The 4th Annual Sustenance Festival is currently on at Yaletown Roundhouse. It is a community oriented festival, showcasing a gallery of food related art, culture and community groups. I went to the opening event on Thursday, October 11th to check it out.

Food related artwork can be found on display around the Roundhouse. This GrassRoots sculpture by Pierre Leichner is particularly noticeable. Later in the evening, he spoke to the attendees about how Western society has lost a lot of art and ecology to business and he tries to capture that in his art to close that gap. Search Dr. Legumes on Youtube.

As well as artwork by Tannis Hopkins. The pie piece is very creative!

The majority of the displays are located in the Exhibition Hall at the Roundhouse Community Centre. For opening night, several community members, including Park Board member Niki Sharma, and the artists responsible for the displays spoke briefly about their involvement in the Sustenance Festival.

Tiare Jung, community organizer, student and artist, spoke about her oil painting of the Winter Farmers Market.

The artist thinks art should look as good as food. "It is so much a people system as much as it is a food system? Prints are available for sale and 15% of the proceeds will be donated to the Campus Food Systems Project at Capilano University. Order forms are available at the Roundhouse by the painting.

This wall of facts was put up by the Park Board. They are hosting an event: "CHECK OUT OUR ASSETS: How could your Parks and Community Centre make your neighbourhood a better place for local food?​" on Thursday Oct. 18th at 6:30pm. Tickets are free and are still available!


Gavin and Joanna introduced the Vancouver Urban Farming Society. A relatively new organization that supports urban farming in Vancouver. Their biggest project right now is: Best Practices to bring to the city and other urban farmers and how we can become a model to other cities.

There are at least 20 urban farmers in Vancouver alone!


The community group, Village Vancouver made this display that spans three walls. They are also hosting a zero waste, city-wide neighbourhood potluck: NEIGHBOUR SAVOUR 3 on Tuesday Oct 23rd from 6pm - 9pm at Heritage Hall, Main St. Free to join!



 The youngest artist of them all made this "Earth Pizza". Very cute! =)

The West Side Food Security Collaborative talked about the the Neighbourhood Food Networks mural they made.



Hannah Louise on behalf of the Indigenous Initiatives at UBC Farms. Their display features photos and a video.

The last event of the evening was presented by Nicole Dextras the artist responsible for the “Little Green Dress” installation at the Earth Art Exhibit in the VanDusen Botanical Garden in the summer. She unveiled her "Nomadik Harvest Dress". The dress is made up of soft wool sweaters dyed green and stitched together. The vest is made with moss found from Nicole's own garden.

The dress contains a lot of pockets which held a variety of vegetables with tags that described each of them. The wearer can live off of this dress! It contains everything she needs to cook and eat.






Nicole Dextras.


After wriggling out of the dress, the model, Neta cooked a soup, asking the attendees to help pick the ingredients from the foods found on the dress.




Yummy! Leeks, potatoes, tomatoes, mushrooms, carrots and more. It needed a little salt but it was a pretty hearty soup!


Besides the soup, attendees were treated to some Mexican snacks from Encanto Culinary Services.




A platter of "Mexican Grudiles"

and Momochilli popcorn.

The Sustenance Festival is on until October 21st, 2012 and there are all sorts of interesting workshops such as Weed Eating, Fondue Making and Cheese Making and other events coming up this week. Most of them still have tickets available! Check out the website's event page for more details.