With ‘Luminous Paths,’ Nanaimo looks towards a brighter future for the downtown

By HILARY ANGUS

A month-long winter arts festival encouraged Nanaimo residents to see downtown in a new light.

Luminous Paths brought art, music and activities to downtown’s Maffeo-Sutton Park to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the City of Nanaimo’s first council meeting. On its opening night on Jan. 22, the festival featured live performances, food trucks, and family-friendly interactive activities. Illuminated art installations by five local artists remained in the park until the closing event on Feb. 17.

Jaime-Brett Sine, the city’s culture coordinator, said the idea behind hosting Luminous Paths in the park was to allow people to engage with an area of town they might not otherwise go to on a dark, winter evening. Sine said a downtown park at night may be uninviting or even intimidating to many people, so the festival was intended to help people reimagine the space.

“It just felt like a really good metaphor for the light that art brings to people’s lives,” Sine said. “Especially when times are tough.”

Differing opinions

Downtown Nanaimo has been the subject of a spate of negative attention in recent years, due to what many city residents perceive to be a dramatic increase in crime and disorder from the city’s growing unhoused population. In the 2023 homelessness count, city council registered 515 individuals experiencing homelessness, an 18.9 per cent increase from 2020. But some advocates in the city say the number could be as high as 1,000, in a city with a population of 104,000.

Steven Johns, a business owner and the vice-chair of the Downtown Business Association, said much of the negative publicity around downtown is unfair.

“I think a lot of it is just fear,” Johns said. “We do have a homeless problem. Nanaimo is one of the fastest growing cities in Canada, and with growth comes growing pain. And that’s all these things are, we’re just working through.”

Luminous Paths took place alongside a broader city-led revitalization plan for downtown Nanaimo, which includes a number of construction projects that will see the refurbishing of downtown plazas, pedestrian areas and public spaces over the next several years.

Amy Ferris, co-owner of White Rabbit Coffee Co. and Black Rabbit Kitchen, said there was a noticeable uptick in families visiting downtown throughout Luminous Paths compared to other winter evenings.

“Arts and culture is the main way that we’re finding that we’re able to get people kind of out and engaged with the city,” Ferris said. “So seeing an initiative in the winter months where we see lower traffic has been really helpful and very smart of the new administration.”

But for some residents, art festivals and street redesigns are Band-Aid solutions for a much larger issue.

Broader concerns

Joe Kingdon, a nurse and Nanaimo resident, said his hesitation around the area is due to the prevalence of open drug use and “the unpredictable behaviour, the violence, that does spring out of that lifestyle.”

Kingdon used to come downtown with his family, and still occasionally does on his own, but no longer brings his children with him.

“Just seeing the decay of our social fabric, you know, people literally overdosed and comatose on the street in these very wild and zombie-looking like positions. That terrifies my one child.”

Kingdon said initiatives like Luminous Paths and street redesigns are good for people who live downtown, but will do nothing to revitalize the area without a broader societal conversation around drug policy, which he acknowledged is beyond the scope of only Nanaimo or any one festival.

“Revitalization means different things to different people,” he said. “I do have a lot of respect for some of the businesses downtown and you know, I appreciate the struggles that they’re going through. I wish them well.”

A brighter future

While Ferris acknowledges that the tension around downtown Nanaimo is still “prevalent and ongoing,” she believes the future of the area is bright.

“So much of what the city is doing is just beginning,” she said.

Ferris said she and her partner have been working with other businesses, Tourism Nanaimo and the arts community, to build a strong sense of interconnectedness in the city, “to show people who are coming from off Island that Nanaimo is interesting and it has culture and it’s worth stopping in.”

Ferris said if there is a disdain for coming downtown, it won’t encourage her and others like her to keep doing what they’re doing.

“I think the only way that we’re going to combat this is through pride of place.”