Welcome to The Hub Nanaimo, your weekly insider guide to the best of community arts and culture. Did a friend forward this email to you? Subscribe to this newsletter.

One of the things that sets The Discourse Nanaimo apart from our sister outlets in the Cowichan and Comox Valleys is that our founding reporter Julie Chadwick took her love of the local arts and music community and turned it into a standalone email newsletter called The Hub, which we publish every Tuesday.

I cut my teeth as a young journalist many years ago covering the vibrant independent music and punk rock scene when I lived in Calgary, even producing an early email newsletter similar to The Hub where I rounded up local shows. This was back when the main way you found out about shows was either word of mouth, seeing posters up in the local record shop or being handed a flyer outside a show you were at. I even remember at one point the Justabunchokids collective that organized a lot of the all ages shows in the city had a voicemail you could call to get the details on upcoming shows.

So when I had the opportunity to continue Julie’s work covering Nanaimo’s artists, I jumped at it. I love collecting local listings for The Hub each week and am so lucky that local artists, musicians and poets have spent time talking with me and, at times, sharing quite personal parts of their lives with me and our readers.  

Here are a few of the standout arts stories that we published in 2024. I hope you enjoy reading them as we enter a new year. 

Q&A: MJ McGregor speaks their TRUTH

Raised in a secretive religion, local artist MJ McGregor uses music to find and form a new identity.

Nanaimo’s Backyard Fest is back on

Two-day backyard festival that celebrates local musicians and artists saved by ‘working together,’ says organizer.

Proposal to cut VIU’s music programs called ‘reductive and short-sighted'

As the university searches for ways to address its deficit, proponents of music education say these cuts aren’t the answer.

Vintage film offers a glimpse into the dreamy world of 1960s Nanaimo

After finding a trove of his father’s 8mm films, Paul Wende made it his mission to give them new life.

Q&A: Nanaimo’s poet laureate Neil Surkan on the radical act of reflection

Surkan explains how Nanaimo’s outdoors inform his poetry and his goal as the new poet laureate for 2024-2026.

See you around town,

— Mick and The Discourse team

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