They look fairly happy about it.
Today Joy Burch and Andrew Barr announced $85,000 in joint funding for You Are Here, Canberra’s little festival that could.
They did this in the alleyway behind Impact Comics.
You Are Here have used this space as a venue during the festival before, but on those occasions the traffic had been blocked off and a lot of effort had been put into decorating and cleaning up the space.
Today, it was just an alleyway full of trash, traffic, and surly electricians.
So members of the media, several artists, a few politicians, and of course the YAH producers themselves exchanged pleasantries and posed for photos while being constantly disrupted by parking motorcycles and the the Rentokil Pest Control van.
Confused and grumpy looking workmen carrying trash cans and ladders pushed past us like they didn’t care about Canberra’s ongoing alt-art scene.
Then it started to rain.
It was the best media event I have ever attended.
You Are Here was birthed into 2011 and grew out of a desire to fill the city with art and invite people to rethink about how they related to the city they live in. Empty store fronts, nail salons, and alleyways became venues for performances.
You may remember that I had some positive things to say about this years festival.
You Are Here’s collection of producers have been hard at work planning next years event, however there has been a question mark over the even due to the lack of funding. Previously the festival had been funded as a part of the Canberra Centenary program.
This is good news for arts lovers in Canberra.
Several artists came out to help celebrate the news.
Dancer Adelina Larsson twirled up and down the alley while slam poets Zoë Erskine and Amelia Filmer-Sankey filled the space with words. The sun then came out and suddenly it wasn’t an awkward alleyway anymore.
They may not have intended it, but in a way this little media event was a perfect preview to You Are Here 2014.
I can’t wait.
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