Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival: What We Tried, What We Learned

In the weeks leading up to the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival, we were preparing, planning, and making adjustments. Producing new prints, testing new sizes, and rethinking how everything would be displayed.

I’ve attended the festival before, but it’s different when you’re setting up a booth and trying to understand how people will move through the space, where they’ll stop, and how they’ll engage with what you’ve brought. You try to anticipate it, but a lot of it is still unclear until you’re actually there.

Most of the preparation comes down to small decisions. What to bring, how to show it, what to test. You want to move quickly, try new ideas, and build on what you’ve learned, but at the same time the details matter.

You can plan as much as you want, but eventually you just have to set it up and see what actually works.

Preparing for a Live Event (and Adjusting on the Fly)

A lot of this only works because of family. My aunt and my cousin Sam are the ones on the ground in Vancouver, and going into this one, my goal was to make things smoother and more efficient for everyone. Less weight, fewer moving pieces, quicker setup.

Like most things, it didn’t quite go exactly to plan. Nothing dramatic, but it’s a good reminder that it’s almost always more work than I think it’s going to be.

Rethinking the Display Setup

The setup itself has been one of the biggest points of iteration so far. We’ve tried frames, easels, clips, a bunch of different configurations. Frames look great, but they’re heavy, fragile, and slow to set up. At the Dragon Boat Festival, it took us half of the first day just to get everything in place.

So this time the idea was to go lighter and more flexible. Foam boards, sleeves, binder clips. We probably reduced the weight by something like 75 percent. What used to be four tubs of materials is now two. That part felt like real progress.

Testing the Setup Before the Event

We also did a full run-through the day before. So we went out to the field, set up the fence panels, and ran through the entire process like it was already the event. It probably took an hour and a half, just the three of us in the middle of a field clipping boards onto panels, but by the end of it we had a system. 

Figuring Out the Space in Real Time

When we got to David Lam Park, the first thing I noticed was the placement. We were right in the middle of the field, while most of the other vendors were along the edges. My initial reaction was that we might be too isolated, but at the same time we were fully immersed in the space.

And that’s kind of been the pattern with all of this. You can’t really tell if something is good or bad in the moment, and one weekend isn’t enough to know for sure.

The weather followed a familiar pattern too. Slow mornings, a bit grey, people easing into the day. Then the sun would start to come out properly around 4pm, which is right when we were getting ready to shut things down. So the best conditions always felt slightly out of reach.

Are We a Gallery or a Store?

What stood out most was how people engaged with the work.

There wasn’t a lot of urgency. People would come in and spend time. Ten minutes, fifteen, sometimes longer. Pointing at different prints, trying to recognize locations, comparing perspectives. It felt less like a store and more like a gallery.

And that’s something I kept coming back to throughout the weekend.

Are we a gallery, or are we a store?

Because the behaviour is completely different. In a gallery, people linger and interpret. In a store, there’s usually some movement toward a decision. We’re somewhere in between right now, and I’m still figuring out how to navigate that.

There were a lot of moments where people would recognize something immediately. False Creek, Granville Island, Mount Pleasant. At one point I was pointing out the ferry in False Creek as it was passing by in real time, showing how it matched the print. Those reactions feel real, and they happen consistently.

The challenge is converting without disrupting the experience.

Expanding Beyond the Booth

When we first started speaking with the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival, there was an opportunity to integrate artists more directly into the event, and we leaned into that. VCBF was developing their Young and Emerging Artists initiative and wanted to bring in two Pleasant Shimo artists to lead public-facing activities, each supported with funding to create something for the community.

Amanda Niekamp (Mount Pleasant and Arbutus) and Julia Vasileva (Granville Island, Hastings-Sunrise) each designed their own sessions. Amanda led cherry blossom lantern-making, while Julia focused on Vancouver-themed cards. It wasn’t just about showing finished work. It was about letting people engage with the process, spend time with it, and create something of their own.

It made the whole area feel more alive.

And it also reframed what we were doing. We weren’t just a booth selling prints anymore. We were part of the programming. Part of how people were spending their time at the festival.

I don’t think that fully translates into immediate sales, at least not yet. But it builds something else. It creates a deeper connection to the work, to the artists, and to the idea behind it.

It’s something we’ll keep developing.

And it probably deserves its own write-up.

Preparing for Sakura Days at VanDusen

This was our third event in about six or seven months, and while each one brings something new, I’m starting to see how much of this is just about showing up, adjusting, and continuing to build.

Heading into Sakura Days at VanDusen this weekend, we’re adapting again.

New location, different setup, and a slightly different audience. 

We’ll take what worked, adjust what didn’t, and keep moving forward.