Black: Tribute To Johnny Cash | Commodore Ballroom, 868 Granville St., Vancouver | Aug. 17 at 7 pm | Shawn Barker tribute show covering Johnny Cash’s life and music | Tickets $60+

The Tumbling Paddies | 80 Pacific Boulevard | Aug. 17, 4 pm | A fun-filled event celebrating all things Irish | Tickets $52

East Van Cider Fest | The Wise Hall | Aug. 21, 7 pm | Over 25 cideries and ready-to-drink cocktail producers under one roof | Tickets $30

Burnaby Lake Run 2025 | Burnaby Lake Regional Park | Aug. 25, 7 am | Go for a run and raise money for the Burnaby Hospital Foundation | Entry is $39

RIOT Vancouver Sketch Comedy | Hero's Welcome - 3917 Main St. | Sept. 7, 8 pm | Sketch comedy exploiting local issues, opinions and personalities | Tickets $8/$10

Submit your event and it could appear here and reach 40,000+ Ottawa locals.

THIS WEEK’S STORIES

PHOTO OF THE DAY

Kulinarya on the Drive offers a delicious Filipino feast for a very reasonable price, considering how much food you get. On top of the amazing food and service, the dining experience itself is very unique for Vancouver – gourmet grazing by hand with the table as your plate! A must-try for adventurous eaters.

COMMUNITY HIGHLIGHTS

• The PNE is opening up this weekend, and the food vendors are all Canadian. [Vancouver Sun]

• ‘Guerrilla gardeners’ are transforming Vancouver streets by spreading native wildflower seeds. [CTV]

• There’s a big warehouse sale this weekend. [Vancouver is Awesome]

• The Cobalt has reopened with plans to revive Vancouver’s underground punk scene, despite looming redevelopment of its Main St. location. [Georgia Straight]

• SFU is planning to open its first art museum in Burnaby this fall. [SFU]

VANCOUVER GUESSER

Well done to all of you who put together that Robson Square will be squarely within the 2km brand exclusion zone around BC Place next summer for the FIFA World Cup. 

For this week’s Guesser, can you tell me what neighbourhood this park entrance is in?