New event for the curious culture lover

WITH preparations in full swing for May’s inaugural Ballarat Craft and Design Week, local creatives with bright ideas for affiliated events are being invited to submit their ideas now.

The new Craft and Design Week will be free to attend and will run from 1-10 May at the city’s historic Mining Exchange with the spotlight on multiple creative collaborative projects.

The public program will include hands–on workshops, talks, a retail space, a community art project, and a range of additional activities and events.

Artists, groups, organisations, studios and retail spaces now have until the end of this month to register their own proposals for affiliated events to be included on the program, with the wider Ballarat community encouraged to participate in an art project that invites responses to the question: Why are you here?

City of Ballarat mayor Cr Tracey Hargreaves said the debut Craft and Design Week will be shaped by the people who take part in it.

“We’d love to see as many community voices woven into the program as possible,” she said.

“If you’ve been thinking about sharing your craft or opening your space, now is the perfect time. Even a small contribution becomes a part of something collective and powerful.”

The City of Ballarat is presenting the event in partnership with Craft Victoria and the Centre for Rare Arts and Forgotten Trades.

At the heart of the week are five featured collaborative projects, each chosen for the uniqueness of their partnerships, the quality of the work and the visitor experience they’ll create.

They each explore themes of textile, memory, resource, materiality and connection, inviting audiences into journeys shaped by clay and cloth, light and shadow, experimentation with reclaimed materials, and reflections on culture and place.

Applications to run an affiliated event close on 30 March, and creative responses to the community art project close on 31 March with more details on the Creative Ballarat website.