Christie Anditama

(Here is a short editing test of how the animation is being on the wall. Contribute to see more!!)
WHAT IS IT?

The animated wall mural project is a community based arts project to address graffiti tagging and vandalism in Footscray. It was conceived through the Emerging Cultural Leaders program at Footscray Community Arts Centre in 2013. The idea is to replace vandalism with a stop motion animated painted wall mural, based on the work of Italian street artist, BLU. The technique will involve painting repeated layers of the mural with slight changes to create the sense of movement, all captured through a series of photographs. The photographs will be edited together to form an animation. The design will feature the stories that make up Footscray and will be designed and produced through a collaboration of various Melbourne artists working with community members from the area. In particular, we aim to give Melbourne's western suburbs aged 15 - 25 opportunities to contribute to the mural, learn animation, gain new skills through free arts workshops and connect with the community's cultural leaders.


(Emerging Footscray Animator, Becky, rolling on some base coat for our mural)

STORIES
The design of the mural will incorporate stories from Footscray such as ancient Megafauna that used to roam the land, William Cooper's campaign for Aboriginal rights, cars being dumped in the Maribyrnong river and late animator, Sarah Watt's visions of whales on the streets. By participating in the project, the youth from Melbourne's west will learn about their history.

WHERE

The mural will be painted on the side wall of Betta Electrical, on Barkly St, Footscray, which is a site that has been victim to repeated acts of vandalism.

WORKSHOPS

(Some of our project team and participants embarking on a field recording session with sound artist, Nat Grant)
In order to help us gain the skills to complete the project, we are running workshops with experienced artists on the topics of sound design and mural design. Also we are consulting on the history of Footscray with Footscray Community Art Centre's elder in residence, Uncle Larry Walsh and Indigenous artist, Paola Balla. These workshops are free to youth residents in Melbourne's western suburbs.

(Lucy and Gonzalo from Magic Lantern Studio doing a presentation about mural design for our project)


(Uncle Larry Walsh and Paola Balla sharing stories and advising us how to best represent Footscray's Indigenous history into the mural)

OUR TEAM:

We have an amazing team that are running this project, comprised of young artists that live, work or are associated with the western suburbs of Melbourne:
PRODUCERS: Christie Widiarto and Jody Cleaver (from Austhetic Inc who are running this project)
PROJECT MANAGERS/DIRECTORS: Christie Widiarto, Becky Blechynden, Jared Backhouse
DESIGNERS: Rose Randall, Kim Grondowski
DOCUMENTATION: Jody Cleaver

OUTCOMES
There will be two outcomes, the first will be the finished mural, and the second will be a short stop motion animated film which will be launched at Footscray Community Arts Centre later in 2014 before hitting film festivals.

We have some initial funding from Maribyrnong City Council but we soon realised weneed a lot more resources to speed up the process and get a great result! The following items are what we'll be using the money for
$1,300 : Mini portable scaffolding to increase the height of the mural
$900 : Art and culture workshops by professional artists/cultural leaders
$100 : Safety equipment for scaffolding
$500 : Paint supplies and equipment
$300 : Documentation
$900 : Community mural painting sessions with animators

The main risks and challenges we face are:
* Generating enough support to buy the paint materials required
* Finishing the project within a reasonable time frame (we aim to launch the finished product in Oct/Nov 2014)
* Generating enough funds to keep running workshops with professional artists to help ensure a high quality end product