FlagWalk.ca

FlagWalk Commemorative Poster

2010-02-17T18:47:00.000-08:00

The FlagWalk Commemorative Poster is available from the South Granville BIA office for $15 each. Full colour flag decals of the 83 countries from February 2010 in celebration of international friendship. Comes with a durable travel/mailing tube. A great souvenir for yourself and a wonderful gift for family and friends.

The South Granville Business Improvement Association is pleased to direct all profits from the sale of these posters to support the Arts Club Theatre Company, a not-for-profit arts organization. South Granville is home to the historic Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage which not only serves as the main stage for the Arts Club Theatre Company, but also serves as the cultural heart of the community.

FlagWalk Follower

2010-02-07T22:43:00.000-08:00

If you’ve been anywhere near Yaletown or South Granville anytime in the past few months, you’ve probably seen the FlagWalk decals on the sidewalks. FlagWalk involves more than 450 flag emblems from approximately 80 countries participating in the Winter Olympics placed on sidewalks between the two neighborhoods.

FlagWalk also has a spinoff project: buttons! Read More

An Interesting Perspective

2010-01-18T17:37:00.000-08:00

Performing Vancouver comments on FlagWalk.
Read more here

FlagWalk is about peace and friendship

2009-12-26T12:33:00.000-08:00

Another call from Annette. Am I sitting down? (she is laughing at this point) Who is left to be offended now? An Indonesian Trade Official has called wondering why they are NOT on the sidewalk and how can they be included. We laughed and asked how quickly they could qualify a bobsled team!

I don’t know where we are going to end up with all this. We figure we should go work for the UN! I must confess that there are moments when we start to feel a little beat up and disillusioned. Between thefts and requests for removal we won’t have any countries left on the FlagWalk by the time the Opening Ceremonies start! We hope to add a new round of decals in early January to celebrate the most recent qualifying countries and will do our best to navigate the sense and sensibility minefield we find ourselves in.

FlagWalk is about peace and friendship – nothing more... nothing less. Hopefully those aspirations will prevail.

I will keep you posted as to how we are doing.

What happened to friendship?

2009-12-24T01:03:00.000-08:00

This past week, we had a letter from the Indian Consul who received a complaint from an Indian citizen suggesting that a depiction of a flag on a sidewalk was in contravention of Indian flag protocol. The Consul had not personally seen the installation and did not return my numerous phone calls but simply wanted the decals removed immediately. How do we balance that concern against the Indo Canadian resident or athlete that is bursting with pride that her country is along side the rest of the world in a celebration of inclusiveness and friendship?

A Muslim resident was concerned that the Iranian flag has a depiction of the word Allah as a centre emblem. That emblem was now on the ground and that was considered highly disrespectful. This effort was about peace and friendship... so without further need for discussion Iran has been respectfully removed from our route.

But then it got political. Taiwan participates in the Olympics as Chinese Taipei. We received a very polite email from the VANOC Protocol Department advising us that we were using the wrong symbol for Chinese Taipei – could we please fix it immediately. Apparently, there is some agreement between China and the IOC for Taiwan to participate under its own national banner but it can’t be their flag. Can we please rectify by using a decal that has a blue flower like symbol with the Olympic rings on it. We told the very nice gentleman from VANOC that we were not allowed to use the Olympic rings under any circumstance because of brand infringement. Choosing to display the national symbol of Taiwan seemed the appropriate action on our part. We did however, take the cue from CTV and refer to it as Chinese Taipei. As an interesting footnote… CTV has now bowed to a request from VANOC (who thanked us for the heads up) and changed the Taipei symbol on its website to the flower and rings after a year of it being the Taiwanese flag.

Within 24 hours of the request from VANOC to remove Chinese Taipei, we receive an email from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Vancouver wondering why we are not referring to Chinese Taipei as Taiwan. This time we get to say that if they are required to use the word Taipei in their formal title for political reasons, how should we be any different – given sensitivities around the subject. Next we get a call from an unidentified Chinese Official. Not only does he want Taiwan removed, he mentions Nepal! (I ask myself... should we throw in Hong Kong while we’re at it?) All these ‘offended’ and ‘offensive’ countries may or may not actually field an athlete at the 2010 Games! Can you hear my very large sighs? This is about friendship... right?

This required another glass of wine. What do we do? Annette and I told each other to step back from the edge and remember why we did this in the first place. What would it feel like for a new Canadian or visiting athlete to see his or her county along side the rest of the participating countries in a display of pride and friendship and peace. That was the end of discussion.

It was a great moment when Jeff Lee from the Sun sent a note telling us that we needed another decal – Ghana had just qualified a skier known as the Snow Leopard. How delighted we were to add his country to the route. Within days I had a merchant call trying to figure out what country was out in front of his store. When I said Ghana and told him about the skier his response was ‘wow, that’s great... I am going to cheer for Ghana and the Snow Leopard’. Faith in humanity quietly returns. Thank you.

Sense and Sensibilities

2009-12-23T07:10:00.000-08:00

During the months of FlagWalk preparations we had numerous concerns thrown our way... many were purely operational like Coefficient of Friction (say that 3 times really fast) or approvals required from VANOC and the City. Then there were United Nation types of concerns.

What about Palestine? (The last time we checked they do not have a Winter Olympic team). What about the GLBTQQ flag? (For those who are as daft as I was… it stands for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Questioning) We got that question put to us from a current city councillor who shall remain nameless. For the record, GLBTQQ is not a country. Which way should the decals point? We decided the top of the decal should be parallel to the curb so the flag depiction is rarely viewed upside down. What about the concerns of who should be placed beside whom? This is about friendship… right? Just in case we followed IOC protocol – alphabetical order.

Now that the decals are finally on the street we have a new round of concerns. Some people think they are entitled to help themselves to our decals and take them home for souvenirs. Thanks a lot for disrespecting our community project that celebrates friendship! Then there are folks that have decided that they don’t like what we have done to a picture of their national flag. You can make flip flops and underwear decorated in flags but not sidewalk decals. Sigh. We have received more than one nervous email from city officials who think we should respond immediately to this concern or that concern.

Getting it Right

2009-12-21T20:00:00.000-08:00

We knew flags and patriotism were sensitive issues so how do you give countries the respect they deserve? The first step was to make sure whatever we did was not in the shape of a conventional flag.

CTV had a full online list of countries that participated in Torino. We were told it would take months to know who might be coming to Vancouver so the 2006 list of participants was the best guess. Then the hard work really began. Literally hundreds of hours were devoted to researching colours, making sure that whatever we used in our decals was accurate and of the highest quality. The blues had to be perfect; the reds had to be exact. I never imagined there were so many shades of red used in national flags. China’s red is different than the US red which is different that the Great Britain red and if you really get into it... you learn that some flags are the same colours, in the same order but vertical stripes instead of horizontal (see Germany and Belgium or Poland and Monaco which are upside down versions of each other. It is enough to make you dizzy. Our thanks to Clarke Wright for his endless passion to get it perfect!

The enthusiasm went on from there. 3M came through by donating a portion of the decal materials and Ken and Mike from Brushworks planned and planned for how they could get 450 decals placed on the sidewalk in the most efficient manner. There are a lot of unsung heroes in the FlagWalk story. All of them small, local companies or contractors that captured our vision, embraced it as their own, and helped us make it happen. Even our respective organizations got enthusiastic. 2 generally competitive shopping districts collaborating on a project is a brave move. Our thanks for their trust.

By the time 3 decals were down on the sidewalk, FlagWalk was drawing attention. People were stopping on the street, trying to decide what decal represented which country. A big smile would appear when a pedestrian guessed which country was being attached to the sidewalk. What got the most attention was that there was no advertising or reference to the Olympics in any way. Certainly this was a city project! Nope… just 2 little business districts who wanted to celebrate something great – friendship. Somehow that made FlagWalk even better.

An Opportunity, a Challenge and a glass of wine…

2009-12-20T21:30:00.000-08:00

My name is Sharon Townsend and I am the Executive Director of the South Granville Business Improvement Association and the co-creator of FlagWalk. Over the next few days I thought it might be of interest how FlagWalk came about and what we are learning as FlagWalk comes to life.

The opportunity – 6 billion eyes, 300,000 spectators, and a once in a lifetime opportunity to showcase a great city. For well over 2 years we have been searching for ways to welcome the world. South Granville is on the fringe of the downtown Olympic bubble. Close enough to be impacted but not necessarily close enough to benefit from the thousands of spectators that will be milling about before and after events looking for a place to eat or to pick up that fabulous memory of their Vancouver visit. How do we entice folks across that bridge; how do we encourage our regular customers to shop; and how do we celebrate the Olympics without infringing on the Olympic brand!

We would plan something only to discover that our ideas made the Ring Police twitchy and we would be forced back to the drawing board to try again. It actually got to the point where we were so frustrated that we were simply going to do nothing. Nuts to it all!

Enter the glass of wine and a friend. I meet regularly with my Yaletown Business Association colleague, Annette O’Shea to brainstorm, laugh and complain about various aspects of our respective jobs. This particular meeting was devoted to ranting about VANOC and how impossible they were making it for folks like us to tie in to the Olympic celebrations without getting our hands slapped. By now Annette was all too familiar with my geographical challenge. Yaletown was facing the opposite challenge. How do you conduct some semblance of ‘business as usual’ when you are smack in the middle of Olympic Ground Zero with road closures and security zones! We also shared a concern that November thru February could be boom or bust for retail depending on who you talked to. Salt Lake City had warned us years in advance that shoppers were prone to stay home to avoid the perceived chaos and that was simply something we could not allow to happen in our respective communities.

I must confess that I laughed out loud and cheered when I saw the article about Lululemon and their non-Olympic merchandise. We had the identical conversation – often in fits of hysterical laughter about what was in... what was out... and what might land us in Olympic jail.

By the time the first glass of wine was done we had determined to work together and focus on the pre-Olympic period to ensure our merchants survive the upheaval. By the second glass of wine we had a plan exploding in our heads with far too many crazy directions we could take the idea of Flags and wayfinding.

At the end of the day, it came down to this... forget the hype, forget the rings forget the commercial aspects of the Olympics. We were going to follow our guts and do what was important to each of us personally which was to celebrate national pride, friendship, world peace, inclusiveness, equality, and have fun while we were at it. The IOC did not have a trademark on national pride or friendship. A phrase was at the top of one of our planning pages “a world of friends is a world of peace”. FlagWalk was born and the tagline is still with us.

Vancouver... a local's perspective

2009-12-09T09:48:00.000-08:00

Late on Friday night after many a glass of wine at Section 3, a group of us stumbled our way through Yaletown on our way to Fritz Fries - our favourite late night snack house for those times when you're really craving a smoked meat poutine. As we were walking down Hamilton Street, I noticed a series of round...

Read More:
http://bcrobyn.blogspot.com/2009/11/international-flags-all-over-sidewalks.html

December 8 - the flag of the day

2009-12-08T16:10:00.000-08:00

Have you already found out the flag of the day?

It's time to introduce you to the home country of our main sponsor Victorinox. It's located in the middle of Europe and has five different neighbour states. This is not international enough: our country has even four official national languages. Being one of the smallest countries in Europe does not mean that you should underestimate it. Its economy is stable on a very high level, what makes it one of the economically stongest countries in the world. High quality brands like Victorinox cause the spread of its name into stores all over the world. In the present and past it has always kept the role of complete indepency and neutrality in politics.

The biggest part of today's country is rather remote as it is located in the Alps. This causes a lot of funny prejudices. Do the inhabitants really play the alphorn on top of the mountains?

Watch this! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGAgltU5Pqo

First day of flag decals in Yaletown

2009-11-24T18:38:00.000-08:00

No rain today? Great! The decals are being installed in Yaletown, too! Kids as well as grown ups are getting excited while walking through the streets and trying to figure out which flag belongs to which country.

The Brushworks-team got Mainland and Davie Street done, Hamilton is almost complete and decorated with decals on the sidewalks.

We love the new street look and are excited about starting the contest!

Flag Walk links South Granville and Yaletown

2009-11-20T11:49:00.000-08:00

Two of Vancouver’s most hip and exciting neighbourhoods have joined forces in celebration of [READ MORE]

Flag walk program connects south Granville, Yaletown

2009-11-20T11:44:00.000-08:00

Flag walk program connects south Granville, Yaletown