The Beaumont Studios launch crowdfunding campaign to try to stay open
Longtime space for 100-plus artists and gallery announces it’s in “serious immediate danger” of shutting its doors
THE BEAUMONT STUDIOS facility has announced it faces closing its doors and needs urgent community support.
The Vancouver creative hub blames soaring real estate costs and the financial impacts of the pandemic, tracing its financial difficulties back to 2019. Its rent and property tax obligations have increased by 20 percent over three years—leading to the “serious immediate danger” of closure.
Opened in 2004, the West Side’s Beaumont Studios (at 316 West 5th Avenue) join a larger landscape of disappearing artist spaces, in a city that has lost about 150 such buildings in the past decade—many of them before the pandemic. A 2019 Eastside Culture Crawl Society study documented the loss of 400,000 square feet of studio spaces over the previous 10 years, due to residential or commercial conversions and redevelopment. It found 152 were lost or converted for other uses over the decade in the Eastside Arts District.
A working space for more than 100 full-time professional artists, Beaumont Studios also houses a gallery and hosts events that bring in the community—from 5X Pride parties to popup shops and full-building Halloween installations put on by resident artists.
Today, it’s launching a crowdfunding campaign as part of a larger fundraising strategy. The GoFundMe campaign is aimed at stabilizing the studios’ financial situation.
Longer-term planning includes a call for partnerships with local donors, contributors, sponsors, and developers, and engaging with the city council and staff to create sustainable solutions, according to the announcement today.
Founder and creative and executive director Jude Kusnierz explains the situation and its goals in a video here.
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