WHO WE ARE
Friends of Granville Island (FGI) is a grassroots community that advocates for Granville Island’s unique status as an urban park which is zoned for urban experimentation, innovation and the nurturing of arts & culture.
To encourage its full potential as one-of-a-kind urban public space, FGI’s mission is to help ensure that Granville Island is accessible, equitable and inclusive for local and global communities, toward creating a community-led ‘People’s Place,’ where urban experimentation, innovation, and arts & culture thrive.
We respectfully acknowledge that the land known as a7ermitsut or Granville Island is the current, ancestral and traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the xÊ·mÉ™θkÊ·É™yÌ“É™m, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and SÉ™lÌ“ílwÉ™taɬ Nations. We are grateful to be living, working, gathering, celebrating and organizing together on this land.
Huy ch q’u (Thank you in Hul’q'umi'num)!​
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Friends of Granville Island is committed to meaningful reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples, in particular the xÊ·mÉ™θkÊ·É™yÌ“É™m, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and SÉ™lÌ“ílwÉ™taɬ Peoples.
WHAT MAKES GI SPECIAL?
In the early 1970s, Granville Island was a largely derelict wasteland - but some Vancouver locals found that the abandoned buildings could offer mixed-use, affordable rents for experimental businesses. The public embraced this creative and cultural re-use of 'Industrial Island', and with public input and visionary foresight it was designated by the Government of Canada as the site for re-development, as a multi-use “People’s Place” or “urban park”- terms that were coined specifically for the use of this 42-acres of land.
WHAT WE DO
“Granville Island is a zone of public possibility. It bridges our history with our collective creative potential. It is a place to escape the expected.”