The Story Behind Canvas & Cocktails
It’s an event that’s taken Saint John by storm.
Canvas & Cocktails provides people with a fun night out with food, drinks and painting at a local hotspot. Not only do you get out on the town, but you also leave with a painting thinking “Wow, I actually painted that?”
It’s a pretty brilliant concept, but it’s one that came to couple Corrine Long and Nasiyr McGill in a moment of necessity.
The couple met a few years ago at New York Fashion Week. Long, who is from Toronto, was working for a designer and McGill, who is from Virginia, was working as a model. Shortly after, Long was unable to secure a visa to work in fashion design and illustration in the U.S. She was left three options:
“I could go back to Toronto where rent is ridiculous and where I tried to work in the industry and it’s really hard. Or I could go back out west to where I grew up, but I didn’t want to do that,” she says. “Or I could go to my mom’s side of the family who live here in Saint John.”
Being somewhat familiar with the city from when she was little, she decided to give the port city a shot. She started working odd jobs and McGill soon joined her. It didn’t take too long for them to realize the reality the region’s economy: securing traditional, steady jobs was becoming less of a thing. McGill was getting unsteady contract work with gyms as a personal trainer, but that wasn’t cutting it.
The couple realized they had to take a different approach.
“It was getting to the point where we had to do something,” McGill says. “If I did pick up a steady job and things got a little easier, we might still be planning [the business] it because we wanted it to be perfect, but we didn’t have time.”
The idea to start Canvas & Cocktails came when Long and McGill went to last year’s Third Shift, an outdoor night art event in uptown Saint John. The event appeared to bring the whole city to the uptown.
“It wasn’t so much the art part, but it started a thought process because so many people came out for it,” McGill says. “Everybody was out and it felt like Saint John was a nice place. It had nice venues and a lot of people were looking for something to do. They could come if they had something to do.”
McGill’s mother back in the United States had hosted similar painting classes. Since Long was a trained artist, it was an idea they thought could catch on in Saint John.
“I thought about it and I was just like [to Corrine] ‘well you can paint, why don’t we do something like that?'” McGill says. “I also felt there were so many nice venues around here, but the most I saw a lot of them do were open mic nights and it wasn’t drawing people into the venues. So I thought it would work both ways. It would be a reason to bring people into venues as well as give people something to do.”
Venues agreed to host a Canvas & Cocktails event in exchange for the clientele it would bring in.
“That’s our agreement with the venues. We bring in the people, we just need the space and maybe a dedicated server,” McGill says. “As long as there’s a server there to take orders, people will keep ordering.”
Tickets to take part are pre-sold and participants are given all the supplies they need.
It took some major hustling to get the first few venues to agree, but that didn’t last long.
“It took off so fast. We started on November 26th [2015] and tickets went on sale November 9th. It sold out in two days,” McGill says. “We ended up selling out three events before we even did our first one.”
The demand for the events soon became too much for Long and McGill to handle. They have now partnered with four (soon to be five) artists in Saint John, who also get a fraction of the ticket sales of the events they teach. The business is no longer just helping local venues, but providing an income for local artists as well.
“We know that it’s hard as an artist to make a living and it’s hard to make money consistently as an artist without having to compromise or do something you don’t want to do,” McGill says. “Luckily it put us in the position to provide for someone else that can pay pretty well. It’s a steady income for people who can paint or draw and that’s something they love to do.”
This fall, Canvas & Cocktails plans to expand to Fredericton and then Moncton. After that, with the help of Vennture Garage in Saint John, the plan is to start franchising their model out to other cities under the Canvas & Cocktails banner.
“The goal was to always expand,” Long says. “It was never just to make a quick buck.”
Though their lives in New Brunswick got off to a rough start, the couple says that hasn’t changed their opinion of the region.
“I felt like there was a lot of opportunity here when I got here. I used to talk about it all the time. I felt like there were a lot of people here who love where they are,” McGill says.
“It was the energy I felt here, like there was a chance. I didn’t think it was necessary to go somewhere [else]. I always thought there was a chance here.”
When the economy goes down, entrepreneurship often goes up. This is something Long and McGill have noticed since moving to the province. People are willing to take chances to create something great.
“I feel it’s a good environment in that way because a lot stuff can grow out of that,” Long says.
“It’s breeding a lot of people with that drive who want more,” McGill says. “I feel like this is a place where if you want more out of it and you’re willing to search and find it, figure out what it’s going to be and work at it, you can succeed. You’ve just got to be willing to look outside the box.”