TIN CAN is project I started with Caroline Ballhorn in 2009 and is an 18ft 1972 Streamline trailer that has been lovingly converted into a multi-functional and fully mobile studio/gallery/event space. Our intention is for the project to become a platform for collaboration and public engagement. During its many stages, it will be a place where people can come together to build, make, show and share ideas with the intention of building community through the act of collaborative production, as well as through the creation of a physical space for gathering and dialogue. Tin Can studio represents for us the notion of coming together to create something that addresses our common awareness of shrinking space for creative production in Vancouver. Through a mutual desire to create meaningful work that actually engages people, that functions as a hub for strengthening community bonds, that plants seeds in neighbourhoods about making creativity and art accessible, we hope to empower others towards connecting and collaborating.
Our goal is to create a space that allows for unusual collaborations and shared experiences between those who identify as artists as well as those that do not, outside of traditional creative contexts and environments
We have explored this idea through various experiments which have thus far taken the form of collaborative projects, events, artist talks, performances, discussions, concerts, pirate radio broadcasts, and micro residencies. And, we’re always looking for interesting ways to activate our space and good reasons to hitch up and move around to different places.
Tin Can Studio was built as a response to the loss of art spaces in Vancouver in the wake of the arts funding cuts in BC. We decided to try our hand at creating a space that housed our ideas of what a creative space could be; collaborative; inviting; connected to making and to showing; and mobile.
