The Langley Free Little Art Gallery (FLAG) was established as a way for youth in our community to feature their art and access free art supplies to foster their creativity. Located in the main atrium of Timms Community Centre, our FLAG is the first of its kind in the Fraser Valley and has been a massive success in supporting a culture of youth creativity within our city.
After receiving our grant, we dove right into figuring out how to best execute this project. First, we needed to decide how to make our art gallery. We looked into repurposing thrifted cabinets, but none of them could meet the dimensions or other specifications we needed. That’s when we decided to purchase an IKEA cabinet that we designed and built ourselves. Some parts of the cabinet construction were challenging. Since we couldn’t paint the wood, we ended up using a finicky chalkboard vinyl. After finishing, we had a beautiful cabinet ready to be decorated to the moon!
Once our cabinet was ready, we toured local youth organizations for potential FLAG locations, including considering semi-permanent rotations. For the gallery’s launch, we ended up deciding on Timms Community Center, an easily accessible location in downtown Langley. From there, we planned our launch party in collaboration with the City of Langley youth program. The launch event was a space where youth could eat yummy snacks, win prizes, and work on art for the gallery. It was a big success! Some attendees even learned how to use certain art supplies like watercolours for the first time. Youth in attendance also created many pieces for the gallery’s opening.
We learned a lot through this project, from physical things like how to build a cabinet to figuring out how to maintain a permanent project. We would love for even more youth artists in the area to contribute to our gallery, so follow along and find updates on our Instagram, @FreeLittleArtGalleryLangley!
A big thank you to Neighbourhood Small Grants for making this project possible, and to staff at the City of Langley and Foundry Langley for supporting our work!
