“ We three are 100 Wonder Place and we are putting on the Arty Party next Thursday 6th October from 11am — 4pm in Spinks Park behind the Lismore Regional Gallery.
100 Wonder Place is a partnership between the three of us and our aim is to create events and experiences for families and children to do with all sorts of art forms, music and movement, visual arts, performance and all different spectrums. We want to bring people to play together in art. Our tag line is ‘playful art making in public spaces.’ We want to bring communities together to bring a sense of place and connection to regular people in regular places. To play and have fun without technology.
We have a big policy of using as much recycled and up-cycled materials as we can. We’ve cut down bamboo at a friend’s farm and had a fantastic donation of fabric, costumes and books from Lifeline Northern Rivers. The three of us are op shop queens so we’ve sourced lots from op shops.
It’s also important to us that we engage with community groups which exist here. We have Lismore Environment Centre coming on board to do an activity about biodiversity and sustainability. We have the CWA who will be providing refreshments and a lovely space on the day where mum’s can take their bubs to change and feed them. Some of the women from the CWA will be passing on different crafting skills. Intergenerational sharing of skills and art and wisdom is really important to us. We often forget about the older people in our community and they have a lot to share.
We have had great support from our partners Lismore Regional Gallery, The Lismore Business Panel, The Lismore City Council and Lismore Tourism and Events. We also have support from North Coast TAFE, SCU Live Ideas program who have helped us source volunteers. We have lots of wonderful volunteers with all different skills coming on board and also volunteers to learn new skills.
We really want to keep the Arty Party free and we want it be accessible to all families. We don’t want people to miss out. We want to support those in our community who may not have enough and to have everybody feel comfortable.
We are also running a Pozible Crowd Funding Campaign which is the idea that a whole bunch of people put in a small amount of money which means that a target is reached. Once the target is reached we can put those funds toward more performers, materials, venues. People can pledge and there are rewards like t-shirts, badges, stickers and you can even get a 2 hour private workshop in your home with 5 of your friends with Peggy Pop Art. It closes 5pm this Friday and we are more than half way. Even $10 makes a big difference. Part of the funds raised will be used to pay Auslan interpreters for the deaf community to attend and we are also making sure all our props, sets and everything that we build for the event is all wheelchair accessible.
We are paying 25 artists to be a part of the Arty Party which provides a lot of employment for local artists. We also have 25 volunteers, some of those are children so The Pozible campaign will help to fund some of that stuff.
We have a volunteer package that we drew up and we listed some of the things that were important to us and one is diversity. We are strongly aligned to wanting to make it a diverse place for all members of our community. People from different cultural backgrounds, the LGBTI community, young and old, people with disabilities, all of our community. A lot of our volunteers are teenagers and they’ve come up from doing workshops with us over the years. We want to support young people coming through the arts.
Other than 100 Wonder Place the three of us work in different community areas including disability and we are all practising artists and performers as well. We have worked together for 15 years and we are really excited about the Arty Party. It’s an annual event and it takes a lot of energy and enthusiasm which we have but we don’t want to get burnt out so once a year is enough.
We are also really good friends. We love each other and we all work together in other capacities. We dream up wonderful, creative things together. We are honest and kind to each other and thats the microcosm that we make that we want to share. Last year we had over 1,000 people attend. People can like our FB page and see the funny video we made today.
This year we have the Paper Caper, a space for all things paper. Origami, paper folding, pirate hats, drawing games, sculptural book folding, collage, badge making with Jesse Macintosh. We have the Yarn Barn which is weaving, knitting, make little felt pillows, pompoms and more.
We also have dance workshops and a band playing. Spaghetti Circus are bringing their pop up playground and St Johns Ambulance will be. We will have various performers, two different stilt performers and the play-dough chef. We have giant cubby house building with Valley. Peggy Pop Art will be the MC for the day. We have story telling, giant weaving machines. Aunty Thelma will do welcome to country and our new Mayor Isaac is going to open the event. We stop at 1pm for lunch so either bring a picnic lunch or support the local cafes.
It’s going to be a whimsical, colourful day and we will use the whole park this year. It will be a place of wonder which is how we came up with our name. The 100 comes from The Hundred Languages of Children. Loris Malaguzzi said that children speak a hundred languages and they are the languages of touch, of seeing and hearing and singing, dancing and being in the world. As we get older people tell us we cant speak those languages so we want to have a space where children and grown ups can speak all those languages together and share.