Being punk means radical inclusivity at the Vera Project

James Keblas left Tacoma for the Art Institute of Seattle a week after his high school graduation, after recognizing that he was on a bad path and a menace.

Keblas felt lost after the record label he was interning at went under, the job that made him drop out of the institute, after thinking he had “made it” in the music scene. He worked in warehouses and traveled, but it wasn’t until becoming involved with the community at the Velvet Elvis Arts Lounge, a former music venue in Pioneer Square, that Keblas realized he needed to do something more with his life.

“I went to North Seattle Community College, met some amazing professors, and I transferred from there with an associate’s to the University of Washington,” Keblas said. “I was [going to go to] the School of Construction Management.”

Keblas learned that construction management was not the right fit for him, after a long, boring lecture on air ducts. That’s when he discovered the community and environmental planning (CEP) major.

“I started drawing up all these shows and thinking about urban planning as a gathering of people like in the shows,” Keblas said. “[It] would bring so many different kinds of people around: gay kids, straight kids, rich kids, poor kids, men, women … And if we're doing urban planning, it's not about physical spaces, it's about people.”

At the time, Seattle was in the trenches of the Teen Dance Ordinance — a law that essentially morphed the city into the town from “Footloose.” Teens could not attend any public dances or concerts unless the venue paid liability insurance and hired security guards under this ordinance from 1985 to 2002.

“The problem that we were trying to solve was that there was literally no places for young people to see music,” Keblas said. “I mean, there was a moment where there was nothing, it was completely wiped out … There was no legit safe place for young people to see music.”

Keblas’s outrage turned into a moment of clarity when his passions for music and CEP connected.

“When I had that moment of realizing that music could be a tool to develop a city, everything made sense to me,” Keblas said. “My entire life made sense. Everything had purpose. I knew what I was doing. It was clear to me.”

Keblas’s life continued falling into place after attending a concert for The Ex, a Dutch punk band. The artists told him about a club in the Netherlands called the Vera Club, which was a government-funded organization connecting the community with music and art for the past 100 years.

The following week in Gould Hall, Keblas saw a study abroad flyer for Groningen, Netherlands: the exact town housing the Vera Club.

Keblas and Shannon Stewart, a friend and classmate, immersed themselves in the Vera Club while studying abroad. The experience and every event leading up to it gave them the idea to start their own version of the organization back in Seattle, called the Vera Project.

“It was just this irony of [how] there wasn't access for young people to see music in the city that was in the center of the music spotlight,” Stewart said. “And James and I both were kids that grew up going to shows, and so we decided to try to start this organization where our idea [was] that it would be a nonprofit, that the city would fund it, and that it would be volunteer run.”

Keblas and Stewart both admitted that their naivety as young 20-year-olds likely aided them in starting the Vera Project. They were bold when asking city council members for funding while having no experience or credibility.

“We were meeting one-on-one with the city council and saying, ‘Hey, Seattle is known for being this cultural center, specifically for music, yet there's no way for young people to participate in this part of the city's culture,’” Stewart said. “‘And it's on you to change it.’”

Eventually, the Vera Project got enough financial support to have their first show Jan. 27, 2001. However, the idea of the Vera Project was met with opposition from every side.

“We were rejected, not only by the establishment, but we were rejected by the music scene because our idea of bringing government into the music scene was not appreciated by the music scene,” Keblas said. “There was a lot of people in the punk scene, in the DIY scene, and the hip hop scene, that were like, ‘Fuck the government, fuck the police, fuck everything, like how dare you?’”

But Stewart and Keblas believed in Vera because they saw what it could be while studying in the Netherlands. They stuck to this belief, and now the Vera Project resides outside the Seattle Center, with a cafe, silkscreen, recording studios, and a stage inside.

Stewart and Keblas both received the Mary Gates Leadership Scholarship while at UW to pursue their plan of starting the Vera Project, and Keblas said he owes a lot of Vera’s early success to the CEP program. They both also named Kate Becker, another Vera Project co-founder, as an integral part of the project’s foundation.

Today, 24 years after its first show, the Vera Project is part of the course curriculum at UW. In DRAMA 494 A: Special Topics "Arts Leadership," Assistant Professor Jasmine Mahmoud teaches students about Vera using the lens of the effects of public policy, such as the Teen Dance Ordinance.

While the Vera Project may not be as relevant today as it was in the early 2000s regarding providing a safe space for all-age shows, Keblas and Stewart maintain that the community it has built over the past two decades remains essential.

“I think it's still relevant because it's about community,” Keblas said. “It's about the gathering of people, and it's about a place where people who don't know what they want, but they love music and they love art … They just don't feel like what is for everybody is for them. That's Vera. Vera is this place for when you feel when those people are there when they're in that headspace, that they can find themselves here, and they can find their friends, and they can get a sense of purpose, and they can get a sense of inspiration.”

Reach Science Editor McKenna Sweet at archive@dailyuw.com. X: @mckenna_319 Bluesky: @mckennasweet.bksy.social

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