Parked cars were turned into works of street art on Wednesday as the Kalari-Lachlan River Arts Festival organisers launched a new festival drop-in workshop.
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“What we’re doing is called “yarn bombing”, “guerrilla knitting” or “guerrilla crocheting” festival minister Marg Willmott explained this week.
“We want to emphasise that anyone can do “art” and anything can become a work of art.
“We’d love to see the whole of Forbes CBD decorated for the festival,” Ms Willmott said.
The ‘yarn bombing’ was held outside the River Arts Festival’s new headquarters, a vacant shop at 81 Rankin Street, which has been donated to the festival organisers by local businessman, Tony Bernardi.
Up until the festival is held on October 25-27 the premises will house a drop-in centre, which will be used to hold meetings, as a workspace for creative volunteers, or even art exhibitions.
“We’re very grateful to Tony Bernardi and his family for allowing us to use 81 Rankin Street as our festival drop-in centre and workshop,” said festival chairperson, Merrill Findlay.
“We’ll make very good use of his building and take good care of it as we prepare for River Arts 2013. We need lots of volunteers to keep it open and to help make the site decorations, lanterns, costumes and all the other things a great festival needs.”
Ms Findlay said the festival ministry would love to hear from other owners of vacant commercial premises.
“We’d love to see all the other empty shops in Forbes filled with art and creative activities for the festival. It would be a much better look for the town to have them all used for the greater good, than standing empty,” she said.
“At least six well known visual artists from Forbes, Orange, Bathurst and beyond have expressed interest in pop-up exhibitions in empty shop fronts in Forbes in October. It would be fabulous if other building owners could follow Tony Bernadi’s example.”
Ms Willmott said the ministry looked forward to more colourful crocheting displays, like that seen on Wednesday afternoon.
“We’d like to see unexpected things, like light poles, tree trunks and street furniture covered in bright crocheting and knitting, and brilliant banners and bunting hanging in unexpected places,” Ms Willmott said.
“We’ll be inviting all our local knitters, crocheters, embroiderers, machine sewers, painters and print makers to let their imaginations run riot between now and festival time. We hope our new workshop will become a hive of activity with people making extraordinary things to transform Forbes into the most creatively dressed town in the central west for our festival.”
The festival shop will be open in the coming weeks as a work space and drop-in centre for people wanting to know about the event and how to contribute to it.
For more information visit www.riverartsfestival.org.au, become a friend on facebook, or drop into 81 Rankin Street.
