A Space for the Community

Wednesday, 02 March 2011 17:33

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When Kelsey Erickson came up with the idea for Urban Tribe, she was sleeping. This literal dream became a reality against all odds. Between the time she dreamt it and when the performance art space came into existence, she had quit her job, stumbled over a couple patches of bad luck and was living on the fringe of society.

"I envisioned this place a couple years ago, and I actually had a dream where all of my friends rented all of these warehouse spaces and we all helped each other to make our businesses and creative ventures succeed," Erickson said.

The warehouse, located off of Sixth Street and Granada, is a part of a row of communal living spaces occupied by local musicians and artists. Before living in warehouse 12, Erickson stayed a few doors down at warehouse 10. Opening the space made sense for Erickson, who often found herself without a practice space since beginning circus performance a couple years ago.

"The main thing was that, I have been doing circus training. I have been doing aerial silks, fire, and all kinds of training for a few years now and there were times in my training where I didn't have any money and I wasn't able to pay to keep training and my training suffered because of it," Erickson said. "I went months without training at points because of money and to me that doesn't make any sense at all, so I wanted to provide a space where people can come, train, and find other ways of exchanging so that they could continue to train even when things were a little harder financially."

For now, Erickson says that the array of classes offered are made known by word of mouth, but in the future she hopes to improve on promotional efforts.

Click play below to hear Erickson discuss the creation of the collective.

Written by Emily Bowen

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