Located in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood of Vancouver, Means of Production (MOP) garden was created in 2002 by artist Oliver Kellhammer, in partnership with the Environmental Youth Alliance (EYA), Community Arts Council of Vancouver ( CACV) and the Vancouver Park Board. Kellhammer’s original conception was to create an ‘open source’ landscape where people could experiment growing their own botanical materials for art and craft use and for the garden to be a community ‘hub’ where ongoing investigations into art and ecology would take place.

The Means of Production Garden is co managed by Environmental Youth Alliance and the artists from EartHand Gleaners Society  furthering MOP’s original mandate as a platform for community environmental art engagement. We are particularly interested in interdisciplinary interventions that use materials harvested from the MOP site’s plantings or that re-examine the creative potential in under-used urban zones.
MOP engages an urban community of local residents, visual artists, environmentalists, crafters  and performers in creating art through a living and productive landscape. The existing garden becomes active studio, lab, performance space, social setting; with artists and public co-producing site-specific artworks and events. Inspired by, and honoring the original intent of MOP as a working garden for artists and members of the surrounding community. The variety of collaborations undertaken ignites community passion and nurtures a participant’s involvement.   Annual residencies in a top garden bed allow other artists to experiment at MOP.   Our goal is to continue to create community-focused, cutting-edge performative eco- actions  that blur lines between art, daily-living, social actions and environmental awareness using the site resources as ‘living palette’ through which people develop a closer, more tactile relationship to nature.