The webinar is the first in a series about populating public space during the cold and dark season is rain. From the event posting:

“Wet and cold but also life-giving and fun. Are there activities best performed when raining and how do we mitigate the discomfort of bad weather? A summer rain might be sensual but how about a rainy November evening? Join us in our exploration of how to enable life in public space all year round.

The webinar will consist of two parts. First, speakers on rain placemaking from Gothenburg and Vancouver. Second, a brief workshop to further dig into the issues together. We will co-create new ways of bringing life to our cities on rainy days.”

For more on the event, or to register: Nordic Placemaking Talk

Saturday, February 22, 2020
10am-2pm
Helena Gutteridge Plaza, City Hall
(located on the north side of City Hall – W 11th Ave and Yukon Street)

Designed by Sistema LUPO, a Spanish collective specializing in childhood and architecture games, the Art Easel allows participants to create large-scale artwork on the plaza surface. Come play in the rain and participate in a fun day launching the Art Easel. Children of all ages and familes are most welcome! Hot drinks and snacks provided!

More info: Facebook Event Page

The big reveal will take place

Thursday, July 18
7-9pm
Creekside Community Centre
1 Athletes Way

Jury selection and People’s Choice prizes will be awarded, as we will also be unveiling a series of new rain-friendly public space activations.

The event is free, but registration is required. Tickets are available via our Eventbrite page. Tickets will go fast, so reserve a spot today!

Life Between Umbrellas is co-produced by the Vancouver Public Space Network and Viva Vancouver.

For more information on the Life Between Umbrellas Design Competition, please see our competition website or follow along on social media using the #LifeBetweenUmbrellas hashtag.

Happy Canada Day long weekend! Here’s hoping you have some great opportunities to celebrate the 152+ years of the country and the thousands of years of cultural history that have taken place on these lands.

There are lots of festivities taking place around the Lower Mainland, much of it happening in our parks, plazas, community centres and other public spaces. Be sure to check your local community facilities to see what’s happening in your ‘hood!

• Daily Hive – 34 Free Canada events happening in Metro Vancouver
• Vancouver Sun – Canada Day: 20 celebrations happening around Metro Vancouver

As part of the weekend fun, we’ll be holding three pop-up People’s Choice voting events on Sunday, June 30. If you haven’t yet had a chance to cast your ballot in the Life Between Umbrellas design competition for rain-friendly public spaces, these will be great opportunities!

The three events take place:

• 10am-12pm, Oppenheimer Park (SE corner, Cordova & Jackson)
• 1-3pm, Oakridge Ctr Transit Plaza (Cambie & W 41st)
• 4-7pm, Kerrisdale (Arbutus Greenway & W 41st Ave) 

Stop by and check out the short-listed entries in the Life Between Umbrellas competition and pick your favourites. Your vote will help award prizes and could shape the future of rain-friendly spaces in the city!

Other upcoming events:

• Friday, July 5 – CityLab – 511 West Broadway (at Cambie) – UPDATED
• Sunday, July 7 (12-7pm) – Car Free Commercial Drive, 1000-block laneway
• Thursday, July 18, 7-9pm – FINAL REVEAL – UPDATED

Stay tuned for more details on these and other events. You can also check out the LifeBetweenUmbrellas.ca website for more information, or follow along via social media, using the #LifeBetweenUmbrellas hashtag.

Life Between Umbrellas is co-produced by the Vancouver Public Space Network and Viva Vancouver.

Vote for your favourite rain-friendly public space designs!

It’s been a few weeks since our last update on the Life Between Umbrellas design competition for rain-friendly public space and lots has happened in the intervening period. 

After the competition closed at the end of April, the competition jury met several times to review the 100+ entries we received. These were long meetings, with lots of tough decisions – a testament to the many excellent ideas that entrants submitted. (No surprise: there’s a wealth of creative thinking out there about how we, as a city, might collectively make our public spaces better in the rainy months!)

After many hours of deliberation, the jury selected a series of short-listed entries. These design ideas are now part of our People’s Choice voting process – and we’re looking for your help to award prizes in three different categories. There are so many excellent ideas that were submitted, and we want to hear which ones you think should be the winner!

Another bit of good news during this stretch: we had initially only intended to have People’s Choice voting in our Stream 1 (The Place) adult and youth categories, but following a recommendation from the jury, have now added additional People’s Choice prizes in Stream 2. That means there are a total of three different voting opportunities – featuring a total of 26 short-listed entries – on which you can cast a ballot.

And so… after a few smaller “test” events, we’d like to take this opportunity to issue the first of a few invitations to our People’s Choice voting events.

Over the next few weeks we’ll be holding a series of pop-up voting events around the city. Each event, weather permitting, will typically last a couple of hours. We’re kicking off the first of three initial events tonight:

1. Friday, June 21 – 6-9pm, English Bay Seawall 
2. Tuesday, June 25 – 6-9pm, 800-Robson Square 
3. Wednesday, June 26, 6-9pm, Seawall between Science World and Olympic Village – UPDATE: This event will take place along the seawall immediately north of Olympic Village Plaza

We’ll also be adding more events over the next few days, so stay tuned for details on those.

Voting events are in-person only – so you can have a chance to see all the entries in all their large format glory, while meeting other public space enthusiasts in the process.

Following that, we will be having our final wrap event on the week of July 15. (Details to follow, but mark your calendar).

Life Between Umbrellas is a co-production of the Vancouver Public Space Network and Viva Vancouver.

1. The Place – An idea to make a new or existing public space (such as a plaza, street, sidewalk, laneway, parklet, or park) rain-friendly.

2.  The Intervention - A rain-friendly design feature or element, or seasonal structure that can serve to enhance an existing public space.
3. The Celebration – A rain-friendly pop-up activation (e.g. an event or interactive installation) in a public space that will help build a more positive culture of rain-friendly activity, fostering social connections in the rainy months.

The event takes place:

Saturday, April 6, 2019
9:00am to 6:00pm
800-block Robson Square (south side of the Art Gallery)

A full schedule of activities will be shared via the Facebook Event Page.
#LifeBetweenUmbrellas is brought to you by Vancouver Public Space Network and Viva Vancouver and aims to generate ideas on ways to improve public space and public life during Vancouver’s rainy months. The contest is open to anyone interested in making public spaces more rain-friendly. Multiple prizes will be awarded, including prizes for children and youth under 19. For more info, please visit: https://LifeBetweenUmbrellas.ca

The launch event will provide an overview of the competition, featuring speakers and activities that will help to showcase some of the design challenges and opportunities that come with life in a rainy city. For added warmth and coziness there will also be a hot chocolate bar and fresh-baked cookies!

Joining us for the event will be:

• Joe Fry, HAPA Collaborative
• Andrew Nakazawa, DVBIA
• Ann Livingston, VANDU
• Melina Scholefield, City of Vancouver, Office of Sustainability
• Nick Collinet, Public Disco

Details of the Competition – A Quick Overview

The Life Between Umbrellas design ideas competition will be open to a broad audience, including designers, students, and the general public. The competition will have three streams, allowing entrants to submit ideas on (1) rain-friendly spaces, (2) design features, and (3) events or activations. A number of prizes will be awarded in each stream, and winners will be chosen by both a jury selection process and a people’s choice voting process.

A separate competition website will be live on Friday March 1. In the meantime, for more information on the competition, check out LifeBetweenUmbrellas.ca.

Tickets

Tickets for the launch event are free and available via Eventbrite, but seating is limited. If you book a ticket and are unable to attend, please cancel your ticket so that we can ensure a space for someone else!

Photo by Adriana Calvo, Pixels

As part of this overall project, we’ve been connecting with community-members this past year to gather ideas for ways to improve Vancouver’s public spaces during the winter months. (You may remember our various umbrella wall activities from spring, our early share-back of ideas in the VanBubble during Vancouver Design Week, or our more recent presentation at SFU’s City Conversations).

We’ve got another great opportunity coming up to help shaping the competition. On Tuesday, December 4, we’re holding a workshop on draft principles for rain-friendly public spaces. It’s open to anyone who is interested in helping us to review and refine the work that we’ve done to date, and to help us craft the principles will be used to inform the Design Competition.

We’re just in the process of finalizing a location for this event. If you’d like to be part of the discussion, please let us know. Email info@vancouverpublicspace.ca.