An influential media arts centre in Vancouver may have to shut down after five decades in the community, unless it can raise C$50,000 ($35,800) by the end of the year. In an announcement late last month the Vivo Media Arts Centre, an artist-run centre and video distribution library, pleaded for urgent support.
“We are facing a rent affordability crisis that threatens our ability to serve artists and the community at the level we have sustained for five decades,” the announcement reads in part. “The city of Vancouver has increased our rent by 30% and imposed annual hikes that far outpace our funding sources.”
According to the announcement, that 30% increase represents all of the operating revenue Vivo received from the city, leaving the centre with nothing to support staff or programming.
“This crisis is not only about rent, it is about protecting jobs for local artists, safeguarding cultural infrastructure and ensuring Vancouver does not lose one of its longest-standing artist-run centres,” Vivo’s manager Carla Ritchie tells The Art Newspaper. “Without intervention, the impact will ripple across the city’s cultural sector, affecting thousands of artists, organisations and students who rely on Vivo to ensure art-making is affordable and accessible, as well as community members and organisations who depend on Vivo’s resources, mentorship and archival access.”
The arts centre’s funding drive has as of this writing raised almost C$9,500 ($6,800). According to Ritchie, the funding being sought will help finance operations and staff costs for the rest of this year and the first few months of 2026. The centre’s fiscal year starts in January, when funding will be replenished.
Vivo was founded in 1973 by a group of artists who met at the Matrix Video Conference at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Its initial purpose was to promote the non-commercial use of video technology through a public video library. Its mission grew to provide equipment rentals, artist workshops and public information about media arts. The space later became the Video Inn, serving as a resource and informal hangout for artists.
Over the years Vivo has hosted artists and curators including Paul Wong, Abbas Akhavan (who will represent Canada at next year’s Venice Biennale) and Hank Bull. It organises events, exhibitions, artist and curatorial residencies, and media workshops and has hosted festivals such as the Vancouver New Music Festival and a performance art biennial. It is also home to the Crista Dahl Media Library and Archive, one of Canada’s most important collections of video by artists and independent producers. With more than 5,000 video titles, an extensive print materials collection and photo archive, many see the centre as a vital civic and artistic resource. Video collections safeguarded in Vivo’s archive include the Women’s Labour History Project, the First Nations Access Program and Vancouver Status of Women.
Wong, a multidisciplinary artist who worked on the centre’s first video library in the 1970s, is one of many artists alarmed at the threat to Vivo’s future. The centre “was my work and life and community—it still is. It was the incubator for so many artists and video-makers in Vancouver, across Canada and internationally. It is an extraordinary organisation still at the forefront of innovative and experimental and non-commercial exploration of digital art and storytelling forms.”
Pete Fry, a Vancouver city councillor who serves as the council liaison on the city’s Council Arts and Culture Advisory Committee, tells The Art Newspaper he is “not convinced” that municipal authorities will help solve Vivo’s real estate woes.
“Vivo is a wonderful, living example of artist-run excellence, and sadly is falling victim to the pressures of runaway land speculation, gentrification and an indifferent political environment,” Fry says. “Where the centre once had reasonable hopes for a yet-unrealised developer-contributed space, instead they are struggling to keep up with commercial rents in a municipally-owned interim space. Today, ‘highest and best use’ is the mantra for the city’s real estate department, and the feckless council majority I am on the outside of are pushing for an election year austerity budget.”
