Page 2269 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 15 September 1992
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ACTION and Montone Paints have for some years now run a competition for the painting of bus-shelters which is open to community groups. This allows young people to identify with their shelter and has clearly operated to discourage young people destructively graffiti-ing public facilities such as bus-shelters; rather, directing them to creatively painting those bus-shelters. The pattern has been, particularly near schools, where in the past we had problems with graffiti in bus-shelters, that once you let the school group have the bus-shelter and create its youth art work on it, other kids from that school will tend to leave it alone. No-one is more vigilant in protecting public property, it would seem, than the young students who have done the work. They seem to be far more effective in prohibiting graffiti than are members of the police force or our Urban Services inspectors.
That has been a significant saving to the community. It costs the community, when we have to send people out to repaint a bus-shelter, between $130 and $200. We tend often to do that work on weekends in order to avoid inconveniencing the community. I think Ms Szuty once asked me a question about why we were doing it on weekends, and that was the answer. In the five years that we have had this program running, over 200 of our total of 500 bus-shelters have been painted by community groups around Canberra. In August this year we launched for the first time seminars at the Australian National Gallery, where people who were interested in joining the competition - school groups, community groups, youth groups - were given a half-day workshop from some of those expert creators at the gallery on community art and public art. They were shown a very interesting slide display of public art works in Europe, particularly in the Netherlands and Germany, and then were given some workshopping on butcher's paper, putting those ideas into place.
This year some of the works our young people will come up with on the bus-shelters around the town will be that much more artistic, if you like, that much more studied, than we have seen in the past - again directing the focus of energy and expression into positive aspects of public art as opposed to the destructive vandalistic graffiti. A year or so ago, when ACTION was running one of these competitions, two unemployed young Canberra people approached ACTION to get involved in painting bus-shelters but were unable to take part in the competition because they were not a community group.
These two young Canberra artists, in association with the Chief Minister's local employment development initiative, have been able to incorporate themselves as a business, Vahomes Murals, and now have a contract with ACTION for the painting of 22 bus-shelters. So, in addition to the community competition, we have also been fostering work by two previously unemployed young Canberra artists. This is very high quality work. As well as getting the contract with ACTION, they have recently got a contract to do a mural in the basement of Parliament House. The business is now being expanded to employ and train another 36 unemployed young Canberra artists, in conjunction with ACTION and the Chief Minister's Department. There is a very impressive record of achievement in community art in the ACT.
There was an issue agitated earlier this year in relation to underpasses. When school safety issues are raised we will often say, "Look, we have constructed an underpass; it is the safest possible means for young people to get from one side of the road to the other". Sometimes there is resistance from parents and schools
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