How British Columbians are getting creative with live music venues

CBC News

· Posted: Mar 16, 2025 9:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 10 minutes ago

Many unrecorded euphony venues are closing.

Whether it's nightclubs successful downtown Vancouver, a non-profit abstraction successful the province's superior oregon a smaller venue successful agrarian British Columbia, dedicated spaces for artists to execute are becoming fewer and acold between. 

In general, the precocious outgo of rent for some artists and for concern owners moving the venues is the main culprit. 

Communities are being forced to get creative. Traditional theatres and stages whitethorn beryllium disappearing, but show spaces are popping up successful unexpected spaces similar creation galleries and adjacent conscionable random people's surviving rooms. 

Podcast big and shaper Kristina Rothstein remembers the Sugar Refinery successful downtown Vancouver arsenic a spot wherever "interesting things were ever happening and radical were trying retired caller things and putting connected a play and doing a weird experimental show."

"I ever felt astatine home," she said. 

The venue, located connected the Granville strip, unopen down successful 2003, but euphony lovers and artists alike inactive reminisce astir the shows they saw there. Rothstein's curiosity astir what venues came earlier and aft her favourite spot inspired her podcast, In Search of Lost Venues, wherever she wanders Vancouver neighbourhoods with section musicians talking astir unrecorded euphony events of days gone by. 

And portion remembering the bully aged days tin beryllium cathartic, determination inactive remains a problem: musicians are looking for determination — anyplace — to perform, now. 

Beloved B.C. instrumentalist Dan Mangan and his concern partner, Laura Simpson, founded Side Door successful 2017  after noticing a deficiency of abstraction for performers. 

It connects artists with hosts who person a abstraction for them — often their ain homes. Both the creator and big are paid automatically done the platform, and thousands of shows person happened since the level launched. 

Victoria Levesque has hosted respective shows done Side Door since 2019 and has a fewer coming up. 

She offers an indoor surviving country abstraction or, upwind permitting, a tiny plot abstraction successful her yard. 

"When you enactment the clip and effort into hosting artists … it's not for that 1 day; it's for the aboriginal of their career," she said.  

WATCH | Inside Victoria's DIY unrecorded euphony scene:

In Victoria, a photography workplace has go a much wide originative space, hosting unrecorded drama and music. 

"I was a punk stone kid increasing up. I utilized to spell to tons of punk shows and tons of location enactment shows," said Antonio La Fauci, proprietor of Cinderbloc Studios.  "I kinda similar conscionable getting radical unneurotic and having radical physique a showcase done creativity."

Not acold from Cinderbloc, the Little Fernwood Gallery has besides offered up abstraction for do-it-yourself unrecorded music, wherever artists rent the assemblage abstraction and person it into a unrecorded euphony venue, bringing the equipment, ticketing the lawsuit and everything they request to enactment connected a show. 

Tarun Nayar, Canadian Live Music Association committee seat and a Surrey, B.C., musician, said autarkic venues — longtime, accepted establishments oregon DIY spots — are indispensable for some section and planetary musicians. 

The relation precocious released the results of a study on the interaction unrecorded euphony has connected the Canadian economy. It recovered that successful 2023 alone, unrecorded euphony contributed $10.9 cardinal to the country's GDP and supported much than 100,000 full-time equivalent jobs.

"We each cognize it's important, from the biggest Taylor Swift stadium craziness to the section amusement astatine the Biltmore oregon the Fox," helium said. 

"Taking it earnestly is precise important, not conscionable for culture's involvement but besides for the economy."