"O CANada..."

My recent travels for work and pleasure sadly didn't take me as far afield as Canada - but if they had, I would definitely have tried to pay a visit to Vancouver Canstruction, which was taking place at several locations across the city earlier this month. The premise behind the event is simple: "teams of architects, engineers, designers and schools get together to CANstruct fantastic, giant sized sculptures made entirely out of canned food", as their website states. The photos on the site don't really do the sculptures justice in my opinion, so if you can bear a visit to the Daily Mail website (which appears to be the only UK news site which featured the event), you can see some of the creations in all their glory. This one of a Lego spaceman is my favourite:

The teams have six hours to create their works, after which they go on display to the general public for a number of weeks. After this, all the tins are donated to local foodbanks. So it's all about combatting  and raising awareness of food poverty in a fun and original way.

What I didn't appreciate at first though is that it is not just an annual event in Vancouver; founded in 1992, Canstruction has grown into a huge charity which now operates these events in 150 cities worldwide, and to date has "helped raise over 25 million pounds of food" for hunger relief organisations. As they largely function in North America, I am assuming by 'pounds' they are referring to weight rather than monetary value, but either way it's a pretty impressive statistic. Here's a link to an interesting news article about the work they do, with lots more facts and figures. I will have to keep an eye on the Canstruction website to see where else their events are taking place, in the hope of being able to catch one at some point.

There was actually a one-off Canstruction event in London in 2012, when sculptures were displayed in Canary Wharf as part of the London Festival of Architecture. As a biennial event, the festival will be back this year; could Canstruction make a return too? I can only hope so, not only to see the sculptures up close, but also as there are more Londoners than ever before who are relying on foodbanks and cooperatives, so if there is any way of drawing attention to the great work they do, I am all for it.