It’s lights out for the darkroom at the Dunbar Community Centre.
Despite a petition to save the small photo-printing lab in the basement of the West Side community centre, the darkroom will close after the end of the fall programming session.
Because too few people sign up for classes and buy monthly memberships to use the dedicated, single-use space, the Dunbar board of directors decided the windowless room will be repurposed, possibly for storage, though its future remains undecided.
“We would be overjoyed if the darkroom was bursting at the seams,” says Kathy Mullen, the vice-president of the Dunbar Community Centre Association. “That would be a really good news story in Vancouver, where these [darkroom] facilities are few and far between. We can’t keep throwing more money at it when there are just not many users. It means we have to put our efforts elsewhere, which is sad.”
Low turnout is measured in foot traffic and class attendance, says Mullen.
Only two people are registered with a monthly membership, which costs $55 for unlimited access to the darkroom during regular operating hours. In the past 15 months, the majority of programming was cancelled because of low interest, says Gerald Massing, the president of Dunbar’s board of directors.
“We are running a 50 to 60 per cent cancellation rate on the darkroom, which is higher than we have in other areas,” he explains.
Mullen says the darkroom was promoted in the community centre’s monthly programming guide.
The Dunbar community centre was built in the ‘50s and is one of the oldest in Vancouver. Mullen said the floorplan is not as flexible as more modern centres and is limited by many small, closed-off rooms, including an unused and otherwise useless apartment once lived in by an on-site caretaker.
She could not say with certainty when the darkroom opened, but it may have been when the centre was last renovated in the 1980s.
Photographer August Bramhoff started an online petition at Change.org, asking that the darkroom remain open. She runs the orientation sessions and also instructs classes, both for which she is paid. She also volunteers additional time to maintain the space.
Mullen is sympathetic to the remaining users, and especially Bramhoff, but says paying to keep the darkroom open could no longer be justified.
“We’ve tried a number of different ways to bring people in. The reality is the market is just shrinking and shrinking,” she says. “Our role is to bring in as many people in to the community centre and offer as wide and varied programing that the community wants as we can. As a board, we look at what is being offered, who is coming in and for what programs. We bring in new programs and we try new things. We listen to our patrons when they are saying what they want and don’t want. We look at this on an ongoing assessment.”
Mullen said she was sympathetic to Bramhoff’s concern and effort to protect the darkroom.
“She puts a lot into this and really cares about it. For her, it is professional and it is personal,” said Mullen. “We think we’ve given it a really good try and we wish it was successful.”
With the closure of the Dunbar darkroom, the West End will be the site of the last remaining community centre darkroom in Vancouver.
– Story courtesy of the Vancouver Courier
