We are pleased to announce the latest cohort of projects funded through our long-running Neighbourhood Matching Fund (NMF). Together, these seven new projects will help build community connections through art, gardening, and environmental stewardship.
Since 1994, the NMF has provided funding and support for community-led projects that showcase and celebrate the unique character of Vancouver’s neighbourhoods. The NMF awards up to $10,000 in matching contributions, including in-kind donations and volunteer labour to each successful group.
Projects that received funding
These projects have received funds to further their work and enhance Vancouver’s vibrant park system:
- Cottonwood Community Garden will develop a self-guided walking tour focusing on urban agriculture production in the community garden at Strathcona Park.
- Free the Fern Stewardship Society will integrate place-based learning (ecology, art, and Indigenous teachings) in the process of creating a native food forest on Red Alder Trail in South Vancouver.
- Maps, Medicines, and Meadows: Tending Together Replenishing with the Land project, sponsored by Hives for Humanity, will continue its work to restore native species to the berry patch at Beaconsfield Park. This project structures practices of tending, harvesting, and gifting to replenish collaborative relations by sharing participants’ skills, stories, and communities through shared care for the land.
- Collingwood Neighbourhood House Society was awarded funds to revamp the Joyce Street community banners. This intercultural and intergenerational art-based project will bring seniors and youth together to create banners, which will be installed in the neighbourhood. Participants will share stories of belonging through art-making as inspiration for the banners.
- Stanley Park Bog Restoration, sponsored by Stanley Park Ecology Society, will focus on the restoration of the small bog at Stanley Park’s Beaver Lake and enhancement of surrounding wetland habitat.
- Still Moon Arts Society will build an artistic cob garden shed with the community that will serve as storage for hoses and gardening tools and a surface for art on the exterior walls.
- Medicine Wheel Mosaic, organized by Vancouver Urban Food Forest Foundation, will be installed in Oxford Park. A circular wading pool which is no longer in use will be transformed into a community-created medicine wheel mosaic design.
Apply for the Neighbourhood Matching Fund
If you have a creative project that would actively involve your local community and build neighbourhood connections, we want to hear from you.
Applications for the next round of NMF funding will begin in the spring.