Halifax doctor's donation helps north-end arts centre secure permanent home

A Halifax arts centre run as a collective that's grown into a regular home for everything from zine libraries and printmaking to live music is celebrating a substantial donation that's poised to support the space's continued existence well into the future.

The RadStorm collective, which has been fundraising to buy the building it calls home on Gottingen Street for several years, announced Saturday that they've reached their goal thanks to a generous contribution from Bob Fredrickson, a longtime pillar of Halifax's queer community.

The purchase was also supported through community donations and a one-time contribution of $100,000 from the Halifax Regional Municipality that was approved earlier this year.

"It's kind of unreal," said Lucas Goudie, who has been involved with RadStorm since 2016, and is a member and volunteer in the collective.

"I can't think of another art space of almost any kind in the country that is in this kind of position … it's protection from a lot of the economic and cultural forces that have been pushing against us for quite a while."

Disappearing venues

A space like RadStorm, which has existed in one form or another since 2003 and moved to Gottingen Street in 2018, is increasingly rare in a rapidly changing Halifax that has seen the closure of numerous venues and all-ages spaces in recent years.

Fredrickson, 77, is perhaps best known for his time working as a primary care physician for hundreds of HIV/AIDS patients in Halifax during the deadliest years of that pandemic.

After a long career, the now-retired Fredrickson wanted to do something to pay it forward.

"This is kind of my way of saying thank you to Halifax," he said.

What RadStorm does

RadStorm is home to three collectives:

• SadRad, which hosts all-ages shows, rents jam space, leads workshops and facilitates equipment sharing.
• Anchor Archive Zine Library, which has over 5,000 self-published magazines in its archive.
• InkStorm, which offers affordable public access to screenprinting equipment and workshops.

When Fredrickson first visited the space, it brought him back to his earliest days in Halifax, when he was a doctor at the Halifax Youth Clinic on Barrington Street in the 1970s.

"It was a bare-bones operation," he recalled. "We had a burlap-covered couch and it was in the second floor of the Khyber building and it was kind of an ad hoc medical clinic for kids, for people who were disenfranchised … people kicked out of their homes, artists, whatever."

Above the clinic was The Turret, a legendary Halifax gay bar, and the first iteration of Wormwoods Dog and Monkey Cinema.

At RadStorm, Fredrickson sees young people determined to create something in spite of the social and economic conditions around them.

Upcoming celebration

"It's neat to see the younger people having the same kind of energy we had back in the day," he said.

For the hundreds of people who've made RadStorm a home-away-from-home since its inception, the building purchase is poised to go a long way toward making sure they'll be able to keep coming back.

"It feels like the tiniest little site of resistance," said Goudie.

To celebrate the big purchase, and to thank Hendrickson and other donors, RadStorm will host a party on Sunday afternoon, with live music, food, and tours of the building.

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