Big Car Collaborative

Tube programming/facilities/houses and gallery: Big Car owns and operates a 12,000 square foot former manufacturing building, known as tube factory artspace (1125 cruft st.), which serves as an art gallery and space for community meetings and cultural events, drawing 20,400 people per year. Big Car also owns listen hear, a 1000-square foot space for gallery shows and small concerts (2620 shelby st.), and an artist residency house/gallery (1135 cruft st.). Big Car programs all three spaces with cultural events and art shows.

Design for good: Big Car offers quality, moderate-cost design and branding services, and event and marketing planning to non-profits, community organizations, and other public entities. Good, thoughtful design engages people and transforms communities, energizing these pro-social missions. Big Car also provides video production, t-shirt design and production, exhibition design, signage and wayfinding, as well as experience design. Public art and programming: Big Car brings art activities to public locations including markets and parks. Big Car produces murals in public places.

Fee-for-service and placemaking: Big Car engages the public by activating locations with engaging cultural/creative activities, at the invitation of governmental, corporate and non-profit partners. These placemaking efforts bring people to a space, connect with it, and/or re-imagine future uses.

Cruft street commons: Big Car's artist and public life residency (aplr) program supports artists who use their talents to drive positive community change. On the cruft street block, we offer 5 affordable homes for artists to be owned and 8 more as subsidized rentals, all previously vacant. And, recently, we raised $4 million in grant funding to transform an adjacent 44,000 square-foot building into a studio, exhibition and performance center with an outdoor sculpture garden. With this, we're now able to grow our established program into a vibrant community of artists. In 2019, we purchased four vacant homes and a former church on our cruft street block. We began renovations to make them affordable (30% off market-rate) rental homes for artists. These are in addition to five other homes being purchased by artists in a partnership with riley area development. Our affordable artist housing program now has eight artists in place, living on our block and leading programming with support from Big Car staff. Last year, we moved three more artists through the mortgage process to acquire their home loans. We will begin renovations to the larger factory building this year.