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    Vancouver Women in Focus Society fonds

    • Title:Vancouver Women in Focus Society fonds
    •    
    • Corporate Author/Creator:Vancouver Women in Focus Society.
    • Published/Created:1968-1993
    • Holdings

      • Location:RARE BOOKS & SPECIAL COLLECTIONS Where is this?
      • Call Number: RBSC-ARC-1586
      • Number of Items:2
      • Status:Available
      • Location Has:Newspapers
        Box 1-67, RM-01 to 07

      • Location:RARE BOOKS & SPECIAL COLLECTIONS audiovisualWhere is this?
      • Call Number: RBSC-ARC-1586
      • Number of Items:1
      • Status:Available
      • Location Has:SP45-01 to 02, SPC-01 to 08

      • Location:RARE BOOKS & SPECIAL COLLECTIONS mapsWhere is this?
      • Call Number: RBSC-ARC-1586
      • Number of Items:1
      • Status:Available
      • Location Has:Box 1-67, RM-01 to 07
        Newspapers

      • Location:RBSC ASRS - (Confirm availability: email rare.books@ubc.ca) Where is this?
      • Call Number: RBSC-ARC-1586
      • Number of Items:74
      • Status:c.1 Box 5 Requested
        c.1 Box 7 Requested
        c.1 Box 10 Requested
        c.1 Box 11 Requested
        c.1 Box 14 Requested
        c.1 Box 57 Requested
        c.1 Box 66 Requested
        c.1 Box 67 Requested
      • Location Has:Box 1-67, RM-01 to 07
        Newspapers

       
    • Library of Congress Subjects:Vancouver Women in Focus Society.
    • Description:9. 69 m of textual records and other material.
    • Summary:The Vancouver Women in Focus Society fonds reflect their activities in video production and distribution, gallery exhibitions, activism and lobbying, community engagement, and research. Materials include correspondence, office files, newsletters, grant applications, sales and rental records, legal documents, catalogues and bibliographies, clippings, posters and flyers, meeting minutes, books, newspaper clippings, and financial records. The fonds also contains several non-WIF records relating to feminist and women's issues, general art and film, as well as local and federal politics that reflects the context of the time and place in which Women in Focus were operating.
    • Biography/history note:The Vancouver Women in Focus Society, commonly known as Women in Focus, was established as a non-profit society in 1974 and originally started as part of the Women's Office at the University of British Columbia. The original function of the group was to "support the production of feminist video and film, and to encourage women artists in the making of images which reflected their lives and experiences." The group then further expanded out into distribution and in 1975 became the first national feminist film and video distribution centre in Canada. Women in Focus continued to grow and develop as a society by conducting video production workshops, lectures, concerts, film screenings, poetry readings, dances, and presentations on the theory and practice of feminist art. As part of its public programming mandate, Women in Focus rented out videotape production equipment and published a quarterly member newsletter called "Focus." In 1978, the group began their gallery program as an offshoot to the Vancouver Women's Film and Video Festival. The group continued to host sporadic monthly exhibitions of local women artists until 1986, when they established the Floating Curatorial Gallery as a year-round schedule of exhibitions. Women in Focus additionally had "a mandate to emphasize women's and artists' issues among public policy makers on regional, national, and international levels." As such, Women in Focus participated in and/or was a member in organizations such as: The National Action Committee on the Status of Women, the Association of National Non-Profit Artist-Run Centres, the Independent Film and Video Alliance, the Canadian Museums Association, Amnesty International, the B.C. Museums Association, the British Columbia Federation of Women, Vancouver Artists' League, Vancouver Cultural Alliance, the Canadian Conference of the Arts, the B.C. Film Industry Association and the Coalition for the Right to View. The society also organized several film festivals in Vancouver and the Fraser Valley, and attended festivals elsewhere, becoming part of an international network of feminist groups. Women in Focus was further involved in multiple projects and groups dealing with violence against women, pornography, child abuse, women's labour laws, lesbian rights, racism, education, women in politics, and women in prison. They distributed a variety of educational materials on these subjects and maintained a significant print library of books, newsletters, pamphlets, magazines and newspapers.
    • Indexes and finding aids:Online inventory available.
    • Notes:Title based on the contents of the fonds.
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