Short Form Online Video/ project concept

Connective tissue

A series of short videos about communities in urban settings and the people who create them.

As the editor of a community newspaper in Vancouver, a large focus of my job has been giving voice to individuals and groups brought together by circumstance, shared goals, collective concerns or common interests. Nowhere was this more evident than a few years ago when the paper embarked on a sprawling 15-month feature series documenting the neighbourhoods of Vancouver. Although each feature covered the history, geography, demographics and "livability" of each neighbourhood, it was always the people in the community, and the communities that formed within each neighbourhood, that anchored these stories.

My goal with this video project is to cast a wider net, beyond Vancouver (although it would feature prominently), and explore some of the more creative and surprising communities people have formed in urban settings in an attempt to connect with one another.

I'd like to make one to two videos a month, each based on a different community, and begin by generating ideas and examples in an open forum such as this where community members can contribute and interact with one another by sharing their own thoughts, words and images.

Possible communities/video topics:

Guerrilla park creators
Urban hunters and foragers

Co-housing residents

DIY motor cycle garage collective
Letter writing clubs

Young lawn bowlers

Live Action Role Players

Yarn bombers

Facial hair clubs

Instameets

Indigenous hip hop communities

Dad bands

Female coders

...to name a few.

Building on previous work...

In many ways the project would build on what I've been writing and making videos about for years, people like guerilla city park creator Julien Thomas, who took it upon himself to create Vancouver's smallest park in the middle of his street. It has since become a neighbourhood hangout and meeting place for work parties, coffee klatches and community get-togethers.

George Rahi and Julien Thomas (left) enjoy a cup of coffee on a traffic calming circle at St. George and 10th Avenue. Thomas turned the unappreciated traffic circle into Vancouver's smallest park, which has become a hub for work parties, coffee klatches and neighbourhood gatherings.

Recently I made a short video on Vancouverites such as Danielle Eastveld who've decided to live in RVs and campers to save money and avoid paying Vancouver's skyrocketing rent. The growing community of "live-aboards" not only reside on Vancouver streets. Areas such as False Creek have become home to more and more unregistered boats and floating homes that anchor offshore to avoid moorage fees of marinas.

Others, such as Gord Hocking, have opted for live-aboard life while they wait for more permanent, social housing.

Lack of space has also led many in Vancouver's motorcycle and scooter community to find creative ways to share knowledge, tools and a communal garage. Inspired by similar models in Portland, Los Angeles and other American cities, the Vancouver Motorcycle Collective is a DIY garage where members can rent space, take maintenance courses, access tools and learn from one another. The largest growing demographic of members? Young women, such as Tori Tucker, who now manages the collective's garage space.

One of the more unusual and inspiring communities I've had the chance to write about was the surprising and utterly charming relationship between Joyce Wong and East Vancouver's skateboard community. Over the course of many years collecting empties in the neighbourhood, the elderly Chinese woman and her husband have formed an unlikely friendship with the skateboarders, who threw a 75th birthday party for Joyce at the local skate park. For the event, they even made T-shirts with Joyce's face on them and painted a logo on one of the skate park's bowls that reads "Joyce 75 years strong."

Community can also take root and flourish in unexpected "businesses." The East Vancouver Free Store is exactly what it says: a store where everything is free and no money exchanges hands.

Sources of inspiration and research:

Community newspapers, urban weeklies, online message boards, Facebook groups and scouring the recesses of the internet from Instagram to Reddit and everything in between.