The Women in View festival began in 1986 when Jane Heyman, along with Sue Astley, Sharon Bakker, Patricia Ludwick and Suzie Payne created View, the Performing Arts Society, a non-profit organization. The purpose of the organization included promoting the artistic growth of women involved in the performing arts; to provide increased opportunity for women in the performing arts and to encourage the participation of women from diverse cultural background. Between 1986 and 1988, View organized workshops, lectures, and networking sessions for women in the arts in Vancouver. From the beginning, the goal of the organization was to create a festival.
The first Women in View festival was held in Vancouver in 1989, and was a multidisciplinary arts festival showcasing work initiated by women. Over the following 10 years, until 1998, the festival was successful at providing opportunities for over 1,500 women in the performing arts from across Canada and around the world. Following the 10th festival, the board of Women in View faced a deficit of $20,000 and the resignation of 2 key organizers. Unable to gain funding for the 1999 festival, the board decided to cancel the eleventh festival and dissolve View at its annual general meeting in 1999. Women in View’s few assets, and its work, were taken over by La Luna Productions, a collective of professional women artists of colour.

Adbusters Media Foundation is a Vancouver-based nonprofit society that was founded in 1989 by Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz. It is an anti-corporate, activist organization that is pro-environment and anti-consumerism. Adbusters is known for its strategy of culture jamming, which involves rearranging popular advertisements, slogans, and logos to subvert their meaning and expose underlying ideological messages. A main component of Adbusters' advocacy is aesthetic in nature, aiming to "out-cool" brands they perceive as having harmful impacts on global society or ecology, while using graphic design to sell ideas geared toward activism and political change.

The founding of Adbusters links to events in the late 1980s, when Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz created a motion picture "anti-ad" that advocated against old-growth forestry practices in British Columbia. Canadian TV stations refused to air the ad. Realizing that corporations held privileged access to public airwaves, Adbusters Media Foundation was created to advocate for a citizen's right to communicate anti-corporate messages.

A major activity of the organization is the publishing of the bi-monthly, internationally-circulated Adbusters magazine. Subtitled the "Journal of the Mental Environment," Adbusters magazine features articles, anti-ads, and calls to action aiming to destabilize pro-consumption messaging traditionally distributed through magazines, television, and the internet. The magazine is entirely reader-supported, receiving no funding from advertising, sponsorship, or government grants. As of August, 2022, 162 issues have been published and distributed since 1989.

Through its magazine, newsletters, and online presence, Adbusters has launched or promoted several international campaigns including Buy Nothing Day, TV Turnoff Week, First Things First, Media Carta, Blackspot Shoe campaign, and Occupy Wall Street. Buy Nothing Day, occurring on the 4th Friday of November, is a protest against consumer culture and Black Friday. TV Turnoff Week, and it's modern analogue Digital Detox Week, advocates for taking a week-long break from televised consumer messaging. The First Things First campaign is aimed at graphic designers, advocating against "selling out" to promote unethical products and industries.

Media Carta was the campaign slogan applied to a 20 year legal battle fought by Adbusters for the right to air anti-consumerism messaging on several Canadian broadcasting networks. The lawsuit claimed the broadcaster's refusals limited Adbusters' freedom of expression. The case was dismissed in the BC Supreme Court in 2008, only to be overturned in 2009 by the BC Court of Appeal.

Occupy Wall Street was initiated by Adbusters in mid-2011, through a mailing list email and a poster featuring a ballet dancer on top of Wall Street's Charging Bull statue. The movement was initially created to protest wealth disparity and corporate influence on democracy in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, and eventually grew to over 900 cities around the world. Adbusters does not claim ownership over the Occupy movement, as it grew to be run by local grassroots collectives.

Adbusters continues to publish its magazine and launch campaigns, with its latest efforts focusing on garnering an international movement to fight for psychological, ecological, corporate, financial, economic, political, and aesthetic change.

The Indigenous Media Arts Group, or IMAG, was a Vancouver based non-profit organization founded in early 1998 to encourage and facilitate the promotion, development and dissemination of Indigenous media, arts and culture. The group grew out of the amalgamation of the First Nations Video Collective and the former First Nations Access Program at Video In Studios. Founding members included Dana Claxton, Cleo Reece, Zachery Longboy, and T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss and membership was comprised of local media makers. IMAG was incorporated under the BC Societies Act on July 19, 1999. IMAG's activities included organizing the IMAGeNation Aboriginal Film and Video Festival, a festival that was held annually in Vancouver from 1998 to 2006, and a traveling film festival that was held in rural communities throughout British Columbia (Prince Rupert, Duncan and Enderby) in 1999 and in 2005. The group also facilitated workshops and training programs in media and arts administration and operated a resource centre for Indigenous people to access information regarding film and video making, media arts, cultural theory and media literacy. IMAG held its first media training program in 2000 and continued to offer training in subsequent years, including themed training programs, such “Healing Hands: Voices of Resistance” and “Repatriation: Returning Home” in 2004-2005. IMAG added a professional media arts training program in 2003 and an After School Media Arts Program in 2005.
IMAG co-sponsored programming events to encourage and facilitate communication, cooperation, and exchange among diverse Indigenous cultural and artistic communities. The group was run by a combination of paid employees and volunteers. IMAG had a board of directors, usually consisting of a group of Indigenous film makers who volunteered at IMAG. The group never received operating funding and functioned from grant to grant. By 2007, key individuals had left the organization and, without an operating grant, the group disbanded the same year.

Arthur Charles Erickson was an award-winning Canadian architect and urban planner. He was born in Vancouver, BC on June 14th, 1924. Erickson gained formal training at McGill University, where he earned his Bachelor of Architecture in 1950. Throughout his career, Erickson designed private residences, city plazas, and buildings for governments, commercial enterprises, cultural centres, medical centres, universities, and colleges. His designs have been constructed or conceptually incorporated into buildings throughout the world, including in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, China, Japan, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates.

Erickson’s buildings are known for their integration with their surrounding natural and urban setting, as well as their dramatic use of light and space. His distinct architectural aesthetic is influenced by modernism, as well as his travels in Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East. Notable works designed by Erickson include the Filberg House in Comox, BC (1958), Simon Fraser University (1963-1969), the Expo 70 Canadian Pavilion in Osaka, Japan (1967), the University of Lethbridge (1968-1970), the Vancouver Museum of Anthropology (1971-1976), the Helmut Eppich House in West Vancouver, BC (1972-1973), Robson Square and the Vancouver Courthouse Complex (1973-1981), Roy Thompson Hall in Toronto, ON (1976-1982), the Napp Laboratories building in Cambridge, England (1978-1982), the Hugo Eppich House in West Vancouver, BC (1979-1985), California Plaza in Los Angeles, CA (1980-1989), the Canadian Chancery in Washington, DC (1981-1988), and the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, WA (1996-2002).

While working as an architect, Erickson founded the Erickson/Massey Architects firm with Geoffrey Massey in 1962, as well as the Arthur Erickson Architects firm in 1972. He met his life partner and design collaborator Francisco Kripacz in 1961, who was responsible for the interior design of many of Erickson's most well-known buildings. Erickson passed away in Vancouver, BC on May 20th, 2009, at the age of 84.