I’m still learning about the local arts organizations since my move to Mississauga a year ago. When I saw the Mississauga Arts Council share a job posting for an Art Shelter Arts Activation Coordinator for a company called Frog in Hand, I was intrigued and wanted to know more about Frog in Hand and the Art Shelter. Last month I met virtually with Colleen Snell, Frog in Hand’s Artistic Director.
Colleen Snell
Frog in Hand is a dance-theatre company based in Mississauga. They are curious about human nature and the spaces we inhabit. Their mission is to uncover, make, and share stories through dance. They contribute to community by sharing resources, knowledge and experience through creation, performance, and education.
They carefully attend to what they make and how they make it. They craft innovative work reflecting their passion for movement as a medium to transcend language. They are committed to engaging spaces in ways that recognize and honour diverse stories and storytellers. They create site-specific experiences as platforms for artistic exchange, collaboration, and social change.
Frog in Hand has always worked in unusual locations. When the pandemic hit, they were able to be mobile and responsive, taking their programming outside working in parks and public spaces. Working outside brought challenges: intense heat, rain, no shelter from the elements, cancelled rehearsals due to weather, nowhere to fill up water bottles. They worked like this for eight weeks in 2020, and again for eight or nine weeks in 2021. After a particularly intense day under these conditions, Snell started thinking about how nice it would be to be able to build a shelter where they could be flexible and adaptable but still visible to the public because although it was hard, they found some amazing silver linings from working outside in public space. Contemporary dance can be sometimes esoteric, or it can seem exclusive. Usually everything happens behind closed doors and then suddenly a show appears, so people don’t know how much effort goes into a production. Dancing in public spaces helped to demystify the artistic process and helped them build relationships with people out walking their dogs, going for a run, going for coffee. These connections would otherwise not have happened.
In 2020, Snell started writing her first grants to bring the Art Shelter to life. Preliminary research included looking at other models, trying to find out if anyone had done anything like this before. Her initial thoughts were that the shelter would be a tent, but in the end, she decided on a dome for safety and security and better protection from the elements. Her research led her to Ontario based Arctic Acres, a company whose mission is to foster self-sufficient and sustainable living across Canada. Their domes are state of the art geodesic greenhouses designed for year-round growing. They create and ship dome kits, and Frog in Hand’s dome kit arrived on the day of my interview with Snell. The kit went into storage and at the time of the interview they were waiting for a building permit. As soon as the building permit gets approved, building will start and will take around two weeks to complete. The Art Shelter will open this summer in Lakeview, Mississauga. They have secured a five-year lease from the City of Mississauga. She mentions how thankful she is to her incredible team of volunteers who are all architects, engineers, and project managers who have been stewards through the process of applying for permits, and the construction process. It's been a huge learning curve.
While the individuals at the city have all been very understanding and accommodating, the bureaucratic system itself has not been. The concept of the Art Shelter is outside the box - “It’s a greenhouse, but it’s a dance studio, but it’s not a theatre. It’s an incubation space for the arts”- so Frog in Hand has found a way to explain what it is they are doing because it’s not clear at first to people who aren’t used to out of the box ideas. Once they were able to tell their story, they received great responses.
The Art Shelter will have solar power and a generator and will not be connected to the grid. The dome shape helps to keep the heat in and the cold out. Frog in Hand is looking at ways of building back with sustainability and the climate crisis in mind. Being off grid means having to think about how the space will be lit, how plumbing will be handled, etc. They are putting in systems that are temporary but sustainable for the long term, like solar power and batteries that can be charged and recharged. They are reusing what they have, being creative and thrifty, making a little go a long way, and doing a lot within a small footprint. Installation doesn’t require digging or foundations, so when their five-year lease is up, they will be able to pick up the dome and move it elsewhere without changing the land.
Placemaking has been a part of Frog in Hand for 10 years, but Snell says in recent times her participation in placemaking has become more intentional. She wants the Art Shelter to be a space where people can feel at home regardless of their artistic discipline, and where people who aren’t artists can have a space where they could come in and see something new or participate in an event or an activity. She says she’s still learning about how to listen to the people who will be Art Shelter neighbors. She’s looking forward to magical exchanges where people will bump into each other and there will be a cross pollination of ideas. Perhaps literal cross pollination if they end up having a beehive brought to the site. In addition to interdisciplinary placemaking, they are creating a space for dance because dance spaces have been disappearing. The dance community is having a difficult time trying to find proper space for professional work. The spaces that are available aren’t professional purpose-built spaces and are often around businesses which makes some activities like ceremonies or live drumming not possible. They are listening to the community and responding to and trying to accommodate community needs.
When asked if the plan was to have year-round activations, Snell says that if the space is comfortable to use in the winter, they plan to use the space year-round. The first year will be informative. The dome shape helps to keep the heat in and the cold out. There will be a small pond inside the dome that acts as a heat retention mechanism. The pond will get heated by the sun and retain heat overnight and balance the temperature.
When the Art Shelter is built the first event will be a party/soft opening for everyone who has helped them get this far, from those who helped with the permit process to those who put their boots on the ground and helped with the build. A formal opening ceremony will follow. Frog in Hand will be the first residents in the dome. Their Summer Company is a Canada Summer Jobs funded program for a group of youth under 30 who are doing nine weeks of research, creation, and performance. They hope to move Summer Company into the space and have them do activations around the site.
As our conversation ends, Snell says that the whole idea for the Art Shelter is about a spirit of service. She’s interested in what happens when we connect the arts to a sense of purpose beyond just performance. “The arts can do so much for community wellbeing. This is about sustainability. It's about care, caring for each other, and valuing what it means to have relationships with each other. What I'm trying to create here is not just something for myself or for Frog in Hand, but for a whole community to emerge and to connect. It needs to be a space where everyone feels safe. What does that look like? There were things we were living with that were not good, that need to be changed. It’s going to take a lot of people coming together and having authentic and sometimes difficult conversations about what they really need. We don't want to go back to normal. This is about doing it differently. That's the point.”
Follow Frog in Hand on Instagram
Interview by Glodeane Brown
If you liked this post please like, comment, and share.