The Blue Cabin floats to its new home in Richmond

24 January 2022

Following two and a half years of exciting programming at its inaugural moorage site in False Creek, the Blue Cabin Floating Artist Residency is on its way to Imperial Landing in the City of Richmond’s historic Steveston Village—and it is quite the move.

The 1,200 square foot, 170 ton structure will be towed by tug boat through False Creek and into the Strait of Georgia, passing around Point Grey and Iona Terminus then heading up the Fraser River on the seven hour journey to Steveston.

“The Blue Cabin Floating Artist Residency is a great program to support local artists, collaborate with Richmond cultural organizations and create community spirit,” said City of Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie. “It offers artists and the public opportunities to learn, explore and engage with Steveston’s history, the Fraser River ecology and the foreshore.”

The move to Steveston is an exciting next step in the ongoing journey of the floating Blue Cabin. Its new location will provide a compelling new vantage point for artists and the public to explore and celebrate both the heritage and contemporary creative cultures of the region.

“The Blue Cabin Floating Artist Residency was created to honour and sustain the memory of Metro Vancouver’s shorelines,” said Glenn Alteen, founding member of the Blue Cabin project. “We are grateful to be guests on the Sto:lo [Fraser River] estuary, part of the Musqueam Nation's traditional fishing territory, and to be joining a rich history of waterfront communities in Richmond.”

The Blue Cabin programming team is excited to work with local arts and community organizations to develop public engagement opportunities exploring the complex histories of the area. Musqueam artist Debra Sparrow, Richmond-based artist Keely O’Brien and Germany-based Chilean artist Michelle-Marie Letelier will be the Blue Cabin’s first artists-in-residence in Steveston in 2022.

For more information on the Blue Cabin, visit thebluecabin.ca, @TheBlueCabinVancouver on Facebook and @the_blue_cabin on Instagram and Twitter.

About the Blue Cabin

Placed on the foreshore in 1932, the Blue Cabin spent 89 years on the coastline of the North Shore, occupied most notably by artist, musician, and writer Al Neil and artist Carole Itter for five decades.

Three Vancouver-based arts organizations—Creative Cultural Collaborations (C3), grunt gallery and Other Sights for Artists’ Projects—came together in 2014 to remediate the cabin and transform it into a mobile artist residency that provides a unique perspective on Metro Vancouver from the water and a venue for dialogue and exchange among coastal artists and communities.

In 2019, the Blue Cabin Floating Artist Residency was towed to its first official home in False Creek for an inaugural program of residencies and events, including Skeins: Weaving on the Foreshore which focused on intergenerational knowledge exchange around weaving, language and design led by Master Weavers from the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.