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Alexandra Diebel is a composer of new operas and an aspiring long distance swimmer.

In Europe, a big opera house runs a studio opera on the side. It's in a skankier part of town and it's smaller and the tickets are easier to get. It's doing something experimental. Here, there's the fear that you're going to tread on heretic ground if you do something really different.

The funding bodies should be a little curious. It would be a real virtue if they would investigate the field a bit, rather than waiting for everyone to come to them like in some feudal system. Which is basically how it is. Pull out your flute and play some virtuosic riffs!

Colin MacDonald is a freelance saxophonist, composer and spoken word performer.

(us@intouch.bc.ca)

Our ensemble, Symposium, is looking forward to trying alternative venues: playing in parks, or even busking new music if we can get away with that. We're trying to get a hold of the audience that is outside of the established music community. Or an audience that is not used to going out to artistic events. There's not a lot of contemporary music exploration going on in this city. We think it's a hole we can fill. But we get the impression that it's a hole we have to create for ourselves.

Guy Neufeld is a designer with a head full of oddities, a musician, an aspiring writer and a lover of stories.

I think it's really important to get theatre out of theatres. That is one of my main goals as a technician... as a designer. The same with all kinds of art, getting art out of galleries, Galleries and theatres can sometimes feel very stagnant. The same air is being breathed by the same people. There's not much fresh breath inside. Theatre is an incredibly important method of storytelling; it's in the roots of being a human being. Here in Vancouver, we need to tell stories in places where people are going to listen, and not make it a thing where we have to be shut up in some dark hole. great stuff around to hear and see, if you brought it out where people would hear it and see it.

Funding is a big thing and a lot of great companies - go under because of that, and that's too bad. Sometimes, raving no money helps you to be more creative: it makes you walk down alleys and look for stuff and make use of what you've got. There is so much money in Vancouver, it's just not going to the arts. It's staying in the business community. And that's a shame, because how can you live a 9-5 life and just feel good on that? It doesn't make sense to me.