Smartartz 2007

In 2006 a group of keen adbusters began thinking and planning for a series of street scape art installations to bring an 'alternative' Christmas focus.

In community not church space
Static with crazy multimedia ideas but safe and interactive unattended
Focused on key words from the advent story
Relevant to the community
Friendly and a new face for 'the church'

We ran out of time without burning ourselves out!!

In 2007 a bunch of those inspired group members picked up the idea and developed the alternative side of the project into advocacy for TEAR Fund Gift Catalogue and Fairtrade products.... we now have some ideas for 'stations' next time having seen the ideas and the space first hand with a genuine passing traffic [between REBEL Sport and Charlestown Square Shopping Centre]

A range of committed Uniting Church folk and UCATSA tertiary students of various flavours wore t-shirts pondering "what I want for Christmas is....." depicting goats, wells, etc on the back!! This was a Uniting Church U-Turn group!!

Live music was our centre piece in the rotunda with the usual rotation of embarrassingly talented muso's and singers on tap in these Hunter networks!!

Thanks go to all who participated... including those excluded from the Centre by Security for their subversion of the consumerist myth of happiness by material possessions!!

Some photos will appear here... others will later be uploaded to our yahoogroup space and a flickr panel in the right column!!
Well done and thanks to the core Team who made this possible!!

NEXT year....
three sided gazebo tents
backdrops
4 art installations
a wardrobe with holes cut for 34cm tv's
vox pop video about 'what christmas means to me'
invite Juan Mann to join us with his free hugs
maybe move from the Mall to a community hall or space somewhere with through traffic where a bbq and fire twirling could happen
alternative nativity
negotiate one installation to be in a shop window and out real people in a scene as if mannequins
so it goes on......