SINGAPORE — Photography art space 2902 Gallery is looking at the bigger picture for its Singapore International Photography Festival (SIPF) — and beyond.

It has recently launched a crowd-funding campaign to raise funds for a new mobile art space, DECK, dedicated to photography. Comprising 19 shipping containers and designed by Laud Architects, it will house not only a photography gallery but a library, classrooms and a cafe.

For the first two years, its initial site will be on Prinsep Street in the Bras Basah and Bugis arts district, where it will serve as the “festival village” for this year’s SIPF, which runs from Oct 3 to Nov 30. After the festival, other photography programmes — in collaboration with the music, graphic arts and design scenes — have been lined up until September next year.

Organisers are aiming to raise S$440,000 by next month for the project, of which they hope to raise S$250,000 through an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign.

“With the campaign, individuals can be involved in the making of DECK,” said 2902 Gallery and SIPF director and co-founder Gwen Lee, who sees the new mobile space as the “community extension” of the gallery. “It is built to be a community space. (2902 Gallery) is involved in art fairs, but that alone is not going to help the scene move.”

The shipping containers are private donations and Laud Architects has offered pro bono services for the design. The funds raised through the campaign will go to the construction of the space and cost of leasing the land. The SIPF was named one of the recipients of the National Arts Council’s Seed Grant (worth S$150,000), but only to develop “organisational capabilities” and its programmes.

“Mobile is the way to go. Land in Singapore is so expensive and you face issues of increasing rent every two years,” explained Lee. “The containers are also easy to configure and each is self-contained. DECK can be in a modular format. We (may not) find a piece of land as big as this (next time), so we can think of alternatives like, say, nine containers assembled in the east of Singapore and 10 containers in the west.”

It is not the first time 2902 Gallery has employed containers for its photography projects. In the 2012 edition of SIPF, there was House Of Photography, a roving container housing works that moved around the heartlands. It’s also not the first time an arts organisation has turned to crowdfunding initiatives to garner financial support for its art projects. Last year, theatre group Drama Box launched a similar campaign for an inflatable mobile community theatre space called GoLi.

For more details on DECK or SIPF, visit http://www.deck.sg and http://www.sipf.sg, respectively. Interested sponsors may also email sponsor [at] deck.sg. For more info on the campaign, visit http://tiny.cc/RaisingDECK2014.