New Westminster

If you are, LMK are we could join a team together!

New Westminster, BC – New Westminster City Council has approved a two-year organizational pilot project and strategy to address the overlapping crises of homelessness, mental health, and substance use. The pilot will focus on increasing immediate supports with the long-term goal of transitioning responsibility to senior levels of government.

The project is based on promising practices and lessons learned from other municipalities with the objective of advancing proactive, resilient and strategic organizational approaches that can be sustained long-term. The project will involve three inter-departmental staff teams which include:

• Crises Response Team – a new grouping of staff responsible for day-to-day crisis coordination and response, including outreach and support, addressing community requests, case management services, and providing referrals to Provincial teams.
• Operations Support Team - a group of existing City staff from engineering, fire, human resources, integrated services, and police supporting the new Crises Response Team.
• Policy Development and Advocacy Team – a group of existing City staff that continues lobbying senior levels of government for additional funding, resources, and supports needed to sustainably address the needs and issues associated with the three crises.

“New Westminster, like many communities, is facing the complex and inter-related crises of homelessness, mental health, and substance use. These crises have a profound impact not only on those directly suffering, but the community as a whole,” said Mayor Patrick Johnstone. “The City recognizes that the current responses to these crises are not doing enough and are straining our staff. We must implement a new people-centred approach that is more compassionate, proactive, responsive, and that requires a new focus and some new resources.”

The proposed pilot project will include extensive community engagement and involvement and will see the creation of two working groups with diverse representation. The implementation working group will include First Nations and Indigenous organizations, people with lived and living experience, and representatives from community and social service agencies. The advocacy working will include members from the business community and local residents.

“In order to respond to these three crises, we must structure our organization to be more innovative and nimble, as well as commit to continuous learning and adaption,” said Lisa Spitale, Chief Administrative Officer. “The formation of the three new staff teams will allow for dedicated focus and responsibilities while separating out day-to-day activities from policy development and advocacy work.”

“This is the work our community has been asking us to do” said Mayor Johnstone. “We have great partners in New West, and this approach will assure we are leveraging those supports to get better outcomes for everyone.”

Goals of the pilot project include enhanced relations with provincial bodies that have primary responsibility for addressing the three crises, the realization of a 24/7 shelter with 50 to 60 beds, a health connect and resource centre to address the needs of the unsheltered, and a supportive housing development with 50 to 60 units. To accomplish this, the City of New Westminster will work on establishing Memorandums of Understanding with BC Housing, the Fraser Health Authority, the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions, and the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction, as well as ongoing engagement with First Nations and Indigenous organizations.

For more information on the City of New Westminster’s three crises pilot project, please visit www.newwestcity.ca/crises-response-project

Blatantly stolen from https://newwestanchor.com

Friday, Sept. 22

• Dance party. 9pm. Georgie’s Local.

Saturday, Sept. 23

• RiverFest. 10am. New West boardwalk.
• Dance party. 9pm. Georgie’s Local.
• MEASURE. Including an opening reception and artists’ talks. 1pm. New Media Gallery.
• Jazz Cats Social. 6:30pm. 620 8th St.
• Mushtari Begum Festival. 7pm. Massey Theatre.
• Salsa in the Park. 7:30pm. Pier Park.

Sunday, Sept. 24

• RiverFest guided tours. 10am. Various locations.
• Queensborough’s 13th annual shoreline clean-up. 10am. Thompson’s Landing Park.
• Boho fashion sale. Noon. 1245 Quayside Dr.
• Concert in the Park. Featuring Quayside Voices. 1pm. Upper Hume Park.

Monday, Sept. 25

• Boho fashion sale. 2pm. 1245 Quayside Dr.
• Poker night. 6:30pm. Sapperton District Taphouse.
• Open mic night. 7pm. Begbie’s.
• Trivia night. 8pm. The Terminal Pub.

Tuesday, Sept. 26

• Boho fashion sale. 2pm. 1245 Quayside Dr.
• WorkBC workshop. 4pm. Queensborough Community Centre.
• Open mic: standup comedy. 6pm. The Terminal Pub.
• Trivia night. 6:30pm. Kelly O’Brien’s.
• Piva presents: Jazz at the Anvil. Tickets start at $20. 7pm. Anvil Centre.
• Music bingo. 7pm. Paddlewheeler Pub.
• Open mic night. 7pm. Georgie’s Local.
• Name that tune! 7pm. Hops New West.

Wednesday, Sept. 27

• Trivia night. 7pm. Georgie’s Local.
• Trivia night. 7:30pm. Paddlewheeler Pub.

Ongoing

• The Interplay of Light. Until Oct. 1. Gallery hours. The Gallery at Queen’s Park.

I'll try my best to wake it up......

I LOVE public art and New West has more than its fair share of it.

This is one that I'd missed, even though it's been in place for 6 months on the outside of the Anvil Centre: https://imgur.com/a/u142dWA

``` Rebecca Bair Curl Mapped, 2023 (b. 1995, Toronto, ON, Canada; lives and works in Vancouver, BC, Canada) Anvil Centre Public Art Project April 2023 - March 2024 Curated by Emmy Lee Wall, Capture Photography Festival

``` Commissioned by the City of New Westminster, this temporary public art installation is presented in partnership with Capture Photography Festival

Situated on the façade of the Anvil Centre in New Westminster, Rebecca Bair's site-specific installation, Curl Mapped, tackles the complex, colonial history of archives to represent that which is absent: traces of Black settlers in this region. Bair spent significant time in the city archives poring over the leather-bound ledgers, reading the handwritten notes, and examining the photographs therein only to discover a gap - what she describes as "a ghost in the space." In Curl Mapped, Bair interrupts parts of the map with curly tendrils of hair, which for her, is symbolic of heritage. and cultural care. As these coils reach toward one another, attempting to close the gap in the map, they suggest the subjective nature of maps while gesturing to the need to acknowledge and repair this lack of representation.

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TLDR - Stay cool at these locations

Century House - 620 Eighth Street | 604-519-1066 Extended hours Monday, Aug. 14 to Thursday, Aug. 17: 9:00 am to 7:30 pm

Queensborough Community Centre - 920 Ewen Avenue | 604-525-7388

New Westminster Public Library - 716 Sixth Avenue | 604-527-4660

Anvil Centre - 777 Columbia Street | 604-515-3830

Starting today, take part in activities celebrating diversity, inclusion, and the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.

Find activities at newwestcity.ca/pride-week. Highlights include:

• Pride Painters (11 - 18 years) tonight
• Trans, Gender Diverse, & Two-Spirit Inclusive Swim (TGD2SQ) (All Ages) on Aug. 12
• Music by the River - Pride Edition on Aug. 16

Pride Week in New Westminster is presented by New Westminster Pride Society with community partners and local businesses and runs Thursday, Aug. 10 to Sunday, Aug. 19. Find out more about the variety of events taking place during New West Pride Week at newwestpride.ca.

:(

This Saturday will be Car Free Day. Columbia St shutdown for "live music, food trucks, site-wide liquor license, and more!"

Date: Saturday, July 29 Located: Columbia Street, New Westminster, BC Time: Noon - 8 pm

Always a lot of fun... this is what the food truck festival morphed into (which is probably a good thing because the food truck festival had grown to a ridiculous size).

Core details including the bands playing on https://www.carfree.ca/new-west

More details on https://www.newwestrecord.ca/local-news/get-ready-to-enter-a-pedestrian-paradise-new-wests-car-free-day-is-back-7322081 (including that there's going to be a bike valet this year)

https://12thstreet.ca

Sun, July 23rd 11:30am~5:00pm

Three Stages of Live Music Fun For The Kids and FOOD FROM AROUND THE WORLD!

12th Street Fest New West Entertainment Schedule

Metrotown Mitsubishi Community Stage @ Hamilton & 12th

11:30 Blue Express Homegrown New Westminster Blues 12:30 ROOTS Peruvian Folk Dance Exciting, Colourful, Traditional Folk Dance from Peru! 1:00 The Sweet P’s Patsy Thompson & Pamela Dominelli deliver soulful roots and blues 2:00 ROOTS Peruvian Folk Dance Exciting, Colourful, Traditional Folk Dance from Peru! 2:30 Arsen Shomakhov Explosive Electric Guitar Blues from one of Vancouver’s finest 4:00 James “Buddy” Rogers Juno Nominated Blues Artist delivers the festival’s Blues Finale!!!

Seventh Avenue Stage @7th Ave & 12th

11:30 The Neil Douglas School of Music New West’s premier music school takes the stage 1:00 Ed, Salve and Friends Remember the Jazz Club on 6th? Salve is back! 4:00 Syndicate 12th Street’s very own Rock solid Classic Rockers!

Match at Starlight Casino Stage @ 6th Ave & 12th

11:30 David Boxcar Gates One of Canada’s most renowned acoustic Piedmont, Ragtime & Delta Blues Guitar players. 1:00 Dogwood & The Shakers Next Generation Rockabilly! 2:30 The Mike Van Eyes Band Rockin’ piano with boogie-woogie and the blues 4:00 The Slip~ONS Hard Driving Garage Punk

12th Street will be packed with Music, Food, and Family Fun! The challenging jobs are taken but we could use a handful of volunteers to help watch the cross streets of 12th.

Sign up now as a “Lawn Chair Lane Supervisor” and we’ll get you outfitted in one of our fantastic 2023 edition TeeShirts. Lots of volunteers mean lots of breaks!

There's no time to relax after week #2 of Fridays on Front - the fun never stops in New West in the summer...

Uptown Live today, Saturday July 15 from Noon - 8:00 PM - uptown New West.

Lots of food trucks, lots of bands, lots of vendors.

Schedule, artists, vendors etc here: https://www.uptownlive.ca/schedule-1

I'm especially looking forward to hearing Ayla Tesler-Mabé - that woman sure knows her way around a guitar but there doesn't appear to be anything she can't do.

Arts New West (what used to be known as the Arts Council of New West) is putting on a series of free concerts at the bandshell in Queen's Park.

Every Thursday at 7pm and every Sunday at 2pm (apparently with a break in the middle...??) until the end of July.

Go take a picnic (and even a beer if you like) and enjoy free good times. Maybe see ya there.

More details on their FB or their website https://artscouncilnewwest.org/concertseries/

I just went to see the current exhibition at the New Media Gallery, DUST:

> Search and you will find dust woven through the universe; swept up, dispersed and deposited across the globe; collecting in every corner of our lives. All of humanity lives on a fragment of cosmic dust…and we are dust. Visible, invisible, meaningful, reviled; dust has been exploited by artists as material, subject, ontology and here as landscape…full of properties, concepts and relationships and the potential to convey expansive ideas, Dust has been handed down to us through histories, words and images. In this exhibition it is interpreted through complex technologies, data collection, augmented videography and sound. DUST brings together three award-winning artists who have created extraordinary, populated landscapes, each underscored with striking aggregations of sound.

Features 3 artists:

• Denis Beaubois, No longer Adrift (2013, updated 2023)
• Herman Kolgen, Dust Surface (2010)
• Michael Saup, DustVR (2018-2023)

All three are amazing. GO SEE THIS SHOW

Also shout out to Director/Curator Gordan Duggan who was our guide for the show. We try and catch all the shows here and he's very often the person there, and he's a great guide and personally excited about all the pieces and artists.

Drop by Moody Park to celebrate cycling as a fun activity, a mode of transportation, something to do with your family, a way to get exercise, and to connect with others who love cycling and want to share with the community!

There's also an E-Bike Share Feasibility Study here: https://www.beheardnewwest.ca/e-bike-share

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.one/post/268547

> "The school board says Beattie has decided to take medical leave. According to school board chair Maya Russell the board does not have the ability to remove a trustee in this case under the School Act, but are requesting she resign immediately." > > Does she think she will be able to come back to her job after this?

Average asking rents are still lower in New West than in neighbouring municipalities — but they’re climbing faster.

This Saturday from 11AM to 2PM - official opening of the Agnes St Greenway. We rode it the other day & it's looking lovely. Lots of nice touches - the planting as usual in New West and the doggy exercise yard.

Got in a coffee hat trick this afternoon.

#1 !Photo: New West Chamber of Commerce

rode into town past the brand-new-just-opened-today-but-not-really coffee shop on 6th - Coasters Coffee. (As far as I can work out they had a ribbon-cutting with the Mayor etc today (Photo: New West Chamber of Commerce) but had a grand opening in March). https://www.instagram.com/coasterscoffeeshop

#2 !

got coffee & nibbles in Craft Cafe down on the Quay. Always good coffee and I managed to avoid buying any of the fancy coffee gadgets they have for sale. https://www.instagram.com/craftcafe.ca/

#3 !

In Craft Cafe I picked up a freshly roasted bag of everybody's-favourite-New-West-roaster Ghost Roaster coffee. https://www.instagram.com/ghostroastercoffee/

Is that too much coffeeing for one day?

After a long “COVID pause”, the RA is back! The meeting is on June 20th at the library. Please share and RSVP. Hope to see you there!

Also, thank you to all who have reached out about participating. We are still looking for members who are willing to be named to the board.

City's asking for input on the 2024 budget - go tell them your priorities (and maybe win a local gift card)