Moree’s street art culture will grow over the coming weeks as 15 bland NBN nodes adopt new, locally-designed masterpieces.
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Moree Secondary College’s art re engagement project, in partnership with Downer, NBN and the council, has involved local artists and students design wraps for the nodes.
Already, some of the seemingly-random, green NBN nodes have fallen victim to senseless graffiti.
However, a range of different designs will be installed on the boxes to add a pop of colour and give a sense of ownership back to the community.
Moree Secondary College senior leader of community engagement Janine French said four local artists, along with four schools created the array of artworks.
“Downer has the NBN contract to install these nodes. They approached Moree Plains Shire Council interested in finding a way to beautify the nodes.
“Council came to Moree Secondary College and asked if our students would be participate in the project,” she said.
Wanting to involve the whole community, Janine asked whether she could ask local artists and other schools to jump on board.
Half of the nodes will feature work from Shanny Smith, Michael Kirk, Chris Roberts and Jaydee Picker and the rest a creation of Moree Public, East, Secondary College and Barwon Learning Centre students.
“There is no specific theme and each node has a different design. You’ll see a couple of Aboriginal artwork, patterns, portraits and plenty of bright colours,” she said.
On Tuesday, Downer representatives were on the corner of the Gwydir Highway and Heber Street to check out Moree Public School’s designed node be installed.
Students from Year 3 and 4 created the colourful tree of life, with one inquisitive student asking a very good question.
“Are we putting our artwork on here so people won’t graffiti on them?” Janine was pleased to see the students understood and recognised their pride, and involvement in the project.
Before starting the project, Janine paired the nodes perfectly to each school/artist so that participants could regularly pass and be proud of their public creations.
“Two winning photos from the My Moree Photography Competition will also be used to give a bit of diversity.
“Robert Dunn’s image of the silos at sunset and Jeddy Fernando’s picture of the little Aboriginal boy will look incredible once installed,” she said.
If you want to check out the designs for yourself, two have been completed so far out of the total 15.
You can find Channy’s design across from the Tourist Information Centre and Moree Public School’s across from Eyra Medical and Skin Clinic on Heber Street and another at Amaroo Park.