A Unique Community Art Echibition

A couple of months after moving to Boolarra, the Boolarra Community Development Committee (BCDC) asked me to organize an art exhibition. After giving a lot of thoughts to
this, I proposed to the Committee a unique art exhibition in which all of the community members could participate. Here is the description as it was mailed out:

Creative Boolarra Art Exhibition

As part of our community development, which involves organising activities and events which enrich and enhance our creativity and our lives, we are planning to have a two-day-event Art Exhibition with the involvement of all members of the Boolarra community. Our main objective is to celebrate our common creative spirit and to share. We believe that we humans are all creative and have been involved in many creative activities during our life time. However, due to the common belief that only artists are creative and should show their artwork, most of our creative endeavours are overlooked and have not been shared with others.
Let’s come together to break this taboo, show off our created artworks and share our
experience. Let’s make art achievable to everyone. If you have ever, either as a hobby or professionally, drawn or painted a picture, made an object from some raw or readymade materials, have taken, enhanced, and enlarged a photograph with a creative vision, made a family photo story board, woven a fine quilt, etc, bring it to show and share.
The Exhibition
The exhibition will be held at the Memorial Hall during 17 – 19 June 2011. All Boolarra residents, including children, are encouraged to participate.
Works include but are not limited to: paintings, drawing, made objects, photo stories mounted on a board. Videos, computer art, and object installations may be included if they can be installed properly and by prior arrangement.
The main purpose of the exhibition is sharing our ideas and creativity manifested in the form of an artwork. However, artworks could be for sale, exchange, donation, and so on. In the case of any sales, 25 percent of sales proceeds will be retained as commission for our
community’s future art projects. Audiences are encouraged to vote for their best choice of artwork, and art prizes will be awarded to the winners.
We had 48 participants presenting 111 artworks of all types, and the public response was great, busy all through the weekend. We are expecting a bigger and more successful exhibition next year, since everyone determined to go home and plan to create new artwork.

 I have really achieved personal satisfaction and fulfilment. Community work works.