Radical Cross Stitch

A few days ago members of the Melbourne Revolutionary Craft Circle went out armed with bags of finger knitted wool, seeds, painted banners, ribbons, thermoses, cups, cameras, chocolate and some sneaky hip flasks to engage in some creative resistance against the rampant speculation which is wreaking havoc in the Melbourne suburb of Footscray.

Concerned that there are increasing numbers of young people with nowhere to live while there is a ton of land lying around unused while the owners reap huge rewards as the property market delivers the rewards that are always guaranteed when a resource is scarce. And we were asking ourselves when the politicians are gonna realise that something needs to change when land values always go up at a higher rate than wage increases? There is a big connection between land speculation and the 27000 people who sleep it rough every night in Australia.

So we decided that all the boring chainlink fences in our suburb keeping people off the land needed a bit of cheering up.

Firstly we decided that some of the properties that were for sale needed a bit of help. They’d all been sitting there empty for a long, long time. One had half a construction on it but was so weather damaged that it will probably need to be pulled down and started again. So to complement the For Sale signs, we added our own:

This one was pinched within 12 hours. We took that as an endorsement on our brilliant artistic skills. I don’t think it was the owner ’cause the ribbons were left on the fence.

These were handpainted on old curtain fabric samples scored from Freecycle. We just projected the text on the fabric and painted it in. I have the file if anyone really wants it get in touch.

Our major piece was another fence cross stitch intervention. The site we chose is a corner sites in between two new townhouses, across the road from a primary school and with a bus stop outside. An extremely desirable piece of land just sitting there.

Fuelled by hot chocolate and yummy samosas (not at the same time) we spent about 3 hours sorting out the fence

Naturally, a bunch of women weaving a fence at 11.30 on a Sunday night did attract the curiosity of the constabulary. They were quite genuinely puzzled when they asked us what we were up to. We just smiled sweetly and told them it was an art installation and that it was ok, it’s only wool. They just told us to have a good night and moved on.

We had another visitor too. Some young lad (whom I suspect, by the use of the word ‘choice’, may have been from Aotearoa) pulled over on the other side of the road, leapt out of his car and leaving his door open ran over to find out what we were up to. When we told him, he got very excited. I would’ve invited him to join us but I kept seeing cars nearly taking his car door off. So dude, if you happen to read this, get in touch and we’ll invite you along on the next adventure.

We also scattered some seeds on this block. It wasn’t the best place to grow veges, but if you go past this site a bit, keep your eye out for some flowers popping up soon.

So a fun (and cold) night was had by all. You can hear all about it on the latest episode of the Craft Cartel podcast with an EXCLUSIVE ALL ACCESS audio report of the night. We’ve also got a wee film of the night coming soon. I’ll update this post when that’s online. And I want to say a BIG THANK YOU to our awesome wee posse. It was such a great fun night, and I can’t wait for the next one.

Finally, while I’m on this topic… If you’re a film maker and want to tell a story about housing issues and go in the running to win $3000, check out the I Want To Live Here film comp!