Route 22 Artist Collective Gallery invites the community to show love for the arts by supporting the “Love Your Gallery” fundraising campaign which begins this month and runs until May. Route 22 has a goal of fifty thousand dollars which will be critical to sustaining and growing the operation. The funding is crucial at this point because many grants that other organizations rely upon for operations are not available until the third or fourth year of successful operation.

Route 22 Artist Collective Ltd. is a registered non-profit, volunteer-based organization with the mandate to promote the arts in the Cochrane community. Located in the Safeway mall, on 5th Ave, it operates as a multidiscipline art gallery plus it provides programming space for arts education, workshops, and other community needs.

Donations to the Love Your Gallery fundraiser can be made through the Route 22 website and will be greatly appreciated. People can also head into the gallery and show support by purchasing beautiful original creations from local artists. While there, you can purchase a raffle ticket to win an original framed photograph by local artist Wendi Forster.

Despite the pandemic over the last two years, Route 22 has managed to operate and grow the gallery.

President Lara Kruger says, “Obviously we’ve been operating in COVID, so we were launched as an organization kind of right in the thick of COVID and we’ve been operating throughout this whole time in sort of the pandemic mode, so it’s been a challenge. But we’re doing very well considering that we’ve had about 2500 visitors through this past year to the gallery. Programming has been well attended.”

After two years of operation, Route 22 is growing and looking for a more permanent art space. While they enjoy the space they are in, it is a commercial location and they would like to find the gallery space within a town facility. Kruger says they are in active discussions with the town with the hopes of making that happen down the road. Kruger says, “At the moment, the real message is we are looking to our community at a grassroots level to really help us build the capacity to have a permanent home in a long-term space for the arts in Cochrane.”

Kruger says the operation of Route 22 is dependent on volunteers, “The gallery itself right now is all volunteer-based so we staff the gallery with our artists, and everybody volunteers their time to do that. And that fact that we have a 40 strong group of artists that are willing to put their time in to make this happen, I think that speaks how strong that arts community really is…”

With the hope that the pandemic may be nearing an endemic and restrictions being lifted, Route 22 is looking forward to interacting with the community even more with programming and events throughout 2022.

Bottom line: Kruger says, “We’re trying to build a home for the arts in Cochrane so you know if that’s something that people care about seeing then we would really love their support.”