Books, teas, and cats: KPU alumna launches new East Vancouver arts space

Franz Seachel describes their new arts space, Enabling Arts, as a “gathering space for creative folks to do cool shit.”

Located at 343 Railway St. in East Vancouver, Enabling Arts opened on March 7 as a place for artists, readers, collectors, and cat lovers. 

Seachel is a Kwantlen Polytechnic University creative writing alumna. Since graduating, she has done everything from spoken-word music to selling her ceramics at farmers markets. 

While Enabling Arts is a venture they’ve been working on since October, Seachel says they have always wanted to have their own space and run their own business.

From books to teas, Enabling Arts sells a range of local goods.

“We’re really focused on creative wellness and what you would want on a cozy self-care day,” Seachel says.

“One of my favourite things in the store is The Lineages of Change Tarot deck by adrienne maree brown. It has a lot of words of wisdom from really prolific Black and brown writers and activists, like Audre Lorde and James Baldwin.”

Enabling Arts also has a “very curated” book selection with five sections: transformative justice, mind care, natural world, cats, and poetry.

“[The book sections] tie into our interests and ideas of wellness and what it means to be in community,” Seachel says. “The cats are honestly just because I love cats. I think Vancouver doesn’t have a space for cat lovers, like you can find dog things everywhere and anywhere.”

Though no cat roams the space, Enabling Arts has a “stay-at-home feline division.” From a cat nap coordinator to a garbage inspector, Berry, Bok Choy, Bonzo, Luna, and Wilson keep people on their paws.

Seachel says 84 per cent of Enabling Arts’ vendors are Canadian, with 67 per cent based in B.C. and 46 per cent from the Lower Mainland.

She adds it was always part of the plan for her to support local artisans and producers when selecting products for Enabling Arts.

“As someone who was a local maker doing the market hustle for a long time, I know how exhausting picking up and packing all your shit, vending in a market for six hours, and then doing that a lot of times over the year can be.”

Seachel used to work at non-profit creative studio and bookstore Upstart and Crow, which they partnered with for their bookselling.

Upstart and Crow runs free events, including writing workshops, lecture series, and lots of work surrounding climate justice and Indigenous Peoples, Seachel says.

“All of our book sales go to helping them as a non-profit bookstore fund other creative projects,” she says. “It’s cool that we also get to support that work through our sales.”

Apart from selling bath products, teas, and books, Enabling Arts is a community hub for artists, authors, and local artisans to host events. 

Seachel used to struggle to find a space to host events, but with the opening of Enabling Arts, it means they don’t have to.

The space has already housed its first poetry open mic on March 19, with a second open mic scheduled for April 16. 

Enabling Arts takes its name from Enable: Arts Society, a non-profit Seachel founded after graduating. She says she created the organization because fellow artists needed access to funding to support themselves. 

“There’s a lot of cool people I knew who wanted to do cool shit, but none of us had money to do stuff,” Seachel says.“We’re all full-time artists, so [paying] people is really important — and not just scraps, but paying wages [so] we can actually afford to do this full-time.”

With Enabling Arts, they say they just want people to hang out, take a breath, relax, and reset.

“It almost feels like part of the evolution, part of the journey of being an artist who really does believe in the power of community.”

For more information about the space, visit www.enablingarts.com.