WPU2What do the people of St. John’s want?

A pop-up farmers market. A place to tell and collect neighbourhood stories. A stage for an open air festival. For the past five months, the Wandering Pavilion team conducted extensive public engagement both in-person and online. By and large, they heard that the city needs more places that generate activity, bring people together, and help to foster a sense of community.

The Wandering Pavilion can help meet these needs because it’s small, temporary and portable. We’ll be able to test out many ideas to see what really works where. The ultimate hope is that the Wandering Pavilion will open up possibilities for permanent structures like this in the future.

The team has come up with a draft schedule of events for the summer based on what they heard from you. They’ll then collaborate with community organizations, discuss with property owners and the city and gather more feedback from you. That’s right, if you think the Wandering Pavilion should launch with the artist pop-up or if we got the locations totally wrong, give us good reasons why and we could change it. So without further ado, here’s what we came up with:

01: STORY COLLECTOR (EARLY JULY)

People kept saying they wanted the pavilion “in a place you don’t expect it.” It’ll start out split in two across the narrows. One set will be at the entrance to the East Coast trail in Fort Ahmerst, Deadman’s Bay Path. The other set will sit at the entrance to the Signal Hill trail from the Battery. Each pavilion will be equipped with something to both record and play audio. The pavilion will collect stories that will be able to be played back, even across the narrows!

02: NEW MEDIA AND MAKING (LATE JULY)

During the in-person consultations the ideas of projection and sound kept coming up. Leading up to and during the Lantern Festival in Victoria Park the pavilion will show outdoor films, be projected on, used for sound art and help out the Lantern Festival as the home base for some of their lantern making workshops. The Pool House at Victoria Park is also home to Protoshed, a makerspace which could extend out into the pavilion during this time.

03: PERFORMANCE (LATE JULY, EARLY AUGUST)

Music, puppeteering, dance, theatre, you name it! That’ll happen in Bannerman Park in and around the Folk Festival. We’ve already heard from a few community groups that want to use the pavilion, if you’d like to use it, email us with the specifics.

04: PARKING TAKEOVER, THE ARTS (MID AUGUST)

Another theme that was heard over and over again is put it in parking lots! Many parking lots in St. John’s really aren’t used to their full potential, so the arts will take over parking spots for pop-ups. We’re inviting artists and artisans to submit proposals to use one of the art pop-ups to deliver workshops and sell or display their work. At the end of the pavilion’s time for the arts it’ll convene down near the Eastern Edge Gallery and be part of the Hold Fast Festival.

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05: TAKE A REST (LATE AUGUST)

The Wandering Pavilion has been busy, it needs a break too! While some of what was heard involved lots of activity in very public places, people also said they wanted the pavilion in nature or near views. At the end of August it will go on either end of the Rennies River trail to mark the entrance of the trails and provide a rest stop for walkers or runners.

06: PARKING TAKEOVER, FOOD (EARLY SEPTEMBER)

After a successful summer of Wandering it’ll be due time for a celebration and what do we all love? Food! The Wandering Pavilion will be distributed throughout under used parking spaces in town to focus on food. The organizers want to partner with different food people to deliver workshops and sell veggies or fish. For this time, the pavilion has been strategically located to fill in the gaps between walkable and easily accessible food vendors, like grocery stores.

GET AHOLD OF THE WANDERING PAVILION

A few times during this article it was mentioned that the Wandering Pavilion team still want input, partners and people to inhabit the pavilion. You can get in touch at contact@wanderingpavilion.com or on twitter @wanderpavilion or on facebook, facebook.com/wanderingpavilion to let us know how you’d like to be involved.