Supporting the W2 Media Lab at Woodwards
June 9th, 2009
The W2 Media Lab was one of the community features and non-profits included in the redesigned and rethought use of the Woodwards land and buildings in Vancouver’s Inner-city. I’m not the most political person, but I try to help people when I can so I’m dusting off Muskblog to help get the word out about what is happening between W2, Westbank, and the city.
Building Opportunities with Business, BOB to our friends and not-so friends, is one of the groups supporting W2. We gave them a grant to write their original business plan, which you’d know if you watched the informational video produced by Projections/Intersections our neighbor on Main Street.
This is a busy week for BOB and myself, we’ve got Andrea Reimer and a bunch of other green business leaders and local keener greeners meeting at the Japanese Language School in what is left of Vancouver’s Japan Town. We also are bringing inspirational humorist, David Roche to the Carnegie Centre with the help of Potluck and Carnegie staff on June 10th for free.
I seem to be the only person left on my team as one staff member is on vacation in New Mexico and another got into an auto accident on the weekend and is decidedly unwell. So I’m blogging late at night to encourage people to check out CreativeTechnology.org, Fearless City, the Georgia Straight, and lend some support to W2 if you can.
You can leave comment below, but the W2 came and went, it seems like a lot of effort was expended for no lasting legacy. I haven’t been to Woodward’s in a long time myself.
This entry was originaly posted on , it was last edited on and is filed under: Rambles and tagged: DTES, Vancouver, W2.
W2 Community Media Arts Centre and the business plan I helped write was deemed the best of the proposals for the 1000 Square Feet of retail space at grade to be leased to a Non-profit.
There were a few “subject to’s” and the City Council could still vote otherwise, but that is unlikely. The official announcement can be found at this URL:
http://vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/20090910/documents/csbu4.pdf
Despite me and over a dozen others including the SFU Student Society leadership speaking in support, City Council has chosen the safe course for them and is making the W2 Media Lab compete for space they had previously been promised including the ground floor social-enterprise cafe they envisioned and included as a revenue stream in their business plan. I may do some digital kung fu and get video of my first ever speech in front of Council available on YouTube or something, but with Mark Townsend and other parts of his budding DTES empire as the only voice(s) against W2 in council, new battle lines may have been drawn and further balkanization of the DTES non-profit community appears to be the end result of Council’s ruling.
More from the Georgia Straight.