LETTING SPACE is a project by the Wellington Independent Arts Trust. Letting space seeks to transform the relationship between artists, the public and their environments to enable social change. Based in New Zealand, Letting Space creates major temporary public artwork and events designed to provide dynamic new spaces for engagement, increasing the public commons.
Empowering artists to be courageous as agents of change. Letting Space work's with commercial and property partners to create programmes that transform the way we treat urban spaces as living spaces.

LETTING SPACE seeks to engage a wider public in the vitality and relevance of installation and performance-based contemporary art practice outside an institutional gallery framework. Commissioning leading contemporary New Zealand artists to work in commercial and public spaces, and also provide advisory and curatorial services for organisations looking to programme temporary public art events.

The Free Store was Letting Space's second commissioned work. For Free Store artist Kim Paton created a small retail grocery store, working with a wide network of businesses in the food industry in Wellington to donate food that for a variety of reasons would not be sold. This food was then offered free of charge at the Free Store, central to the project no bartering or exchange took place, customers were free to take as much or as little as they determined they needed but were asked to consider how much is left behind for who comes next.

The Free Store was a interactive social project aiming to question current norms within an economy based on supply and demand. Free Store aimed to make public a point in the supply chain that is usually unseen, raising discussion around how we define the value of a product and what we do with our waste.