Ballarat Street Art murals project #WeRYou, was an inclusive and participatory street art project focused on the power of community, art and ideas to change perceptions and attitudes of Ballarat residents.
Over six months in 2013, I facilitated a series of installations of large format paste-ups, designed to combat ugly tagging in known graffiti hotspots. Black and white glued to the wall posters were displayed in more than 9 locations and featured portraits of hundreds of Ballarat residents. Various Ballarat community groups were involved to create hundreds of giant paper portrait murals and participate in street photography workshops. The most memorable memory I have was working with the group of Afghani, African and Indigenous teenagers.
One of the participants, Sadiqi Mukasa was a secondary school student at Phoenix P-12 Community College. Sadiqi arrived to Australia from the Democratic Republic of the Congo as a refugee with his family and have called Ballarat home for over three years back then. Sadiqi reckons it’s pretty cool to have his face up on walls around Ballarat.”You just walk around and people say, ‘have I seen you somewhere?’, and you’re like, ‘probably on the big posters’. It’s pretty awesome.