Become a Thistle Member or Supporter !

The Purple Thistle is now in its fifth year! And it really feels like we have hit our stride.
We run a big warehouse space on the Eastside for youth aged 15-25 that is a resource centre, with books, zines, great computer lab, darkroom, art supplies, animation lab, bike fixing stuff and much else. We also run a whole series of classes and workshops: life drawing, photography, animation, filmmaking, magazine publishing and lots else.
And it’s all free!

We also work with lots of other local groups and projects, often sharing our space, with folks like Brenda Carr’s Art Studio, the BYRC, Pedal Play, Mad Skillz, the Colouring Book, AMES, and the Interurban. We have many more collaborations in the works right now, and are always open to new projects.

All our money up this point has come directly from grants: HRDC, the Vancouver Foundation, the City of Vancouver, Industry Canada, VanCity, the John Hardie Mitchell Foundation, BC Hydro, Arts Now and others.

We have never really gone out and looked for individual donations before but we are trying to develop a membership and supporter base so that we aren’t so totally dependent on grants. So we are going to friends of the Thistle, people who we can ask to support our work, people who might be willing to help us out.
We really don’t operate on all that much money and virtually our entire budget goes to operations. The Thistle is operated by a volunteer youth collective and we hire one part-time youth coordinator. All the rest of our money goes to rent, utilities, paying
mentors to run classes, supplies and materials.

So we are hoping we can get a bunch of people to become members or supporters. You can pay via PayPal, cheque or cash.

Anybody who donates anything over twenty bucks will get a Charitable Tax Receipt from our sponsor Arts In Action, so please make your cheques out to them.

$20 makes you a member - we’ll send you bi-annual updates on our work and invite you to all Thistle events and shows (like the Culture Crawl)

$50 makes you a supporter – the above, but we’ll also send you a package of selected zines and magazines.

$100 and up makes you a genuine superhero – all of the above, plus we’ll be so grateful your karma will surely be all squared away for at least a year.

Please make cheques out to: Arts In Action, c/o #260 – 975 Vernon Dr., Vancouver, BC, V6A-3P2

-Or-
Pay directly using one of the PayPal options here:

Or use the following link to specify your own amount:

However you do it, make sure to fill in your name, address and email so we can stay in contact with you. Thanks so much!!