Y o u t h A r t s M e n t o r i n g P r o j e c t
<In.scribe> Youth Arts Mentoring was founded in Byron Bay in 2014 as a community and public platform to engage local young people in community arts projects and to enliven the region with street art. The project has grown and expanded to offer hundreds of local youth the opportunity to engage in creative art processes with amazing outcomes of public art being brought to life designed and produced by the young people, while being mentored under Karma Barnes as well as an all-star cast of local street artists, youth workers and arts therapists throughout the Northern Rivers. Additionally, the project has since been invited to work in the Northern Territory (2016) and internationally to Timor Leste (2015) and in Bodhgaya, India (2017)
​
Through the programs, youth are intensively mentored through skills development, community arts, personal and collaborative art processes, art therapy directives and art skills development. The project has offered young people and participants the opportunity to develop creative skills in design, painting, drawing, collaboration, street art, installation arts, stenciling, paste-ups, journaling, live arts, public art design and installment. The program provides a creative outlet for the participating youth, and worked with directives focused on building self-esteem, personal creative development and group processes.
​
The <In.scribe> Youth Arts Project has developed immense community and public support along with a number of strong partnerships including Regional Arts Funds, Arts Northern Rivers, Byron Shire Council, FRRR, ANZ, Many Hands International, Byron Youth Service, Kyogle Youth Action, Tara's Children's Project and PHN Northern Territory.
A special thanks to our supporters & partners
<IN.SCRIBE> YOUTH ARTS MENTORING PROJECTS Stage #4 2020
OCEAN ALLEY - BYRON SHIRES LONGEST STREET ART MURAL
Over 2020 a group of 6 talented young people worked collaboratively to complete the final 20 meters of the now longest street art mural in the Byron Shire. The Ocean Alley is located at the Ocean Shores Shopping Center, Ocean Shores, NSW, Australia. The project was delivered in two segments pre-covid lockdowns and post-covid lockdowns, creating an important creative focus for the participants. The young people were selected from previous <In.scribe> Youth Arts Mentoring Projects to participate. Each young person designed and painted their own components of the work.
BYRON YOUTH SERVICES MURAL FESTIVAL
Celebrating reopening its doors Byron Youth Services post Covid lock-downs commissioned six talented young people to be mentored by Karma Barnes and Nickolla Clark to invigorate the entire entrance to the service with murals. The young people designed and installed their artwork along a series of walls stretching across one the entire front of the service. The artworks explore a range of themes including identity, connection to Country, Black Lives Matter and the perils and challenges of 2020, bush-fires and climate change.
<IN.SCRIBE> YOUTH ARTS MENTORING PROJECTS 2019
OCEAN ALLEY STAGE #3
2019 SAW Stage #3 in our Ocean Shores Street Art Alley Way Project come into fruition with with 6 local young people collaborating on the to create the next 20 meters of the 100 meter art wall art the Ocean Shores Shopping Center, Ocean Shores, NSW, Australia. The young people were selected from previous <In.scribe> Youth Arts Mentoring Projects to participate. Each young person designed and painted their own section of the the wall in this segment.
<In.scribe> All Girlz Arts Mentoring Project // Byron Youth Service, 2018
​
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.
​
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",
​