Over the past 6 months the VALU team has been working on transitioning entirely to what we enjoy doing best:

collaborative creative work with the community we work in

We came together as a small group of artists in 2018 to transform labour practices within the arts and cultural sector. In 2019, we incorporated VALU COOP as a brand new artists workers cooperative and in 2020 we received an international charter from IATSE to form our new labour union the Arts and Cultural Workers Union (ACWU) IATSE Local B778.

Our projects were officially launched at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic: one of the worst times to launch a community focused enterprise that centred on in-person relationships and interactions. Over the past 4 years we’ve seen 100’s of artists come through our doors and take on flexible and living wage production work through our production studio in Chinatown. Our union was officially recognized by the BC Labour Relations Board and we supported creative workers at a number of non-profit arts organizations organize into the union.

The reality of operating a commercial production studio through a global pandemic and through multiple waves of core worker teams has been a challenge for the founding members. In September of 2022 the core workers of VALU came together and voted to formally shift the co-op to focus solely on “VALU Community Projects” to do what we love doing best: creative projects embedded with community. Our core mandate is to cultivate projects that serve community needs.

On International Workers Day, launched with a new commissioned window display by Kyla James Yin, as a part of the re-launched Mayworks BC Festival that highlights the history of labour and cooperative organizing in Chinatown.

We have formally transferred our commercial print shop operations to the Union Cooperative Initiative - UCI (UCI), a new multi-stakeholder non-profit cooperative building an economy that is good for people and the planet. The UCI is a cooperative developer and incubator helping workers and their unions build community focused union coops.

The UCI has launched a new Collective Print Shop operating under the same ethic and values as the founding members of VALU set out to achieve. Our union, the ACWU, continues to organize and support arts workers across North America.

Our VALU community arts projects will continue to operate out of our old studio at 525 Carrall Street in the Lim Sai Hor Kow Mok Benevolent Association Building, working in solidarity with the elders and our neighbours through the new UCI Cooperative Development Centre and community projects studio.

We will begin to transition our social media and online presence towards the community projects and will keep all of our historical legacy documents available for other cultural workers looking to build union cooperative development projects in their communities.

Please reach out to info@valucoop.ca to connect with our community projects working group, info@unionci.ca for all of your print needs, and president@acwu.ca to connect with the Arts and Cultural Workers Union.