Condos v.s The Crumper

Accessible Art Spaces in a Redeveloping Montreal

Fringe ArtsMax Moller — Published February 21, 2023 5 minutes

Picture a street in the midst of redevelopment. Minimalistic condo after condo line the snow-covered sidewalk. Suddenly, something stands out. There, surrounded by identical towers, sits a 60-year old building with dusty windows and a yellowing facade. The studio occupies the second floor of this building, between an upholsterer and a machine shop. The sky-blue paint that coats the lobby is chipped, and you’d be hard pressed to find any un-rusted metal. Despite the building’s eerie atmosphere, The Crumper’s Persian rugs, newly built walls, and below average price points make for a charming addition to Montreal’s lineage of DIY spaces.

“Most of my adult social and creative life has revolved around DIY spaces,” Martin said, referencing the unofficial studios and venues of Montreal. While these spaces were grimier than the professional ones, the shows in them were frequent and cheap. He said it was easy to get on stage, to see your friends play without having to pay a cover or buy drinks.  He talked about a time when there were five DIY spaces within a 10-minute walk of each other in Parc-Extension.

All of those spaces are now closed due to condo development. Although they were upset, Martin and Sharpe were hardly surprised when the DIY space that they had been going to for years closed. Martin said that it had been under threat for several years. The rent was constantly increasing to the point where, despite servicing the space’s maximum capacity of artists, there still wasn’t enough to pay the bills. 

The situation kept getting worse. They had begun to receive police noise complaints from the person who had moved into the industrial space below them. After it became clear that their space was falling into redevelopment, Sharpe and Martin started looking for new options. It just so happened that maestros of the threatened space had opened other studios near Outremont; a decent amount of their clients had migrated there. Finding themselves with adequate energy, money, and time, Martin and Sharpe decided to try their hand at running a DIY space in the building that seemed to be a spiritual successor of the one that was closing.

According to Martin, when they first acquired the space it was “2100 square feet full of shelving, and junk, and electronic components[…] a hodgepodge mess of stuff and darkness.” They spent September of 2022 cleaning the place out and tearing down the old walls. 

A month later they started to build using knowledge gained from YouTube, and used a mix of paid and volunteer work for the things they couldn’t do. The largest part of this undertaking was constructing the new rooms. Since they needed the walls to be soundproof, the amount of drywalling they needed to do was practically tripled. On top of the new rooms, they also had to soundproof the 56-foot wall that separates their space from neighboring studios. 

Martin explained that while the name had been rattling around his head for years, it was only during construction that it really began to apply to the space. Through long days of hefting garbage and clouds of drywall dust, The Crumper was born. In November the space was ready to take on clients, but things still weren’t running smoothly. By the holidays, they only had a single client. “It looked very bleak,” said Martin 

January 2023 marked a turning point. They had been reserving a large area of the studio as an event space, but at this point decided to put this idea on the back burner until the revenue from the studio was stable. Martin and Sharpe began renting it out as an art studio in the meantime. Through social media and word of mouth, awareness of The Crumper started to increase and people began flowing in. They now host over a dozen bands as well as a handful of artists and writers. 

“It’s a different vibe than other places,” said Daniel Horen, a writer who uses the art studio. He said that while there are some other options in the city, a lot of them feel more formal, like they’re run as businesses instead of communities. “It’s one of the only environments that feels like it’s not career driven,” he added. 

Joey Donovan, a singer who uses the studio with her band, said that while yes, the space is for profit, it’s much cheaper than the spaces she’d been to before. She added that it feels like the space’s first and foremost purpose is supporting artists and the art they create. “It feels more like you’re a part of it rather than just paying for a service,” she said. Horen said that the space allows for authentic, spontaneous collaboration, something which he and Donovan agreed is getting harder and harder to find as gentrification has increased in Montreal.

As redevelopment has moved north from the city's core, DIY studios and venues have been pushed further and further away from downtown. Donovan explained that one of the main challenges with finding a rehearsal space in Montreal is that they’re all out of the way, generally north of the mountain. “I don’t know if it’s gotten worse, it just keeps happening,” Martin said, adding that seeing these spaces be pushed further and further away is disheartening. “So many of these condos popped up in the last few years. it feels sad or delusional thinking we can maintain this place, but it’s here,” said Horen. 

A similar phenomenon has occurred in other major cities such as Toronto, Sharpe’s hometown. She’s seen artists evicted and spaces closed over and over, which is one of the reasons she stayed in Montreal. While the pattern seems similar here, Sharpe said that it hasn’t gotten as bad as Toronto’s state, at least not yet.

“It feels… inevitable that one day this will be a condo as well,” Sharpe said. This inevitability is echoed by the modernist buildings that flank The Crumper on all sides, but Sharpe and Martin’s new space demonstrates that accessible artist spaces aren’t going away without a fight. “While everything cycles, and opens, and closes, things do open again…it’s kind of nice to be a part of that pattern,” Sharpe said.