2019-2020 Vice President's Report

Prepared by Ange Adair, Vice President

After the AGM in May 2019, I organized and hosted our first committees meeting, led the planning of the year’s operations, and secured the Waldorf as a free private event venue for VMAA. Throughout the summer, I attended two Vantage Point workshops for non-profit operational planning and managing volunteers in order to boost our operations. Our new president stepped down in August, and after consulting with past president, Jessica, I called a meeting for the future of VMAA, which was held at SPACE. The discussion led to an agreement to continue VMAA with reduced operations for the time being, including a moratorium on new markets and education events. The meeting also attracted VMAA volunteer and communications pro Ingrid Valou, who agreed to step up to the president’s role.

Ingrid and I put our minds together for a new operations plan that focused on community partnerships and aimed to reduce VMAA busywork in the future. I secured the sponsorship of our board meeting space at LaSalle for the 2020 term and took on the task of individually emailing certificates for VMAA members to cash in discounts with our new merchant and educational partners. I worked with Ingrid to clean up the VMAA website and uploaded most Instagram posts and stories not related to exhibitions. Before COVID-19, I joined the advisory board of Crafted Vancouver, with whom I began to design a call for VMAA members to create oversized jewellery made from recycled materials. Powered by community partners, SPACE and Vancouver Art Community, the event would have coincided with the Made from Scraps initiative, Meet the Maker, and a fashion runway show at Van Dusen Gardens. Of course, all public events were cancelled in 2020 from March onwards.

SPACE was also the meeting place this term for Accessorize for Success, a long-standing VMAA community endeavour. Peggy, our member at large, co-organized and co-hosted the event, which provides refurbished jewellery to a non-profit organization in the downtown Eastside that helps ready women entering the workforce. It was a great way to socialize, and we made a huge dent in our broken jewellery and donated supplies! My goals for the coming term are to produce onboarding training material for easier transition of board members, and to reinstate regular educational panels, artist talks, and workshops using video-conference format.