It’s a unique blueprint combining art with the battle against food insecurity: Canstruction Tucson — Build for Hunger 2024 to benefit the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona will begin a 11 a.m. on Saturday, June 22 at Park Place Mall, 5870 E. Broadway Blvd.
“This is a fun summertime event that promotes awareness about fighting hunger,” said Norma Cable, Public Relations and Marketing Specialist for the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona. “It is amazing to see the artistry involved. There are four teams competing this year who will use canned food to build sculptures centered around the theme of ‘Mythical Creatures.’ We love the ingenuity involved around Build Day, which is June 22. Whoever comes out can watch the sculptures being constructed right in front of them.”
The Cansculptures will feature a range of creatures, including a Dragon, a Jackalope and a legendary sea monster known as a Kraken, along with a surprise entry. The public has the opportunity to vote on different categories, including Best Meal; Best Use of Labels; Structural Ingenuity; Best Original Design; People’s Choice and Most Cans. The People’s Choice award will go to the Cansculpture receiving the most votes online for $1 per vote at communityfoodbank.org/canstruction.
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Canscultpures will remain on display at the mall through Wednesday, July 10; afterward, they will be dismantled, and the food will be funneled into Community Food Bank resource centers in Tucson, Green Valley, Amado and Nogales.
Last year, the centers distributed 402,000 emergency food boxes across Pima, Santa Cruz, Cochise, Graham and Greenly counties. In total, more than 36 million pounds of food were distributed to 160,000 people.
According to Feeding America, the most recent numbers for Arizona indicate that one in five children and one in eight adults face hunger, and those numbers don’t diminish during the summer.
“We are so happy about summer projects like Canscultpure that bring awareness to food insecurity,” Cable said. “The summer is a challenging time for us. Food drives decrease and many people and winter visitors go on vacation so we experience a drop in donations and volunteers. Our food boxes are built by humans and we have to keep building boxes to meet the demand for summer.”
The teams involved in Canstruction hope that their efforts will lead to donations of both time and money for the Food Bank, according to Kris Robertson, a project engineer for Lloyd Construction.
“I haven’t seen anything like Canstruction before, and I think it is an interesting way to bring the Community Food Bank recognition and to remind people that they are there and always accepting donations,” said Robertson.
He said that the team effort displayed during the upcoming event is typical of the community spirit and generosity exhibited by the local construction industry and his team is looking forward to the creation of a surprise mythical creature that will be roughly 15 cans tall and 40 cans wide. The logistics of building sculptures are both fun and educational, according to Robertson.
“For the most part, we will stack cans directly on top of each other. We will add platforms every so often to create a perfectly level plane to start the process of stacking cans over again. Events like this are also cool way for people in construction to donate their time and services to help teach kids about construction,” Robertson said.
