The first resource access point art installation took place on March 30th, 2025 at Interurban Gallery in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It was a pop-up designed for the street community with atmospheric, psychoaesthetic upliftment in mind, with free food, water, indoor resting, and staffed by harm reductionists trained in overdose response. There were texts related to Mad Pride available for reading. In keeping with our mission to provide peace from the hustle and bustle outside, we initially set up in the gallery’s quiet back room, away from the exposed wrap around windows of the front. The guests who visited during this time had a mixture of responses, ranging from calm, to uplifted and creative (two people visiting at separate times expressed the desire to get back into singing), to bashfully generous (two people visiting at separate times both bolted out saying they wanted to bring people to the experience and did not return, for reasons unknown.) One of the highlights of the day was having award-winning zither player Vian Diep perform, which was received with delight and curiosity by drop-in guests. When we moved the installation to the front room (a spontaneous decision, we wanted the food to all get eaten before going bad) the visibility brought more people in, somewhat at the expense of the intimate, sanctuary quality that earlier guests had experienced, but we were able to feed more people. We estimate approximately 40-50 guests visited the installation / accessed our service in total throughout the day. One guest accessed the altar space and wrote a tribute for a lost loved one. (Tributes were written on “plantable” paper imbued with wild flower seeds, remaining on the altar until planted, post-event, by SSF staff). We acknowledge the gracious support of all our volunteers without whom this would not have been possible, as well as the Vancouver Status of Women for funding support.
Photos by Zakary Mohamad, Marcie Good and Miki Aurora (see descriptions)