Karma
Barnes

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Over an eight week program, a group of young women from across the region explored their creativity, developed their artistic skills

and engaged in an intensive group process that fostered self-confidence, group skills and positive self-esteem. 

The group engaged in a number of projects during the program these included a paste-ups series of artworks that were installed on the streets of Byron Bay. The group designed and hand-cut their own stenciled that they used to paint their first wall at the Byron Youth Service, they used the learning from this project to correlate and design their ideas for the major work of the project. Then in the second half of the program, the group worked collaboratively towards a major 16-meter street art install on the Byron Bay Community Cottage based on their ideas and designs. This was installed over a two-day workshop by the participants.

Completion of the program and a public launch of the artwork was celebrated at a nighttime event at the Byron Bay Community Cottage with participants and their friends and family and community members. There were performances from Byron Youth Theater and a series of limited edition art postcards of the project were released.

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Mia Green a program participant expressed; "I found that the experience inspired me as well as building confidence in my abilities while boosting my self-esteem. It was great to be able to step out of my comfort zone and paint something on such a big scale. The message behind the wall is about equality as the characters featured are female and of various ethnic backgrounds. I was inspired by the fact that most street art is created by males and as a young female artist I wanted to rebel against that. My piece in the work is a woman of many tribes, she represents a combination of women from different cultures and races",