The genesis of The Post at 750 happened in 2012 with a simple conversation. Touchstone Theatre Society and the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival were discussing the prospect of sharing a new location for the two growing organizations, not only to save money through shared resources, but to build their respective capacities.
Over the next 18 months a plan took shape, and two additional partners, Music on Main Society and The Documentary Media Society (producers of the annual DOXA Documentary Film Festival), joined the project in an exciting new consortium. Despite extensive research and creative thinking, though, a truly affordable, accessible, and professional administrative and studio space remained a crucial, missing piece of the puzzle.
But mere months later, in July of 2013, the City of Vancouver requested expressions of interest in a new cultural amenity space at the CBC campus in the heart of downtown. The Consortium’s submission was successful, and other supporters such as Vancity, the Department of Canadian Heritage, and BC Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture brought their support. In September 2014 the tenants formed 110 Arts Cooperative to operate the facility not just for the member organizations, but in service to the greater cultural community.
With a combination of public and private funding, the $2.3 million project led by Simcic + Uhrich Architects saw the members of 110 Arts Cooperative move into the new facility at the end of 2014, ready to build their futures and to reignite the presence of the arts community in Vancouver’s downtown core.
The facility was officially named The Post at 750 in March 2015. The name was inspired by the history of downtown Vancouver, plotted almost exclusively by 19th century surveyor Lauchlan Hamilton, who used wooden posts to mark the grid for the streets of downtown Vancouver, and named most of them, too! A post is also a structural support, intended to anchor the position of a frame.
The leaders of the new shared arts space at 750 Hamilton St. had a desire to root their endeavor in the material memory of the land in downtown Vancouver on which the space sits.
Our vision for this new cultural space imagines a hub for shared resource, social-profit partnership, creative endeavor, cultural animation and public outreach.