By Mikayla Van Loon
A new Mooroolbark mural has popped up along Brice Avenue thanks to the collaborative efforts of local young people, Victoria Police and a Melbourne-based street art studio.
Taking over a blank wall at Bakehouse Boss, artists from Blender Studios began work on the mural on Wednesday 26 July and, with the help of some high school students, completed the artwork over five days.
The project came about after the Mooroolbark Traders and Community Group received a grant from the State Government’s Living Local Suburban fund and invited police and students to work together.
Members from Mooroolbark Police Station joined the workshop process over four or five sessions to help build relationships with disengaged young people.
“It’s trying to be a positive initiative for the youth in the area who are a little bit disengaged with police and who are mucking around a bit in street crime and things like that,” Senior Sergeant Chris Tulloch said.
Senior Sgt Tulloch said the teens involved went from being “standoffish” to engaging in conversation.
Blender Studios art director Adrian Doyle, or Doyle as he is known, said students from local high schools began the workshops in June to design and learn street art techniques.
“We did a number of different workshops, we did freehand stencil, pre cut stencil, and a collage workshop where in those workshops we came up with the content for the design with the young people and collaborated with them,” he said.
Doyle said the inspiration for the mural came from the concept of being “about everyday Mooroolbark.”
“It’s all the things that people dream of and encounter and think about, but on a magical level. So it is surreal.
“But then there’s things like the kids think about the ocean and dogs and just random stuff. It’s all been thrown together into this really complex and beautiful composition.”
On Saturday 29 July, Doyle said before he and his team completed the artwork, the young people involved in the program painted sections of the mural in almost “a colour by numbers” technique to have an even greater ownership of the work.
For Senior Sgt Tulloch, giving these young people space to understand the benefits of collaboration but also how street art can improve the look and feel of a town.
“They generally won’t graffiti that because they know the kids have put that on the wall. So it actually stays on as quite a nice piece and adds a little bit of significance to the area,” he said.
Although the first time Mooroolbark has done such a project, it has been achieved in various suburbs across Melbourne.
Senior Sgt Tulloch said with the Traders group allocated funding for two more murals there would be an opportunity to recreate this style of work in the future.
To see more of Blender Studios’ work, head to Lilydale’s Lions Park to find a nine by 30 metre mural.
