In Catalonia, a community-run wi-fi network spans much of the autonomous Spanish region. More than 37,000 independent nodes are part of guifi.net, a community-owned and self-organized mesh network that lets anyone log on and access the internet for free. 

Individuals can set up and add their own nodes to the network, each one acting like a wi-fi extender that boosts the signal for a few more folks to be able to access. And unlike city-owned free wi-fi, mesh networks show us what internet access looks like when the community controls it. 

That’s the principle behind Stolon Mesh, a new public art project that hopes to serve as the beginning of Vancouver’s own new network. 

“A lot of my practice centres around participatory practice—doing things with others,” explains Christina Battle, an Edmonton-based artist who developed Stolon Mesh during a multi-year fellowship with Vancouver’s 221A. “A lot of the time, that is how cities, at least, approach thinking about public art: they parachute an artist in; they make something and then they leave. And I’m most definitely not interested in that approach.”

Much of Battle’s works considers disasters, which is where she first learned about mesh networks. The systems often appear during crises, as people with internet access try to extend it to those who’ve lost the infrastructure. 

Similarly, mesh networks in Detroit have been set up and tended as ways to share internet access with underserved communities. The strength of mesh networks—and disaster relief in general—is almost less about the technology, and more about the social connections that are built to deliver it.

The idea for a mesh network in Vancouver came to Battle when she was thinking about 221A’s public art site, x̱aw̓s shew̓áy̓ New Growth《新生林》garden, at the corner of Union Street and Gore Street. Its location, on the edge of Chinatown and the Downtown Eastside, seemed like it would benefit from more free internet access. 

The combination of nature and technology fits into another of Battle’s interests: the way plant systems can model different modes of communication and connectivity. The project is named after strawberry stolons—the horizontal connections, also known as runners, that some plants use to propagate. 

“The amazing thing to me about mesh networks is they really do offer, not just a technological fix or answer to problems, but they rely on community to build them together and to keep them going,” Battle says. “The garden itself operates similarly; it really relies on and is built with community in mind. So it seemed like a sort of invisible layer that could be added upon the garden.” 

All kinds of people were involved in helping bring the idea to life, making it far from a solo effort. The first internet node opened in x̱aw̓s shew̓áy̓ garden in early November 2023, with another node now also online at CoFood Community Garden (2050 Scotia Street in Mount Pleasant). 

The wi-fi network name is stolonmesh, and the password is newgrowth. Once you’ve accepted terms and conditions, it’s just like any other wi-fi network. Right now it’s a fairly small range, though the hope is that eventually, you’ll be able to access it from anywhere in the neighbourhood.

Battle hopes to find a space for a third node sometime later this year, and then it’ll be up to individuals or small organizations themselves to join the mesh: maybe operating nodes along the north part of Main Street to help link together the two points, and expanding it into a continuous area. 

The technological side of expanding the network isn’t too complicated. There’s a hardware element, like a router, and a software layer (an uplink) that spreads the connection. So community members can fairly easily uplink a new node to the network, expanding that wi-fi access further, and hopefully into the range of someone else. 

Battle says the bigger hurdle is the work in asking people to re-imagine what access to the internet looks like.

“Why do we have to pay for this utility that I think most even governments recognize is required and essential?” she asks. While she’s quick to note that there are legitimate reasons to keep some networks private and secure, there’s also the need for “a fundamental shift in thinking for ourselves—that the internet doesn’t have to be private and hoarded, and it can be something to share.”

There have been attempts to start mesh networks before in Vancouver—some of the community advisors involved in Stolon Mesh even participated in them. Those didn’t stick. Stolon Mesh might not either. But in a way, doing it as a public art project helps spread awareness; maybe this time, with the continued and unrelenting public health and wealth inequality disasters unfolding, the stolons will grow.

“The public art part of the project was really getting folks thinking about a thing and excited about a thing,” Battle reflects. “Now it is up to the community to pick it up and expand it and develop it further.”