Have Wheels (will travel)

Riding to our local mobile library Bookmobile

How do creative ideas germinate and travel? I thought of this when I visited my mobile library this week (on my bike). The concept that books need to be housed inside buildings was turned on its head when travelling book outreach programs became a ‘thing’. Taking ideas, culture and books to where people live and work brings communities together. It’s where magic can happen.

Theatre, music and spoken poetry are all relatively transportable with long traditions of travelling bards and roaming performers. Bookmobiles too, are firmly embedded in Australian culture, whereas mobile art programs are rarer to find.

Yet they do exist and are examples of ‘thinking outside the box’. One of the longest running of these travelling art projects in Australia was set up by passionate artist and educator Mervyn Moriarty OAM who used his prize money from an art competition for flying lessons so he could set up a mobile arts school to take art out to remote areas. This legacy lives on today in the work of Flying Arts Alliance, which has been running art outreach programs to rural and remote Queensland since 1971.

Two art practices which would appear to be less than mobile are papermaking and letterpress. Yet inspired, innovative artists have found ways to make even these skills available to people who would otherwise have no access to the equipment or skills necessary.

The Mobile Mill (USA) is a mobile papermaking studio set up by teaching artist Jillian Bruschera, primarily using recycled papers to engage communities in artmaking and art-activism. The Mobile Mill is about “making things and it is also about making things happen”.

In Australia an exciting initiative the SPAM project is a mobile letterpress studio run out of a transportable shipping container “offering hands-on exposure to letterpress printmaking, particularly in regional and remote areas where the tradition of letterpress once thrived”.

Taking art to places where people gather, like train stations or shopping centres through repurposed cigarette vending machines was the initiative of USA artist Clark Whittington in the 1990s who wanted to bring affordable art into the hands of ordinary people. There are now over 200 Art-O-Mat vending machines all over the USA.

The first Adelaide Art Vending Machine which dispensed artworks and DIY crochet kits was set up at the Art Gallery of South Australia in 2019 with crochet art characters created by artist Steph Cibich. However this idea yet to catch on in a big way in Australia.

Locally in Murwillumbah in the northern rivers region of NSW we have an annual ‘art drop’ where artists create to donate artworks which they leave in places around the town and people follow clues to find them. The idea is “community over competition”, as a way to promote the work of local artists and bring art to the streets.

 Finding ways to personally connect your art with the public and activate art conversations is mostly achieved these days through online platforms such as Instagram, Etsy and on-line galleries. This precludes many people who don’t engage in social media for one reason or another. To think laterally and ‘put yourself out there’ means exploring alternative pathways to bring art to your appreciative audience.

Some of these are already available such as curating pop up art exhibitions, organising art events, artisan markets or community gatherings. Art can become the integral foundation for conversation and connection. Opportunities abound, especially if you are passionate about building a community which brings artists and their supporters together. It’s a matter of ‘getting on yer bike’. Onwards and upwards!

Art in the Park - pop up art-making to bring the community together after the 2017 Murwillumbah floods.