Street Art Ballarat – We R You project
Our Faces Our Community
Happy smiling faces are staring at Ballarat pedestrians thanks to a new paste-up photography project, We R You street art project recently started in Ballarat. We’ve just pasted up posters on the Blockbuster building corner Camp/ Mair St. Come & join us, tell us what you think! Read City of Ballarat official media release.
We R You is modelled on the global Inside Out initiative, which is providing a ‘face’ for marginalised and disadvantaged people in communities around the world.
The Victorian Department of Justice provides grant support for projects that engage the community in graffiti prevention & intervention initiatives. We R You is designed to be widely participatory & consultative, to create new works of art acknowledging & empowering marginalised community members, to teach new skills, and to provide an environmentally benign alternative to aerosol-based graffiti.
Conceived as a graffiti intervention initiative, Ballarat’s We R You project engaged a local photographer Aldona Kmiec to run a series of photographic activities in January throughout to mid-May 2013 to engage the local community in a street art project. Participants from different community groups created large digital photographic portraits of diverse people who are otherwise ‘invisible’ in our community. These portraits were printed on paper and then pasted in identified graffiti hot-spots around Ballarat. The first building to receive the image ‘makeover’ was the Blockbuster building on the corner of Mair/Camp streets.
“This is a great community project. The photos were taken by everyday people, with help from a local professional photographer, and show the many different faces that make up Ballarat.”
The exhibition coincides with Harmony Festival and aims to celebrate, engage and connect Ballarat’s vibrant community.
The photographs will now be on an ongoing display.
View the full image gallery here
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