Caswell Bus Barns aiming to be Saskatoon’s new arts and culture hub

The former Bus Barns in Caswell Hill is slowly opening after extensive renovations into the more than 100-year-old building. Keenan Sorokan reports.

Jillian Ross has been longing for a collaborative arts and culture hub in Saskatoon ever since returning to her hometown from Johannesburg nearly six years ago.

Thanks to the Caswell Bus Barns, a new development at the former city transit warehouse in Caswell Hill, Ross and her printmaking studio have a home for years to come.

“Here we are now, finally in Saskatoon, in a hub that opens the doors all the time,” Ross said.

Ross quickly looked beyond Saskatchewan’s borders after graduating from the University of Saskatchewan and ended up settling at an art studio in Johannesburg in 2002.

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Falling in love with the printmaking craft, she eventually met her husband Brendan Copestake and the COVID-19 pandemic forced the couple back to Saskatoon, where one project led to another and eventually had them working out of their home studio.

But with greater ambitions comes the need for greater space.

The idea behind the Caswell Bus Barns mimics the working environment she came from in South Africa, and she feels it’s a missing component of Saskatoon’s arts community.

“As soon as I saw that Crystal (Bueckert) was able to make the art hub that the Caswell Bus Barns is going to be, we were immediately on board,” Ross said.

“It’s like an every day. Everyday possibilities of engaging with other people; everyday possibilities of engaging with the outside in a different way. So for us, it’s about having a community and not only just your own — what you’re creating — but what other people are creating.”

Ross and Copestake are the pioneers of the new bus barns, the first tenants to move into the new space that’s been undergoing renovations since 2024.

Once the city moved its bus fleet to the Civic Operations Centre off Valley Road in 2017, the city explored a number of uses for the vacant building. Crystal Bueckert and her team at Prolog Developments were eventually chosen to develop the historic building north of 24th Street West between Avenue C and Avenue D — some of which traces its roots back to 1913 when the city stored street cars at the site.

“It’s nice to be a continuing narrative of that story,” Bueckert said. “And that this isn’t being knocked down and we can use this space.”

Plans for the mixed-use redevelopment are expansive.

Drawing inspiration from places like Granville Island, the nearly 43,000 sq ft. space will be the home to a number of artist spaces, recording studios, office space, a daycare a restaurant and a 200-person black-box theatre.

Outside, the building will remain mostly as you see it now, with modest changes like the atrium, featuring a fully glazed, timber framed three-season conservatory in the courtyard that will be open to the public and serve as an amenity and gathering space for the neighbourhood.

The goal is for the area to welcome partners, and end fears of rent eviction.

“Creating a space where artists actually own the building is really important because they can never get evicted,” Bueckert said. “They’re in charge of their own fate. And so they don’t have to rely on that funding for their landlords.”

Saskatoon Summer Players, On the Boards Staging Company and Gordon Tootoosis Nīkānīwin Theatre are combining to use the theatre space with plans of moving in 2027.

With art space and rehearsal space for theatre groups at a premium in the city, the Caswell Bus Barns isn’t just looking to give artists another place to be, it’s looking to be a hub of activity for decades to come.

“There’s a synchronicity I think that’s going to happen with everyone, and we’re going to have a lot of collaborations between these groups,” Bueckert said. “It’s going to be a larger community.”