Outside the Shoppers Drug Mart on Fraser Street at East 47th, passersby pause to ask why the bright mosaic underfoot is being tampered with. An elderly Asian-Canadian woman with goldcapped teeth stops to watch the work of those kneeling around the design that includes Baha'i, Muslim and Hindu symbols to reflect the multiple faiths practiced in the community. Later, a young Asian-Canadian man stops to see what's going on. Volunteers explain that a constant drip from the shop awning has damaged the mosaic, forcing its removal.
It's clear no one wants to see the community-developed creation, which is bordered with the word "peace" in multiple languages, disappear.
South Hill, an area centered on Fraser from 41st to 51st avenues, is undergoing a vibrant transformation. In the mid 1990s, parking lots in the commercial area were regular dumping grounds for old furniture and garbage. And though the community's main street was alive with a mix of languages, the surfaces of the area barely reflected its rich diversity. Tapping into the community's creative side is changing all that.
Community vision planning initiated by the city for the broader Sunset community in the late 1990s galvanized local organizers who started working with local businesses to strengthen their slice of the city. Now, South Hill beckons with mosaics, the brightly patterned façade of its library, a hot pink and black zebra-striped lane and massive black-andwhite photographs of community members enlivening alleys.
The stories of some of those depicted in the intimate portraits will be shared Nov. 3 at the central library downtown with a project called INSIDE STORIES, led by award-winning documentary filmmaker Nettie Wild (A Place Called Chiapas, FIX: The Story of an Addicted City).
South Hill has used public art to connect its diverse population in the Sunset community where, according to the 2006 Census, 26.1 per cent spoke Punjabi as their first language, 24.9 per cent spoke English and 21.3 per cent spoke Chinese, with smatterings of Tagalog and Vietnamese.
Community organizer Susan Faehndrich-Findlay has seen, first with community-based and now with grander public art projects, how creative collaboration weaves connections. "[Public] art gets people talking," she says. "Whether they like it or not, at least they're going to interact with each other, and that builds social capital if people start talking to their neighbours in the street."
Those connections proved valuable Sept. 26 when afternoon gunfire and swarms of police shut down East 46th Avenue at Fraser. Children who would have returned home from school to meet police barricades were met instead by an invitation to a neighbour's home and dinner.
T rash was one of the first problems the community tackled. Residents beautified the stretch of cement parking lots with plants. Litter remains a problem but the amount of dumped garbage has decreased.
In 2002, residents launched the multicultural South Hill Festival in the lots between 43rd and 49th avenues. In 2009, the annual festival attracted 10,000 people to Fraser Street.
The 2011 festival also hummed with life. Kids scaled a climbing wall and rode ponies, teens sang on one stage while a duo covered hits in the food fair, and women dressed in white, turquoise and purple skirts belly danced on the main stage.
Canning evenings and weaving projects-even providing a bowl of wool and needles at the South Hill Festival-have seen neighbours of all ages and ethnic backgrounds working side by side. Their creations now hang in the local library and around the neighbourhood.
The South Hill business association initiated a 10year art plan for the community in 2009 that was led by Barbara Cole, an artist and public art consultant who typically works with larger institutions that include Langara College, the Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»Public Library and the city. "They instigated something very powerful," Faehndrich-Findlay says. "And yet I think they did it without really realizing what they were doing."
In a tale that unfolds like the others with still images and audio, Nasrin Jamalzadah describes the depression she felt as a newcomer to Canada and how she had to hide her daughter's progressive upbringing from her Afghan-Canadian friends (her daughter is Mozdah Jamalzadah, the "Oprah of Afghanistan").
Business owner Stephen Tam says most of his friends in Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»for nearly 30 years were Cantonese speakers, but starting the business association helped him make friends outside of this language community. "We started the BIA four years ago. I wish we had done it years earlier," Tam says.
Jinder Johal, the now grown Indian girl pictured with her brother, expresses regret for losing a sense of connection to her Indian culture. She recalls how her father immigrated to Canada when she was a baby in India and how she met him for the first time when she was eight. Her father turned out to be an authoritative alcoholic, but he introduced her to the local library and books became her salvation, providing comfort she didn't receive at home. Now 52, Johal heads the South Hill Library and assures newcomers that books can help them, too.
She's pleased area children can now see images that reflect their ethnic backgrounds on the street. "It seems important for your identity to feel good about the culture that you're a part of," Johal says. "We want to see images of ourselves, like everybody, whoever they are."
INSIDE STORIES, produced by South Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»Neighbourhood House, grew from an earlier project that provided leadership training to the young and old. The community wanted to celebrate its mini United Nations with a documentary by Wild but lacked adequate funds, so Wild proposed a digital storytelling project. She enlisted local web designer Jeremy Mendes who brought in his sister, photographer Shannon Mendes.
The murals have already caught the attention of JR, a French artist and 2011 winner of the $100,000 TED Prize, who recently had an exhibit of large-scale photographic portraits called "Inside Out" at the Pompidou Centre in Paris.
His work served as inspiration for the South Hill murals and the accomplished artist, in turn, wants to work with INSIDE STORIES. "JR believes the street is the largest art gallery in the world," Faehndrich-Findlay says.
Erwin Cornelsen, the 92-year-old Santa-like man pictured in a South Hill lane, has seen his Sunset neighbourhood change since his 1956 arrival in Canada with his family.
The retired Mennonite pastor recalls a stranger chastising him for speaking German to a friend on the bus when he first arrived in Vancouver. "Someone behind us said, 'Don't you know what country you're in? There's English spoken,'" he mimics in an angry voice. "Sounds a little different now. Travel on Main Street bus, there's hardly any English."
This isn't to say those who converse in languages other than English no longer receive negative comments or dirty looks. But perhaps South Hill, an ever-evolving community where immigrants have put down roots 100 years, is setting a constructive example. Wild thinks so.
"What this neighbourhood has taught me is that when a neighbourhood works with people coming from all over the planet, it's when the neighbourhood changes up because of the people who come to it, rather than expecting everybody to fit in to some homogenized little mold," she says.
T he Nov. 3 INSIDE STORIES screening and forum entitled Art + Community=Social Change? starts at 7 p.m. in the Alice MacKay Room of the central library, 350 West Georgia St. Admission is free. Reserve a seat at insidestories.eventbrite.com.
