Glo Says Let's Talk Local, Vancouver

Mural, Mural on the Wall, Who’s the Fairest of Them All?

November 15, 2021 Season 5 Episode 6
Glo Says Let's Talk Local, Vancouver
Mural, Mural on the Wall, Who’s the Fairest of Them All?
Show Notes

In today’s episode of ‘Glo Says Let's Talk Local’ podcast - Season 5 - What ART thou? Where ART thou? (A weekly Business, Entrepreneur and Arts Podcast) host Gloria Chong and her co-host Kristin Lim talk to guest - Adrian Sinclair (Director of Engagement and Co-founder of the Vancouver Mural Festival). Adrian shares everything about Vancouver Mural Festival including how it all started, the goals and how it supports Vancouver's many artists.

Episode Highlights

  • 2:28 – Gloria asks Adrian, how it all started. She further asks, “Do you have to call everything a mural because you're a Co-founder of the Mural Festival?”
  • 3:52 – Adrian says that the festival is really about creating a much more open, accessible and a public art event.
  • 4:44 - Adrian highlights that their background was doing events with transformation projects; they do large scale events for social & community benefit-based organizations.
  • 8:41 – A lot of the money that came in early for the Mural Fest was through engineering and not through public art, states Adrian.
  • 10:00 - They spent a year working like a lot more than full time to get the first year off the ground, says Adrian.
  • 11:23 – Drew was both a Convener and practicing artist. He created events for their artists to show work. 
  • 14:14 – Kristin inquires, now that the Mural Festival is fairly established if there is an application process or how does that whole art selection process work.
  • 16:06 – Their mission is to create visibility for communities that did not have the chance to participate.
  • 18:55 – Gloria states that they are providing all the pillars that an artist needs.
  • 23:45 – Artists are amazing at creating story and mural is about accessing a public that didn't pay to be there and didn't decide to be there.
  • 27:23 – We tried to honour lots of Graffiti Artists in the first year, says Adrian.

Key Points

  1. Adrian says that their goal is to develop curatorial as well as artistic capacity in Vancouver, so they can measure their success on how many curators will be given either their first or biggest opportunity that they've gotten.
  2. It's been amazing to watch once artists have murals-up how much work they get.
  3. The actual reason why they're doing all this work is to basically create a society or to influence everyone as a society that deeply values art and culture. 

Show Quotes

  • “We have to like hustle for every dollar to pay ourselves and do the actual work” Adrian Sinclair  
  • “We've always heard the statistic like most artists’ per capita, and all this sort of stuff is true.” Adrian Sinclair
  • “Everyone gets paid right from the beginning and we really pride ourselves”. Adrian Sinclair
  • “We have a ton of artists who are almost annoyed at us how much work they get now” Adrian Sinclair
  • “You've devoted a lot to art and the support of art and the future of art.” – Gloria Chong

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