NO BORDERS IN OUR SKY BLOG
No Borders In Our Sky brings diverse young people in Wagga Wagga together in a creative multi-artform project that promotes harmony and peace. We invite participants to explore ideas through song writing, spoken word poetry, music production, and various forms of visual media. No Borders will run for 2 years in Wagga Wagga, with monthly visits from our skilled artists to facilitate high quality creative workshops. We are planning some exciting public outcomes.
Watch this space for project updates - we will be sharing bits of creative content from workshop visits as the project develops.
Working together, and through their collaborative artworks young project participants confirm there is far more that connects us than divides us.
Project enquiries: hey(AT)heapsdecent.com
Check out the Heaps Decent Augmented Reality app to view more project content.
April 2023 visit
The Multicultural Council, Wagga City Centre
Mark and Nerida installed the epic AR Trail in 8 locations around the Wagga City Centre. Each location features a futuristic floating gallery of art work and music, all made by young locals! They are a wonderful glimpse into the local area and community. Featuring at the Fresh Festival, the installation is ongoing for the time being - see the map below and check out these awesome artworks!
Can’t get to the map locations in person? Scan the markers below to view the artworks anywhere:
Here is some footage we put together on day one of the AR trail. The works rotating are all connected in some way to the location. They look amazing!
We hosted a community lunch to mark the end of this beautiful project. Kebab Erbil and Tasty Tibetan treats provided delicious catering. We ran some final workshops exploring paint pouring techniques and green screen photography, and of course the sky theme.
We are all here, connected under the same vast sky.
December 2022/January 2023 visits
Riverina Youth Justice Centre, The Curious Rabbit
Adam and Tom followed up the last visit, this time focusing on music production from beatmaking to orchestrating other instruments using various Digital Audio Workstations.
We started the massive undertaking of putting together music and artwork from the last few years for the Augmented Reality Art Trail, due for reveal at the Fresh Festival in April. Stay tuned…
October 2022 visit
Riverina Youth Justice Centre, The Curious Rabbit
Adam ran music workshops at Riverina Youth Justice Centre and The Curious Rabbit, check out one of the great tracks recorded below:
August 2022 visit
The Multicultural Council
We ran visual workshops at the Multicultural Council, exploring model making and artworks on miniature canvases. These were inspired by some local places - the skate park, sports fields, the bushland, and natural environment, local food spots and Wagga’s own beach. These cute little artworks speak for themselves!
May 2022 visit
The Multicultural Council
In May, Tom and Adam visited Wagga, this time working with young people at the Riverina Youth Justice Centre and The Curious Rabbit art space.
During the music production workshop sessions, there were a few cool and inventive tracks made. Here’s a couple of clips from the sessions!
April 2022 visit
The Multicultural Council
Tom, Mark, and Nerida visited to run music production, DJing, digital visual, and large-scale painting workshops.
A couple of the tracks made, featuring Kip, Noah, and Mona Lisa all rapping about their pride in their hometown, Wagga:
Here is a selection of little animation works made on Looom software, a great way for bringing drawings on iPads to life!
Over the 2 days 12 participants created a huge work on paper that featured their life sized self-portraits, and little collages of buildings and locations in Wagga also feature in the work. Here is some of this awesome work:
March 2022 visit
Riverina Youth Justice Centre and The Curious Rabbit
Adam and Tom led a series of music production workshops, with lots of good vibes and teamwork on new ideas. Did you know how good music is for bringing people and communities together? Research shows that making and listening to music improves our ability to connect with one another—by impacting brain circuits involved in empathy, trust, and cooperation—perhaps explaining how it has survived in every culture of the world.
January 2022 visit
Riverina Youth Justice Centre
Uncertain times thanks to the Omicron outbreak! Despite this Adam visited the Riverina Youth Justice Centre to focus on music production. Participants had a couple of very successful and busy days exploring self expression; writing lyrics, making beats and constructing tracks.
November 2021
The Multicultural Council
Nerida and Bella ran a series of visual media workshops, including printmaking, marbling, and collaging activities. Participants created a large collaged map of Wagga, using a combination of marbled prints and images from recent photography workshops.
Adam and Tom visited a week later, working on some fire beats. Check out this track by Kip:
It was great to get back to the project after the ongoing disruptions of COVID-19 restrictions.
October 2021
F.Stop workshops
After a pause on project activities during COVID restrictions, we were truly happy to get back to community activity. James and Patrick from F.Stop ran a series of workshops in both studio and outdoor photography. Participants explored how an image can capture and communicate experiences from their point of view, evoking ideas of home and belonging.
Everyone took their camera home between workshops, capturing photographs at home, at places and events, and with family and friends. During workshops participants went on group walks to different areas of Wagga (the park, the River, and the Saturday markets).
The resulting images are wonderful and capture a wide range of moments and experiences.
April 2021 visit
The Multicultural Council
We returned to Wagga for our first No Borders workshops of 2021. Music producers Jess & Thaylia had an amazing first trip, and created some super catchy tracks. Multi-media facilitators Ego and Bella worked with participants to create visual content for an interactive art walk, drawing inspiration from our favourite places in Wagga, and exploring ideas of looking beyond the exterior to discover inner worlds.
Check out a selection of the works produced below…
We love this new track by Amy and can’t wait to hear the finished product!
These 3D sketches were created with Oculus Quest using Google Tiltbrush:
These beautiful mixed media collages are based on places around Wagga, and will be used to form a large map:
Using the looom application on iPads, participants made these cute looping animations:
February 2021 update
Unfortunately we were unable to make it to Wagga in late January for more project work because of the COVID spike in Sydney (and advice for us to stay put).
We are cooking up some exciting workshops for our upcoming visits.
We created some fun little animations on our last trip, see if you can spot the Wagga landmarks in the background!
October 2020 visit
The Multicultural Council
We ran a series of multi-media workshops during the school holidays at The Multicultural Council - it was great to see many new faces turning up to participate. For visual activities, 2 large landscape collages of Wagga were created using photography, watercolour paint, textured paper, and POSCA pens. Participants also worked on creating stop-motion animations using miniature puppet versions of themselves and their siblings. Some participants also created immersive Virtual Reality paintings using Tiltbrush with the Oculus headsets. You can see some of them in action below:
This magical village was created by Kip
The flying comets are mesmerizing
A lone penguin drifts on an iceberg…
Participants finished these 2 beautiful landscapes inspired by some well known parts of the town.
Check out this track recorded by Aydah:
Over many sessions, workshop regular Kip has been mastering the essentials of music production. Here’s a little tutorial on how to make a beat:
August 2020 visit
The Multicultural Council
Nerida & Bella ran a mixed media workshop with 5 participants - all young emerging leaders from diverse backgrounds in Wagga Wagga. The resulting artworks from this workshop will be exhibited at the Museum of the Riverina, and feature in Artstate Wagga Wagga, a showcase of the rich cultural identity of the Riverina region. The series of works is titled ‘Future Leaders’, proudly expressing each individual’s personal identity with vibrant colour, language, symbols and cultural imagery.
Photographer James Farley first captured the stunning black and white portraits, and then participants created a collage design overlay in colour using textured paper, photographs and text. The images were finalised in Photoshop for exhibition printing & the results are beautiful! We love the individuality of each artwork, and how they celebrate personal and cultural identities.
Participants Wes & Maddy
From left to right: Ja Ing, Nadereh, Maqboola, Wes, Maddy
July 2020 visit
The Multicultural Council, Riverina Youth Justice Centre, Visual Dreaming
We were finally able to return to Wagga for a series of multimedia workshops with facilitators Adam, Charlie & Bella. We adapted our usual workshops to be safer for participants and tutors - with restricted attendance, copious amounts of hand sanitiser and regularly disinfecting equipment.
Participants worked with Bella on some animations translating words from English to their first languages. Here are some fantastic examples created by Fatema:
Participants also created some mixed media collages, using words to describe good leadership. We would love to make more of these to use in exhibition!
We love this track Christabel started working on - some of the lyrics are in her first language:
June 2020 visit
No Borders in Our Sky mural installation
After over 12 months of multimedia workshops, creating artworks, recording songs, interviews and stories, we were proud to install a large scale interactive mural that celebrates the diversity and creativity of young people engaged in the No Borders project. 28 beautiful self portraits make up the mural, each portrait a window into the imaginations, journeys and reflections of more than 50 participants who came together to connect in friendship and harmony.
Using the app ‘Heaps Decent AR’, audiences can scan each portrait to reveal a unique AR activation with further content created by workshop participants; music, spoken word poetry, interviews, collages, animations, 3D paintings and digital sculptures.
It was great to see so many participants come down to see their artworks and interact with the AR activations. We are looking forward to returning to Wagga and resuming our workshops soon!
The mural is located in the parking lot behind Target Country:
If you are unable to see the mural in person, download the app ‘Heaps Decent AR’ on your phone and check out the self portraits below!
March 2020 visit
Mt Austin High School, Wagga High School, The Multicultural Council, Riverina Youth Justice
Facilitators Adam, Charlie, Ego & Jackie led a series of multimedia workshops - including music production, 3D painting, and storytelling.
Jackie interviewed participants about ideas of community and peace, and also what the sky means to them. Here are some great quotes from those sessions:
“Art will make people happy and peaceful”
“In my language, the word for sky also means heaven”
“Everyone is equal under the sky”
“We have all the love. Love yourself more to help other people. We can all be friends and family.”
“Bring people together to make them happy”
“Being friendly to the environment and to people around you”
“Invite your neighbour for a cup of tea”
“If someone is smiling, smile back to them. Doesn’t matter who they are”
“Set the example for your community”
“Sky is like us coming together, joining together.”
Workshop participants are picking up 3D painting techniques with impressive speed! Here are some snapshots of the mystical scenes exploring coming together, gatherings, and safe havens:
Hanging round the campfire
Map of Australia
Kip & Peter’s glowing house
This is a great first go at recording a track by Vian at Mt Austin High School:
Due to COVID-19 we have had to suspend our face-to-face workshops for the time being, however we are making plans to be creating work in the online space & sharing more content.
January 2020 visit
Multicultural Council of Wagga Wagga, WAFRICA Summer School
To start the new year, we ran a series of multimedia workshops over the school holidays at the Multicultural Council and WAFRICA Summer School with 75 keen participants. With some brand new Oculus Quest headsets, Mark led some awesome VR experiments where participants explored 3D painting. They created imaginary new places for us floating through the sky, where the rules for the natural and built environment as we all know them have gone out the window. Nerida & Bella had participants collaging unique sky-dwelling creatures, that explore how we might augment our physical restrictions to take flight. Everyone crafted some beautiful paper houses & shapes for an airborne installation. Adam & Rick worked on some fun new music tracks.
Deep in the VR space
A garden in the sky
Glittery space scene
A mountain river
Some fantastic human/flight enhanced hybrids
Participants working carefully to construct the houses
Completed lanterns lit from inside, part of a suspended installation
October 2019 visit
Fusion Festival
Nerida & Bella had a stall at the 2019 Fusion Festival, encouraging festival goers to participate in the No Borders Postcard Challenge. You can read a couple of the challenge responses below:
September 2019 visit
Bidgee School, Wagga Wagga High School, The Riverina Juvenile Justice Centre & The Multicultural Council
Adam and Charlie focused on music production on this visit, and we also got the "Postcard Challenge” underway. Young people began to collect challenges from people young and old in the community, asking for simple acts to make the local community a more friendly, inclusive and peaceful place in the future. Boys at Riverina Juvenile Justice centre are also participating. More challenges are being collected at The 2019 Fusion Multicultural Festival in Wagga Wagga. Here are some of the challenges so far - featuring some of the great artwork made by project participants:
My Time To Shine is another catchy track from a participant at Riverina Juvenile Justice Centre:
August 2019 visit
The Bidgee School, Wagga Wagga High School, The Riverina Juvenile Justice Centre & The Multicultural Council
With Adam, Mark and Wes we created more music, and also visuals exploring the theme of bodies of water as a means of connection and movement. The Murrumbidgee River images will help connect the portraits for the public mural to be installed, and so we got photos and drone footage to be used in Augmented Reality content. We also filmed coloured inks swirling through water with some beautiful results, which will also be included in the mural piece.
Clarice created these inky swirls.
One of the catchy tracks made at Wagga Wagga High School was ‘Let's Go’:
July 2019 visit
Riverina Community College, Riverina Juvenile Justice Centre, Multicultural Council
With Nerida and Bella, another series of map portraits were created with project participants, whilst Mark facilitated the beginning of AR work with iPad digital portraits and images. Participants also made plasticine creatures, and stop-motion animations inspired by the lotus flower. The lotus flower has meaning in many cultures, and broadly represents rising out of past struggles - no matter how you start in life and no matter what you are going through, you have the ability to overcome and find peace and harmony.
Digital portraits by Christabel & Xya-Lilly:
Adam and Charlie were bombarded with requests to get on the mic and the rest of the music production gear.
This is ‘My Life’ by Kip:
June 2019 visit
Multicultural Council, The Bidgee School, Wagga Wagga High School, Kooringal High School
Thanks to a big fog, it took a long time for artist Howard Matthew to get to Wagga Wagga from Sydney. But he made it, and began the process of creating a public artwork with project participants, using maps to collage a series of self-portraits that represent each unique family history and personal journey. Over 20 detailed portraits were completed over the two days!
Eventually these portraits will become part of a large interactive mural, inhabiting a public space in Wagga Wagga (TBA). Through Augmented Reality technology, audiences will be able to view other work created by young people - songs, poetry, stories, animations, video, and more.
Adam, Charlie and Mark also visited, and as we were coming up to NAIDOC Week, the guys worked with Wes Boney and some of the students at Kooringal High to make music, and a special FB filter to celebrate the week.
NAIDOC Song by Ash:
May 2019 visit
Riverina Juvenile Justice Centre, Riverina Community College, Wiradjuri Art Studio
Adam, Charlie and Mark ran workshops with boys in Riverina Juvenile Justice Centre, creating several tracks and psychedelic digital self portraits exploring the many layers to our identities.
‘Together We Stand’ by two participants at Riverina JJ:
April 2019 visit
Multicultural Council of Wagga Wagga
What a successful project launch! We had more than 40 participants all super keen to get involved. Young people from an incredibly rich range of cultural backgrounds came together to explore different media. Facilitating artists Charlie, Adam, Mark, Nerida & Bella facilitated a series of workshops creating self portraits, a series of images involving lots of shoes, Facebook face filters and some catchy electronic music tracks.
We can’t get this track by Christabel out of our heads!
Here are a few of the portraits created by participants:
Below are some Facebook filters, designed by young people in our April workshops. You can scan these QR codes to try them out yourself in the Facebook app!
Project participants testing out the new filters!