The following article is condensed from an interview with Liz Solo about their recollections on the rise and fall of the Independent Artists Cooperative.
JE Solo Recalls the Independent Artist Cooperative (2,002-2,011)
In 2002, I was searching for a space to house an installation and performance artwork. At the time, the City Arts Coordinator was Kay Anonsen, and I approached her to ask whether the City of St. John’s had any available spaces. Kay brought me around to a few community centres and finally to a building on 2–4 Symes Bridge Road, down by the river in the Waterford Valley.
The City’s intention for the building was in limbo. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the City had acquired it from a man named James Crane—not by purchase, but by taking it in lieu of unpaid taxes.
The James Crane Story
Years earlier, when the road up to the Southside Hills was being built, the City constructed a retaining wall directly against Jim Crane’s property. The wall prevented the hillside from collapsing onto his house, but it also retained water, effectively flooding his home.
Crane entered into years of correspondence with the City of St. John’s, seeking compensation. When no resolution came, he stopped paying his property taxes. He grew old and infirm, and the City eventually seized his home for back taxes.
At the time, Mayor Andy Wells—an outspoken champion of the environmental group Friends and Lobbyists of the Waterford River (FLOW)—announced publicly that the building would be “generously donated” to the group. The organization was caught off guard; they had made no such agreement. The house was structurally compromised, in need of major maintenance, and subject to the ongoing flooding issue.
The City presented FLOW with a contract that required FLOW to assume full responsibility for repairs—an impossible burden for a small volunteer group. They declined to sign, but since the Mayor had already announced the gift in the press, they moved into the house anyway. For years, the Friends and Lobbyists of the Waterford River remained in a tense stalemate with the City, until the building eventually became too much for them to manage.
Founding the Independent Artist Cooperative
That’s where I came in. When I first saw the building, it was clear it wouldn’t suit my planned exhibit. But it did offer something else: a potential hub for artists. Its layout included small rooms that could serve as studios, and larger ones perfect for jam space—a long-standing tradition in St. John’s where multiple bands share rehearsal resources. There was a great need for workspace for artists in the city, a crisis that continues to this day, and this looked like a real opportunity. Kay spoke with the City and they issued a call for Expressions of Interest in potential arts uses for the building.
Naive to the house’s troubled history, and with Kay Anonsen’s support, I drafted a detailed proposal on behalf of the Independent Artists Cooperative. The City was asked to consider multiple options including: selling us the building for $1; providing an interest-free payment arrangement so we could pay it off over time; or leasing it to us at $1 per year and then selling it to us for $1 once renovations were completed. The proposal was accepted and the City chose the third option—lease it to us for $1 a year and then sell it to us for a dollar when the renovations were done. Instead of reflecting this in a contract, the City presented us with the same lease that FLOW had refused—a month-to-month lease that made us responsible for the building, but did not reflect or mention any commitments from the City.
In good faith, because we still had trust, we took the deal and the Independent Artist Cooperative (IAC) moved in to the building. The co-op had been co-founded in 2,002 by a group of St. John’s artists to address the lack of viable workspace in St. John’s. The founding board was: Liz Solo/me (performance artist/musician), Janis Spence (writer, director), Mike Kean (musician), Colleen Power (musician), Jody Richardson (writer, actor, musician), Paul Herridge (promoter), Susan Kent (actress, writer) and Annie Ferncase (potter). Membership was kept accessible—just $5—and the space was open to artists of all disciplines.
We hit the ground running. Bands moved into the jam space, writers took offices, potters and actors set up studios, and community events flourished. We shared our resources to pay the bills and to maintain and clean up the building and grounds. We accessed funding and created new projects: The Atlantic Basin Project (a digital exhibit featuring international projects), Graffiti Dreams (a graffiti workshop), and Rock School for Girls (a skills sharing initiative) the first of its kind ever in the country. Our cooperative served hundreds of artists and dozens of bands.
New entities took root and grew at the co-oop: Rock and Roll Records, a collectively-run label that released 12 records in a short span; the Chromatose Anymation Festival, a video festival showcasing work created with emerging technologies; and the Rock Can Roll Independent Music and Media Festival, which was a runaway success, showcased hundreds of artists, both local and International, and ran for five years.
The First Stone
Early in our first year, we were approached by David Fong on behalf of the Quidi Vidi Brewing Company. Inspired by our independent spirit, they offered to support our renovation project. As an independent brewery, they saw a natural connection between their work and that of our artists. Together, we developed a large-scale fundraiser: Rocktoberfest, a Celebration of Independence—a music festival showcasing independent bands in the city alongside products from Quidi Vidi Brewing Company and Rodriguez Wine Vaults. For the brewery, it was both a promotional opportunity and a way to give back to the community while celebrating independence. They even pledged to donate profits from ticket and bar sales to the IAC. By our estimates, the Independent Artists Cooperative stood to earn over $40,000.
We followed all required protocols with the City of St. John’s to host the event in Bannerman Park in Fall 2002, consulting with the Events Planning Committee, the Fire Department, and our insurance agent. Rocktoberfest was officially approved at a public City Council meeting, and we began booking bands and making arrangements. This single initiative would have put us well on our way to meeting our renovation budget.
But shortly after the approval, Quidi Vidi Brewing Company received a call from the City’s Events Planning Committee informing them that Rocktoberfest had been cancelled at a private City Council meeting. The fallout was significant. Quidi Vidi withdrew, and we lost time and money invested in the planning. To make matters worse, soon afterwards, the Peace-A-Chord Festival—an event of deep historical and cultural importance to many of our members—was also removed from Bannerman Park.
The City as Adversary
Despite all of our well-documented successes, the City of St. John’s was an obstacle at every turn. Mayor Andy Wells was still smarting from his botched public announcement years earlier and resented our presence in the building. Further to that, I had been an outspoken critic of Andy Wells, especially when he tried to pass a draconian by-law banning show posters and the sharing of information via paper within the city limits. His by-law was in conflict with the Canadian Human Rights Code and with the help of a few high profile publicity initiatives, it was defeated. When Wells lost that fight, I became one of the many people on his hit list.
For a time, Councillor Shannie Duff was a supportive voice, but the atmosphere at City Hall was pretty toxic. It was dominated by the usual bullies, evident at City Council meetings but much worse behind the scenes—particularly from Wells and others like Art Puddister. I was told by insiders that Andy Wells frequently went on tirades through the building, threatening peoples’ jobs and generating fear. As I learned the hard way, public statements by politicians rarely reflected their actual intentions or actions; decisions are personal, not civic-minded; and most decisions are made behind closed doors.
The Lost Grant
To this day, government funding for capital costs for any arts purpose is almost non-existent. In 2005, we managed to secure commitments for a Cultural Spaces Canada grant that would have covered major capital costs—repairs, soundproofing, structural upgrades, and new equipment—amounting to over a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. Cultural Spaces Canada were concerned about the City’s lack of commitment on paper and, unbeknownst to us, they sent a representative, Michelle Haire, to talk to City Council to encourage them to support the project with real dollars. All CSC needed was a $40,000 commitment from the City to unlock the federal funds.
The City Council held their vote in private, not at a public City Council meeting. With Shannie Duff out of town, the council split evenly. The tie gave Andy Wells the deciding vote. He voted no. His personal grudges outweighed the needs of the arts community.
Without the City’s contribution, we lost the Cultural Spaces Canada grant. In the ultimate gas-lighting move, the City then turned around and ordered us to upgrade the building within 60 days or face eviction—an impossible task without the lost funding.
We Need the Deed
We staged a small We Need The Deed protest outside City Hall. It was maybe twelve of us, standing there with our signs. The city had gotten wind of it, so they actually had cops stationed there—watching us like we were some kind of threat.
I’ll never forget that Shannie Duff came shuffling out of City Hall in her house slippers—I’m serious—and she just looked so defeated. That had nothing to do with us, though, and everything to do with the toxic atmosphere inside the building. She mumbled a few words about that’s it, there’s nothing I can do, and she turned and went back into City Hall.
I was reminded of one occasion when myself and Jenny Naish had arranged an 11th hour meeting with councillors Ron Ellsworth and Art Puddister in an attempt to lobby for support. A clerk ushered us into a tiny conference room. There was a large round table with a few chairs, far to big to fit comfortably into the room, and in the centre of the table there was a giant plate of cookies. Ellsworth came in first, slid around the walls and took a seat.
He started eating cookies and kicked off the conversation with “I’m telling you right now, you’re not getting it. So just forget about it.” Puddister entered shortly afterwards and the ensuing conversation was so triggering that I can barely remember any details except that the meeting ended with me leaning across the table, feeling very flustered and betrayed, and saying, “The day I ever get in bed with you again, Art Puddister, will be the day I die.”
We joke about that to this day.
Eviction and Collapse
In the end, we were evicted. Our building was hundreds of feet from the nearest resident but, to our shock, once the blood was in the water, the locals started circling. Someone went around the neighbourhood with a petition against us. In the end, the petition had very few signatures and was signed by people’s children and even by their pets, (think “Rover Wiseman” and “Mittens Chafe”), yet it was used against us by the City of St. John’s. Their complaints were absurd—chief among them that musicians were seen carrying beer into rehearsals. It was, in a word, surreal.
We’d been in the building for four years and never once had received a noise complaint, or any complaint at all. We stayed within the noise bylaws, never caused trouble. Meanwhile, we were offering free programs, serving scores of bands, running programs and workshops, bringing beautiful things into the world. All we saw was that we were doing good work and we just didn’t realize that in the hills around us, a nasty hostility was brewing.
For the small group holding the co-op together—maybe three or four of us at that point—it was brutal. When the news of our eviction got out, the vultures circled. People started calling the co-op office, misunderstanding the situation and trying to scam us for the building. Worse than that, other artists stood by and watched us go down. Artists that I knew, (now ex) colleagues, drove by the building, slowly, pointing, while we were still working inside. One day we looked out the window and saw someone measuring the property. Many watched us flounder, and they did not extend a hand.
Changing Funding Models
In the end, we threw up our hands, cut our losses, and moved out. Eventually, the City tore down the building and sold the land for a healthy sum, likely their intention all along. We rented a studio in the Baird Buildings on Water Street and configured it as a rehearsal and presentation space. The Independent Artists Cooperative carried on for another seven years, but it was never the same. The final turning point came with shifts in how governments funded the arts.
Previously, we had been able to link municipal, provincial, and federal support to provide programs and services. We had even received funding from unlikely sources, such as Agriculture and Agri-Foods Canada, which at the time had grants that supported co-operatives. With creativity and persistence, we could piece together enough resources to serve the wider arts community.
But in the late 2000s, funding models began to change. Arts-based groups were increasingly required to define themselves as “service organizations” in order to qualify for programming support. Within a few years, entities like ours—artist-run, grassroots, and interdisciplinary—no longer fit the criteria. We were only eligible for project grants, which could support one-off artistic initiatives but not the ongoing programs, education, and community services we had built our cooperative around.
The shift was devastating. We could easily run a communal jam space by sharing resources, but without program funding, we could no longer sustain our programs and services. Our ability to offer workshops, supports, and free community programming was cut off at the root. Without those resources to offer, we had little to attract or retain members.
From Cooperative to Collective
At the last IAC meeting, only three of us showed up—myself, Mike Kean, and Marcel Levandier, also known as our band The Black Bags. It was clear the cooperative could not continue in its original form.
We made the decision and went about formally dissolving the Independent Artist Cooperative. We redefined Rock Can Roll as an artist’s collective. We named the collective after ourselves, and RCR became the BBMC (Black Bag Media Collective). In 2017, the BBMC relocated out of St. John’s to Toronto and the collective continues to make an impact on the international art scene in music, VR, and emerging technologies.
BBMC kicks ass to this day.
Though the Independent Artists Cooperative ended in hardship, its legacy lives on in the BBMC—in the work it enabled, and in the lessons it taught about resilience in the face of treachery, about the fragility of artist-led spaces, and about the political and economic obstacles that undermine the good work of community-driven initiatives.
