Comrades, Co-Conspirators, Cuddlies,
We’ve had a packed spring event season starting with the annual Cover Band Show and All Black Everything in February, along with dance parties, poetry readings, and workshops, all on top of our regularly scheduled programming. We want to give a huge thank you and shout out to everyone who comes to our events and supports the work we do at Estevan Park. We’ve been held so well by our community’s support this spring. We’re also acknowledging that we should have been prioritizing neighborhood outreach from the beginning, but we just didn’t have the capacity and funding. For our neighbors who have felt like they were in the dark, we’d love to be in better touch. It is our intention, and just know that we’re always open to feedback and conversation if you’d like to reach out.
This spring we’ve seen ourselves getting so caught up in event planning – and sometimes the labor required to book, plan, and execute events detracts from our ability to show up and serve our community in the way we want to. We are a very small team of dedicated folks, each working between 15 and 40 hours a week. Our goal with our events is to create a safe, welcoming, and inclusive community hub, as well as fundraise for our outreach and support work at Estevan Park and for housing justice in general. Over the next few months we’ll be scaling back our event schedule in order to take stock and find a balance of what works, what we have capacity for, what is truly aligned with our mission, and what needs to fall away in order to make room for other projects to bloom.
One big development is that Splinter went up for our liquor license recently. This is something we’ve been working towards for over a year now, and it’s such an excitement and relief to be nearing the finish line. While we’ve been waiting for it to be approved, we’ve been applying for special event liquor licenses for our events that have a bar, which has meant a lot of additional admin work and money to prepare for events. Having an official liquor license will alleviate a lot of stress behind the scenes, and will hopefully be a means of raising more money at events to put back into our projects. It’s never all that simple though. Some folks in the neighborhood have taken issue with the prospect of Splinter having a liquor license, specifically citing our proximity, and involvement with the encampment at Estevan Park as grounds for their letters of protest. It’s really hard to do a big thing, and it is particularly hard to do a big thing like creating a safer community space, creating an accessible space, creating a queer and BIPOC focused space, and make everyone happy. We understand this, and we expect the detractors. The main reason we’re able to absorb so much backlash and criticism for the work we do, is because we also have so many people telling us to keep going. So many people who see our hearts, and see the effort we pour into our work and our community who want to celebrate it. If you do anything big, anything loud, anything impactful, there will always be someone telling you you’re fucking up. You’re not doing enough, or not going about it the right way. Sometimes, that may be true. But hey, all we can do is our best. And we do. We put all of our energy, our love, our tears and our joy into our work because we know this is it, this is the fight we’re meant to be fighting. This is what’s important. We are so unbelievably grateful for the encouragement, the kudos, and the support we see from our community.
If you want us to get approved for a liquor license (which will help Splinter remain sustainable long term), one way that you could express that is by writing to Ward One and letting them know! Community feedback really goes a long way with this kind of thing. If you want to write to them, but aren’t sure what to say, we made a little sample email that you are more than welcome to use as a jumping off point. Find it here.
Many folks at the city, and in particular Ward One, have also shown up for us in this struggle. Mx Lane Santa Cruz, our city councilperson and their office of peers – largely BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ and etc have been doing their best to do their jobs in the difficult space of the institution with heart, intention and shared values. We reserve the right to hold them accountable but also want to shout them out for their support and willingness to listen as we deal with the housing crisis.
One last thing, before we jump to event details and other updates: we have decided to try a new approach in regards to support for the folks living at camp. We are hoping to channel some of our funding into rental housing for folks who don’t have access to subsidized housing programs through the city. We are ideally looking for a 3+ bedroom house, but are also interested in ADUs, apartments, and any other leads. If you or someone you know has a rental property or ADU, and is interested in joining the fight for housing for all, please send us an email! We’d love to hear from you.
We’re not going anywhere, really, but we will be much quieter for June, July, and August. Since our space is outdoors, the heat and monsoons are a pretty good reason to take a break and spend more time planning for the fall. That being said, there will be select workshops happening in the studio space, and maybe a dance party here and there. Maybe. If you got this far, thanks for reading, we can’t wait to see you.