Giant sculptures made of canned food soon will pop up in the Downtown Mall area as part of Canstruction Charlottesville, a benefit for the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank, event organizers announced today.
The structures will be on display April 11-19. “We’re tremendously excited about the potential of Canstruction Charlottesville,” the organizers said in a statement. “It will bring much-needed food to the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank and raise awareness of the need to combat hunger in Charlottesville and beyond.”
The theme of this year’s Charlottesville event will be “Throwback: We CAN Make Hunger a Thing of the Past.” Participating teams will be tasked with building retro-themed sculptures that recall a nostalgic fad or memory of yesteryear. The sculptures must be made entirely of canned food and fit within a 10-foot-by-10-foot-by-10-foot space.
Applications for teams are being accepted through this Friday, March 6. Sponsors for the event are also being solicited. For more information, or to apply to participate, visit www.charlottesville.
Canstruction Charlottesville is being organized by a team from the current class of Leadership Charlottesville, a community-building program of the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce.
About Canstruction: Canstruction® is a nonprofit charity that hosts competitions, exhibitions and events showcasing colossal structures made entirely out of full cans of food. After the structures are built, the cansculptures® go on display to the public as a giant art exhibition. At the end of the event, all food is donated to local hunger relief organizations. Canstruction events are held annually in over 150 cities around the world including North America, Australia, South America, Europe and Asia. The events have helped raise more than 25 million pounds of food since 1992.