April’s Man of the Month was:
Irwin Oostindie
Here’s a little bit about him:
Irwin is the Executive Director of W2, helping build Canada’s first crossmedia centre opening at the Woodward’s redevelopment in September 2010. A cultural change maker and parent living in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side (DTES), Irwin has 25 years experience leading local and international media, culture and social justice projects. He has founded community radio, TV, print, web, festival, and space projects, including the Annual Under the Volcano Festival.
W2 Event - Abandon Normal Devices - COMPETE: Faster, Higher, Strongerphoto by Jason Levis
He was Communications Coordinator for the Roundhouse Community Centre, Executive Director/President of the North Vancouver Community Arts Council, Co-Coordinator of Mayworks Festival, and has produced more than 500 events in BC.
In recent years he has worked in Vancouver’s inner-city as Executive Director of Gallery Gachet, an artist-run centre providing cultural services for artists with mental health, sexual abuse, and trauma survivor issues. Irwin worked for the City of Vancouver as Senior DTES Community Organizer working for the Office of the City Manager, and consulted for the three levels of government helping prepare a DTES Arts & Culture Strategic Framework and Investment Plan promoting economic revitalization for the inner-city through investments in cultural industries.
Irwin received an Honour’s Post-Graduate Certificate in Media Arts from Capilano University. In May 2009, Irwin was nominated for a POPVOX Visionary Leadership Award.
And here’s how he answered my 6 questions about creativity:
What does it mean to you to be creative?
For BC artists, the short answer is living in poverty. Being creative can be schooled, can be trained, but I suspect creativity is more a form that needs to be released. A desire to express and reflect form, ritual and ideas into the commons. To see the way water flows, to see what is revealed in the forest at dusk. Creativity is about codesigning with the world around us.
What inspires your creativity?
I have had the privilege of being around inspiring individuals and mentors – free thinkers and progressives who are fighting the dark side. It is these people who have throughout my life been there and I have learned about the markers, the fences, the open spaces.
What keeps you moving forward in making things happen?
Perseverance is definitely something I am known for amongst my peers and for me it’s the difference between ideas and delivery. I rely on deep feelings and memories of witnessing other people work to at manifesting, expressing, and defending their rights.
People’s actions are often fundamentally creative when overcoming overwhelming odds faced in their daily experience. As a white male, I could be fuelled by guilt or embarrassment, or frozen by the inequity in our society—$6 Billion for the Games, and BC is still #1 in Canada with the highest child poverty rates—or the national public health crisis in my neighbourhood—but I prefer to stay focused and connected with people who are committed to making change. Standing side by side with people who witness or experience these oppressions around us and chose to do something about it—in their own defense or in the defense of their allies.
I see Artists as having a fundamental obligation to express and reflect upon the world around us. I am encouraged by the wealth of engagement artists forge in the world. Its a deep pool of cultural survival that artists manifest and keep me inspired to make things happen. Look at what Awaken 100 does inspired by Louis Riel’s direction: “My people will sleep for 100 years, but when they awake, it will be the artists who bring back our culture.” This is energy that can cut through the distractions of consumer and market-based culture.
What’s the wildest journey your venturesome spirit has taken you on?
Twenty years ago I worked as a photojournalist with solidarity campaigns and traveled quite a lot. These were the most intense experiences in my life as I witnessed brutality and hardship. In 1988 photographing Sandinista troops fighting Contra forces at the border with Honduras, in 1989 wrestling to keep my camera in martial law Beijing, in 1990 meeting with a student army inside Burma, and photographing both sides of the DMZ in Korea.
Many of these tipped the scale, and introduced me to people putting their lives on the line against injustice. Through the 1990s I coordinated a human rights project creating linkages between young Canadians and movements in East Asia, so lots of journeys. Coming back to Vancouver, I started the Under the Volcano Festival (now 20 year old) and as a community effort it was a journey. I learned that I enjoy fusing cross-cultural negotiation and community arts practice, and have been able to do that involving the Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations – whose unceded land I was born on.
What’s the boldest, most provocative statement you are willing to make about yourself, your business or the industry that you are in?
Critiquing the arts cuts from the provincial government needs to be part of a sustained movement of working artists fighting for their collective interests, and for a healthy society. We are best served by building a movement of artists that cuts across disciplines.
The arts cuts are a sideshow to the more egregious move away from public subsidy of cultural production as governments slide towards market-based determinants for arts funding. Yes, progressive artists and arts administrators need to fight the cuts, but we also have to strengthen relationships to communities for long-term sustainability or we face complete marginalization.
What’s next for you?
Right now our organization, W2, is operating the 31,000 sq ft W2 Storyeum space at 151 West Cordova as a festival and conference venue. This fall, W2 is opening a 8,800 sq ft community media arts centre at Woodward’s.
There we are building a cafe, community FM radio station, cable TV station, fibre optic streaming web channels, printing press, media labs, performance space, open web, mobile and networked culture projects. W2 is all about breaking the digital divide, creating a platform for cross-cultural dialogue and redress, and using creative technology for social inclusion. Lots of room to create community in all that.
And here’s something that inspires his creativity:
The Rock - my favourite place as a kid growing up in North Vancouver.
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Thank you Irwin! Your perseverance is an inspiration!
