Hornby Island Arts Centre is open for business after decades of delays, including staffing changes, funding difficulties and permitting problems.
A dream more than 20 years in the making has come to fruition on Hornby Island, which now has a standalone building dedicated to the arts.
Located on Sollans Road near one of the island’s busiest intersections, the Hornby Island Arts Centre is open for business after decades of delays, including staffing changes, funding difficulties and permitting problems. The project was finally approved in 2021, but the COVID-19 pandemic sent construction prices skyward, so more funding was needed in order to complete it.
“Building prices doubled,” president Sheila Morissette of the Hornby Island Arts Council said of the $3.1 million project. “We had to cut the design back, and lose a third of the square footage, and do more fundraising. That was about a two-year process.”
The council operated for years out of a tiny 40-foot ATCO trailer nestled in the woods and off the beaten path — woefully inadequate for a community said to have more artists per-capita than many Canadian communities its size. Its replacement is a 3,100 square foot architectural showstopper made from stucco and cedar, built by Galloway Bros Construction of Parksville from plans by D’Arcy Jones Architects of Vancouver, which won a 2022 Canadian Architect Award of Merit for the Hornby Island building.
“We are an arts centre, so it’s not just a gallery,” Melissa Moore, executive director of the Hornby Island Arts Council, said. “It is going to be for all of the arts – dance, film, music. Everything.”
The council was formed in 1998 to address the needs of artists on the popular Gulf Island, which has 1,200 year-round residents. The blue trailer that was its home was put in place 20 years ago as a stop-gap measure, while the planning process for a traditional building got underway but years went by before a concrete plan would be approved (one earlier version had plans for the building at 4,500 square feet).
The centre was eventually completed with funding at the local (Comox Valley Regional District; Island Coastal Economic Trust), provincial (BC Arts Council; Community Gaming), and federal level (Canadian Heritage), along with private donors. The result is a tech-savvy operation capable of hosting everything from art exhibits to film screenings, with a sprung floor for dance dance performances and high-end audio visual components for concerts.
The centre opened June 21 withOpeningDoors, an exhibit featuring works by Hornby Island artists, which ran until July 1. By the early and enthusiastic response, the arts centre is being immediately embraced by the community, Morissette said. “The response was enormous.”
A new exhibit opens July 8 and will run for the summer, while long-term plans for the centre shift from the initial setup process into more concrete programming. “One of the ways that artists on Hornby have worked, is with back to back [three-day] shows,” Moore said. “We’re not really going for that type of model.”
A movable wall system that could expand exhibition capacity is being entertained, while a touchscreen display in the lobby, featuring profiles and links to local artist studios, will help visitors learn about the arts community on the island.
Moore, the society’s only salaried employee, came to the job in October from England with plenty of experience, including posts at University of the Arts London and the Architectural Association of London. She has big dreams for the centre, including further celebrations and member appreciation events scheduled for after the summer, she said.
“We’re going to unfold like a flower — gently over time.”
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