Giant spray cans for city street art

Eight giant spray cans have taken up residency in central Christchurch as part of a plan to attract young people to the city centre.

The oversized cans on the corner of Manchester and Lichfield streets will be a canvas for street artists to test their wares. Three of them would be semipermanent and were painted by street artists Jacob Yikes, Ikarus and Wongi Wilson.

Wilson said the street artists would be ‘‘caretakers’’ for their cans, while the remaining five became an evolving art space ‘‘so anyone can just come and have a paint and a jam’’.

‘‘It’s really awesome, because kids that do this type of thing don’t have a space like this to try in, to do something proper and practise.

‘‘It’s not like a skateboard or a basketball court, you know, you can’t just go to the local bowl or anything.’’

The cans sit in the East Frame, where hundreds of new inner-city homes will be built. Christchurch Regeneration Minister Megan Woods opened the space on Saturday by tagging a giant ‘‘MW’’ on one of the cans.

‘‘Getting people back living in our city is one of the most important things that we need to do as a city now,’’ she said.

The space, a GapFiller, O¯ ta¯ karo and Fletcher Living project, was ‘‘about getting people back into [the city], not just building the houses but creating the kind of city that we want to see’’, she said.

The Christchurch Youth Council (CYC) and the Canterbury Youth Workers Collective would be based at the site.

CYC co-chairwoman Kendra Burgess-Naude said the area wouldhelp the organisations to ‘‘make sure young people feel valued and they find a place in the city they can belong in’’.

‘‘The only way that young people can feel more valued in the community is through opportunities. This is a place they can get those opportunities and feel very welcomed.’’

Other youth groups could use the space after hours, she said.

‘‘If more youth groups are getting involved, more young people are getting involved, and this place is a little bit of a community in the city’’.

The East Frame development is expected to provide 900 homes by its 2026 completion. The first 20 are due next year and 180 by 2019.