Linwood House Ministries

Linwood House Art Experience: How Marcy Became an Artist

By Idelette McVicker
Cross-posted from SheLoves Magazine

The beauty of this art show isn’t necessarily in the mastery and creativity of some of the Sunshine Coast’s best artists. What makes the Linwood House Art Experience profound, is the exhibition of professional artists right alongside art by women from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Canada.

The smile on Marcy’s (pictured below on the far left) face lit up the room as she introduced me to the art on display like a fine curator. She was so proud to show me her work, to talk about it: a beautiful piece in charcoal … circles and shapes in graphic formation. A few fingerprints pressed at the top of the page. Marcy was one of several women from the Downtown Eastside who had never done any art until this past summer when she participated in a three-day retreat at Linwood House called The Journey. Afterwards the same group of women continued their education with an eight-week course at the studio of Vancouver Artist Pamela Masik.

Marcy couldn’t be more animated than when she told me about their string art project. The day they dipped pieces of string in paint and moved them around on paper to create beautiful artwork. With every paintbrush dipped, every mark made, women who were formerly defined by their stories of abuse, poverty, addiction, homelessness or prostitution began tapping into a creativity that had never been encouraged. Never been celebrated. Until this past summer.

Now they are artists. The framed works on display don’t lie.

Then the clincher: Todd Clark, one of the professional artists exhibiting under the marquee tent that day, bought Marcy’s charcoal piece. The news spread fast. Although Marcy couldn’t be there for the moment–the Downtown Eastside artists had to leave on an earlier ferry–her Linwood House cheerleaders bounced with excitement.

“It was a tough decision,” Clark admitted. “If I could buy them all, I would have, because they’re just fabulous.” In explaining his decision for purchasing Marcy’s particular piece, he said: “The simplicity of it is so beautiful, I’d love to hang it on my wall … This is fantastic art.”

According to Sue Todd, who helps facilitate The Journey, for the women, being part of the Art Experience begins to restore a sense of dignity and value. “For many of our friends when they’re dealing with addiction and mental illness, addiction and poverty and all of the issues associated with that, there’s a dulling of creativity.” Through creating art, however, the women are reminded of the creative spirit within them. “(It) helps them see that they are more than their pain, “ said Todd. “They’re more than a drug addict, more than a prostitute, more than a homeless woman, but they actually are a creative, beautiful, inspired woman.”

Women being pushed to their deaths by drug dealers, say Downtown Eastside advocates

The realities of life--and death--for many women in the downtown eastside are staggering, as we are reminded in this article. Even in the midst of celebrating our friends' creativity at the Linwood Art Experience, this is a timely reminder.

'They're playing with their lives,' says community worker
By Suzanne Fournier
The Province September 24, 2010

Former police officer Dave Dickson stands Thursday in an alley behind the Regent Hotel. He does not believe Ashley Machiskinic committed suicide.
Photograph by: Arlen Redekop, PNG

Ashley Machiskinic was a beautiful First Nations woman whose young life came crashing to the ground Sept. 15 in a sordid lane behind the Regent Hotel in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

Area residents and community leaders are convinced that Machiskinic, despite her off and on battles with drug addiction, did not take her own life.

They say Machiskinic, just 22, was the latest of several women to be killed or punished in a highly public way by drug dealers who want to send a message to women about what will happen to them if they don't pay off their drug debts.

"Women get their heads shaved for a $30 drug debt, they're killed for $50," said Carol Martin of the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre.

Martin and others familiar with the area say Hispanic and native drug dealers are doing a booming business on the eastside, and that women, predominantly First Nations women, are still the primary victims of violence.

"Our women are the mules, they are sex-trade workers, they're drug-addicted, they're holding or selling drugs for dealers and they're paying with their lives, now more than ever," said Martin.

Honduran and Salvadoran dealers, doing a brisk trade Thursday just after "welfare Wednesday," boast of profits as high as $15,000 a month.

Their collection methods, if they front a woman drugs that she uses or loses, can be brutal.

"There's been a few women lately thrown out of windows, at the Balmoral, the Regent, women missing fingers, wearing wigs because their heads have been shaved," said Gladys Radek, organizer of the annual Walk 4 Justice in support of missing and murdered women in Vancouver and along the Highway of Tears.

"Whoever threw Ashley out chose the busiest time when the alley was full of people buying drugs, to make a point — don't rip us off."

Martin was one of the first to the scene after Machiskinic's death.

"I ran over to her right after she fell and she was staring straight up, just gasping her last breaths — I was totally traumatized and I've worked down here for 15 years," she said.

Eastside leaders charge that drug dealers are able to kill or maim with impunity, because Vancouver police, short of witnesses willing to come forward, write off the women's deaths as drug overdoses or suicides.

"Violence against women down here ... is worse than ever — it's at an all-time high," said Dave Dickson, a former Vancouver cop who worked in the eastside and is now a well-respected outreach worker.

"I've known Ashley since she was 15. She was an attractive, quiet young woman and there is absolutely no way on earth that she committed suicide by jumping out of a fifth-floor window of the Regent Hotel," said Dickson.

Read the rest here

Linwood House Art Experience: Welcome to the Vision

By Emma Strobell

As one of the appointed greeters for Linwood’s 4th Annual Art Experience I found myself in conversation with a medley of interesting people: from those who knew all about Linwood, to those who had never heard of us before. Throughout the day, standing under the archway, sneaking baked goods and tea as time allowed, I reflected on these meetings.

Linwood as a home is the essence of beauty, peace, and serenity, and all day it was such a privilege to invite people into just this. Like any event with any organization, this was an opportunity for LHM to share it’s vision, it’s mission. However, uniquely so, the art experience spoke for itself. Artists from up and down the coast, along with our friends from the downtown eastside, spoke much of our story and much of what we hope to invite the communities at large to participate in: hope, justice, compassion, and uncovering beauty in the unlikeliest of places. I realized this weekend what an honor it is to share such a vision, to be a part of something so much bigger than myself, bigger than even Linwood. People came hoping for a little art show, I believe they left with a little hope, inspiration, and motivation to see beauty, to see each other, and perhaps, to connect with like-minded people in the move towards a more just, a more compassionate community. With each gathering, I am reminded that we are in this journey towards justice, hope, healing together as friends, families, communities.

I know newcomers to Linwood grabbed on to this invitation… because I got to greet them and see them off.

Nina & Emma, just two of our many tireless volunteers

For more photos of the day see our Flickr site

When Words Don't Say Enough

By Jacynta Pittaway

Hope is a funny thing. Depending on the day it can be a simple or complicated thing to inspire in ourselves, let alone others. This past Saturday I had the privilege of meeting with some friends from the DTES in the Great Room. We were drawn together by common interests - art and story, our personal stories to be exact. The goal: take one of the Linwood cameras, take our theme for the day (Our Journey – Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow) and express our story through images when words don't say enough.

What unfolded throughout the day was beautiful to watch. Women’s stories slowly began to emerge as they shared the difficulty of looking into the past and the pain attached. Yet as the tears flowed around the past there was a deep sense of hope for today and for the future, a personal hope for each lady and a collective hope for cultures and societies. There was a refreshing truth expressed by different friends, an acknowledgement that as people we are hurt, and we have hurt others, but that this does not need to dictate our today or our tomorrow.

We had an awesome team join us from White Rock Community Church who provided great food and great company. Thank you so much! And to the others who showed up just to be there, the day wouldn’t have been possible without your willingness to be a part of it.

As we venture more into finding creative ways for our friends to give voice to their stories and life experiences, my hope is that a transforming experience may emerge for those creating and for those privileged to be apart of the process.

 

Introducing The Future Fund: Journeying Into a New Story

The girl effect. So many of us watched the short video clip that stirred our hearts into believing once again that change and solution for our world’s mess is possible. The girl effect is the powerful social and economic change brought about when girls have the opportunity to participate.

Linwood House Ministries would like to invite you into a new effort to bring about this very girl effect in countries around the world. We are piloting a Future Fund for women and girls to lend support so they can go to school and impact their families and communities.

We know that when a girl gets a hand up, she ultimately impacts her whole community.

In our work in the Downtown Eastside and around the world, we often connect with women who have a desire and would benefit their family and community by getting more education. Whether it’s a course, learning a trade or pursuing a degree.

This September we are coming alongside a girl in Nairobi, Kenya who is pursuing her Masters degree. She’s a friend and a sister. It fits so well with our mission: to journey with women into the hope of their story.

We sense that this might just be the beginning. We hope you will journey with us into this story.

If you would like to donate specifically to this exciting effort, please designate your gift “The Future Fund”. This category can also be found on our CanadaHelps online giving page.

ZOOM on Over to the Linwood Art Experience

Our friends at ZOOM have a teaser for the Linwood Art Experience in their September/October issue.

ZOOM is a specialty magazine showcasing life on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia through all-colour photographs of its people, places, arts and events, and it is beautiful! If you're on the Coast, be sure to pick up a copy... and to come to the Art Experience on September 19!

A Summer Work Weekend Reflection

by Jillian Fox

August opened with a flurry of activity at Linwood House as volunteers from the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island arrived to lend a hand in this summer’s projects: a new shed, and a garden patch.

I had never witnessed Linwood “at work” until this point… in fact, for two days prior to the arrival of the work party, I had enjoyed with my family a blissful two days of learning about the ministry and its mission, while also exploring Linwood House’s cavernous interior and the surrounding playground of the Sunshine Coast.

I was intrigued by the idea of Linwood from first hearing of it several years ago, when my parents became involved as volunteers through our friend and pastor’s wife. In my first few days at Linwood, I began to learn and understand what the Ministry endeavours to do, through prayer journals, missions, and journeys, for suffering women around the world. I will admit, however, a certain leeriness at first in being involved with anything that focuses predominantly on the female experience. I have never been a women’s rights activist. In fact, during my university career, I ran from any courses whose titles involved the word women coupled with problems or issues, but I wasn’t necessarily disinterested. I am, after all, a woman, but one too many feminist diatribes by literature professors had left me with a skewed view and a knot in my stomach for all the men in the class, such as my husband, who were dubbed the scourges of mankind. Nor was I entirely sure I wanted to be actively involved in a Christian ministry. My beliefs are strong, but my last experience in such an atmosphere had left me unable to hug my own own father goodnight, after a Bible camp pastor preached that men could feel and were led astray by our burgeoning womanhood, necessitating only side-ways hugs.

This, however, is not Linwood. Linwood doesn’t just talk about the plight of women, and nor do they exclude the experiences of men, but most importantly, they act in order to exact change. I immediately felt this was something I could be part of, something that would allow me, as it does others, to not just talk on a theoretical level about the issues met by faceless female and male archetypes, but rather to journey with real women and men all over the world into, as the ministry’s mission statement declares, the “hope of their stories.”

As far as Christianity goes, I have never met such wonderful ambassadors for God and Christ, and through their openness and strength I felt free and inspired, eager to be involved in something bigger than myself, to reach out and touch the world. It was a motley crew that arrived over the August long weekend, men and women from all walks of life, some with homes, some with nothing. We all had our own issues, our own joys and sorrows, and I was not excluded. But here I found what perhaps touched me the most about the Ministry: at Linwood, none of it mattered. In building the garden patch, or putting up a shed, or cooking copious amounts of food, we felt loved and supported. We were lifted out of our own problems and reached out to those around us, discovering strengths we never knew we had, building relationships. We encountered, as Linwood itself attests, “the possibility of wholeness and freedom,” and were reminded just by the undiscriminating love by which we all were met that we are worthy, beautiful individuals.

What I at first met with reservation, I now welcome with open arms. I hope to continue to my own journey with Linwood House Ministries, and pray more people can have experiences such as mine that open their eyes to the world. It is amazing how, when focusing on the lives of others, in lifting others from oppression to hope, we in turn lift ourselves.

A New Journey and A New Circle

Late in July we had the privilege of hosting an extra Journey for women in recovery at the Treatment Centre for Women at Rainer Hotel, and Onsite, a patient addiction treatment program in the downtown Eastside. These two programs are services of Vancouver Coastal Health and operated by the Portland Hotel Society, and these are new and exciting relationships for us. On Wednesday afternoon 11 beautiful women arrived at Linwood House, many new to us and to our surprise, a few who we had met before. It was great to meet friends, new and old!

Our theme was "Summer Vacation" and for three days we soaked in everything that makes vacations memorable - outdoor dining, patio barbecues, bocce ball on the lawn, collecting rocks and shells on the beach, swimming in the ocean, going into town to catch the latest movie, reading, napping, writing, and sharing little bits and pieces of our stories with each other. Everywhere you looked, friends were nestled into corners of the house resting, relaxing and doing what they knew was going to feed their souls. One friend, Paula, walked into the house and immediately sat down at the piano. She began to play the most beautiful music, and we were sure we had a concert pianist in our midst! We were even more impressed when we learned that she was self taught, and reminded again of the incredible creativity and potential that lives inside each and every woman from the downtown Eastside.

In our final women's circle we invited our friends to share about the impact of their time at Linwood House, and to reflect on one thing they were going to let go of and one thing they were going to take with them. Here is some of what they shared:

"I am taking with me, hope."

"I am taking with me a rejuvenated spirit."

"I am leaving behind a little more of my struggle to be comfortable in my own skin. I am taking with me the gift of understanding the difference between solitude and alienation. My spirit was hungry for an experience to re-establish wanting to be in recovery. This was it."

"I am leaving behind some of my negative attitudes and behaviors towards women."

"I am taking with me the reminder that it is OK to sit, be quiet and reflect on gratitude for the little things."

This was an impactful time for us all, and we look forward to future opportunities to journey with our new friends at Onsite and the Ranier Program.

~ Sue Todd

The Journey is meeting with a huge increase in interest, and our goal is to expand the program. If you would like to participate with us and donate specifically to this effort, designate your gift to "The Journey". This category can also be found on our CanadaHelps online giving page.

Raising Awareness, Building Bridges, and Making Bannock

It has been a busy summer around the Great Room, and we have been excited to see the many different ways that our space has been used.

Youth With a Mission have been hosting an awareness and education campaign about the issue of Human Trafficking in the Vancouver area, using a powerful prayer labyrinth that they created to highlight this issue. When they approached Linwood House Ministries about using the Great Room as a place to set up this interactive experience, we were more than happy to partner with them. They have hosted several evenings since then for various community groups to learn and pray for the many women, men and children being victimized through sexual exploitation here in our own city.

From July 25 to August 7, Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship hosted an urban mission trip into the downtown Eastside and asked to use the Great Room as a home base, as well as to partner with us for some of their programming during that time. We were privileged to meet with this enthusiastic group of 12 young people who were eager to learn all they could about the community and the stories of the people living there. And so on a Wednesday afternoon we gathered in the Great Room to share the story of Linwood House Ministries and our heart for our friends of the downtown Eastside. Afterward, we all went to Mission Possible for dinner and there, our friend and Radical Hostess Nina taught the group to make bannock! It was like watching a live cooking show! The students were so honoring of Nina and her traditions, and it was wonderful to see her having the opportunity to share her wisdom and her stories through her cooking.

The evening ended with us back at the Great Room for a celebration of Aboriginal culture. Nina, and another friend and Radical Hostess, Grace, shared more of their stories and what their experiences have been as First Nation's women. I can only say that it was a truly sacred time as we all were left with deeper understanding, wider compassion and a greater resolve to stand for justice for all peoples.

The day wrapped up with more conversation over the delicious bannock that the group made... a perfect ending to an awesome day of bridges built and friendships made. Check out some photos of the day below.

~ Sue Todd

See more images on our flickr site

One Bar of Soap at a Time, Part II

Sue Ann MacCara has been spearheading Linwood House's participation in the exciting partnership we highlighted yesterday. Here is her account of the first day of work...

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Monday, August 16 is a day that will be etched in my memory forever. It is the day that six women from Linwood House Ministries came together to make a difference in the world, and I had the huge privilege of being part of it! Mission Possible on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside invited Linwood House Ministries to partner with them and Clean the World to recycle used soaps from local hotels to send to developing countries to reduce the spread of disease and save lives. Saving lives around the world and creating jobs in the Downtown Eastside - what could be better?!

Mission Possible’s team had done so much work to make this happen, and those of us from Linwood House showed up on that first Monday, rolled up our sleeves, and got to work. The room was bustling with reporters, TV cameras and supporters who had all come to capture the day.

I have been journeying with Carol, Rosalyn, Grace, and Anna for a few years now, and Sandra I had met a few times on The Journey to Linwood House. Rosalyn and I have had many conversations about “who would want to employ someone like her”. She has never had a “real job” as she calls it, and has only ever worked the street. We all chatted happily as we cleaned the soaps and commented on the fact that this would be a fine job even if we never got paid!

The first two Monday shifts were done on a volunteer basis. The women were only too delighted to give of their time, knowing the difference it was going to make in the world, and wanting to return some of the love they have received from Linwood House. On our second shift, I will never forget Rosalyn’s face as she filled out her very first employment contract ever. Grace had a smile from ear to ear. Carol was beaming and Anna was dreaming about the Vespa motor scooter she is going to save up to purchase.

This year will mark six years of my own journey as part of the Linwood House Ministries team. I feel so privileged to be Linwood House's person on the ground in this partnership, right in the thick of it. I love the fact that the hotels we are partnering with are not only saving our landfills from clogging up with soaps that have been used only once or twice, but are also saving and improving the lives of people--especially children--in developing countries, and changing lives in our very own Downtown Eastside. Thank you Clean the World, thank you Mission Possible and thank you Linwood House Ministries!

I phoned each woman that Monday night to thank them and let them know how proud I was of them. One of them texted me back and said “thanks 4 sayg u proud of me never hrd it much in my life."

~ Sue-Ann MacCara

If you would like to donate specifically to this exciting work, please designate your gift “Clean The World project”. This category can also be found on our CanadaHelps online giving page.