Media Advisory
May 14, 2015
“What is the Future of Public Housing?” Asks Multimedia Art Exhibition and Event Series
Series of events to bring together leaders and researchers in public housing
Vancouver – From Thursday May 21 to Saturday May 23, the Housing for All: Multimedia Art Exhibition at the Interurban Gallery, 1 East Hastings Street, Vancouver, will engage visitors in dialogue about public housing, and citizen involvement, past, present and future. The opening reception will be on Wednesday May 20th, from 7:15-9:30pm, with a keynote by Peter Marcuse, Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning, Columbia University, New York City, followed by a panel discussion.
Curated by Aaron Lao, for the Future of Public Housing Project, in collaboration with David Vaisbord, the exhibition will feature a collection of works from: David Vaisbord and the Little Mountain Project, the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture Little Mountain Studio Course, the Carnegie Community Action Project, the Future of Public Housing Project, Patti Fraser and Corin Browne’s Housing Matters Media Project: Young Artists Explore the Housing Crisis and The 19th Birthday Party, and Habitat for Humanity-Tajikistan, and Wilson Mendes & the SRO Collaborative.
This exhibition works to bridge the gap between academic research on affordable housing and community-based solutions, through a diverse selection of film, images, installation pieces, community projects, posters, and interactive elements.
The Future of Public Housing project, an initiative led by Dr. Penny Gurstein of UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), seeks to address the gap in knowledge on public housing by focusing on an international, multidisciplinary and comparative investigation of the history, current situation and possible futures for public housing, asking the questions:
• What is the future for public housing in an era of neo-liberal reform?
• What role did public housing play historically in the shaping of communities and in defining the rights and responsibilities between the state and its citizens and what role should it now be playing?
• What policies and strategies can be introduced that will ensure that all of a state’s citizens are adequately housed?
The exhibition runs as part of Housing for All: a Series of Events on the Future of Public Housing, co-sponsored by the Housing Justice Project and the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies. Housing for All: a Series of Events on the Future of Public Housing includes an academic workshop at UBC which brings together top housing researchers from around the world, as well as Futures for Public Housing: A Dialogue with International and Local Housing Stakeholders, which happens Friday May 22nd, 1:00pm-5:00pm at the Dodson Conference Centre.
For more details about the schedule of events, visit http://www.futureofpublichousing.ca.
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Media Contact:
Kathryn Lennon
604-616-0662
futureofpublichousing@gmail.com