It’s not the best photo (I realised later) but it reads “I hear U’ stitched amongst the question marks!  And it looked gorgeous!

Massive hellos and respect to the person who did it!  Please get in touch xox

So in the weekend I headed back to get some better photos, only to discover someone had come along and cut it all off the fence.  Not in any kind of nice way either, all the wool was left lying all over the ground.  Hmpf.

So I cracked out some spray glue and stuck piles of it back to the top of the fence.  Nowhere near as pretty.  But better than it all sitting on the ground.

And still there’s no house there…

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The upcoming Interventionist Guide to Melbourne show has given me plenty of time to think about the role artists play in our society and how much art is constrained by our economic system.

Any artist that spends more than five minutes thinking about the world around them will be aware of the effect gentrification has on their lives.  But it seems very few really understand how it works.  I see far too much art around me – especially street art – that plays into the hands of the gentrifiers.

I was gonna write a big rant on this but instead I URGE you to download and listen to this episode from the Renegade Economists instead.  It sums up so brilliantly the economics behind why artsists are just pawns in the speculators profit game.

What really frustrates me is when I see really brilliant creative minds who go cap in hand to the land lords asking for good deals on rent for creative spaces when really it should be the other way around.  Especially if you think about how much value artists contribute to communities.  Or arguably even worse is when artists set themselves the task of ‘prettying up’ a decaying suburb.  Rather than questioning why there’s row after row of boarded up shops, they just go and paint pictures on them.  The owners freakin love it, I assure you.

There are countless examples of how artists move into a run down area, get cheap rent, make the place awesome and desirable and then get priced out of the area when the speculators cash in on their efforts.

The question I have to ask is, as artists when are we going to educate ourselves on these issues and collectively stand up against it?

Rent is one of the reasons we started the Craft Cartel.  We wanted to create a market space for crafters who were doing truly interesting things.  It was apparent to us that so many crafters were making stuff that was palatable for the retail sphere not out of desire but out of need.  There’s no point making stuff unless you know for sure someone is going to buy it, especially if your craft is a major source of income.  And if you want to sell your stuff in shops the pressure is even greater as the shop owners have such massive overheads.  Especially rent.

So we made a real concerted effort to have super low stall fees at our markets because we wanted people to be able to have a space to bring the really crazy stuff.  The political stuff, the kooky stuff and the stuff that really makes you squirm..

It’s very much a labour of love for us.  The stall fees went to covering the costs of the market but didn’t go near covering our costs to organise and promote.  But the payment was in the fantastic community that arose out of it.  We had sellers say to us that they loved coming to our markets, not to make money but to have a great time!  So as far as we were concerned, it was a raving success.

So it really gets me going when I know that crafters are busting their asses to make sustainable, interesting, awesome things and there’s so many people out there sitting around trying to figure out how to make money off them.  Be it stupidly expensive markets, yet another bloody internet marketplace or (what really makes my skin crawl) advertising space – we even rip each other off!

It is the monopoly capitalist system that makes it so hard for makers.  Yet it’s so rare that we sit down AS MAKERS and use our creative skills to come up with new ways of doing things.

But sometimes people do. And I want to pay massive respects to those people.

If you want some inspiration or some more info I recommend you check out some of these resources:

• Community Land Trusts – a bloody good working example of reformed local economics
• I Want To Live Here – Born to Rent – win $3000 by making a short film about gentrification. And there’s some good writing about gentrification on that site. Especially check out the blog.
• The Antagonist Movement – just discovered this NY crew and LOVE!  Actually gives me a reason to want to visit that fine city..  What really pressed my buttons was this short doco I found on Wooster Collective. It’s brilliant.  Watch.

The Antagonist Art Movement – For Dummies from Anthony Ferraro on Vimeo.

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AND today a story has appeared in The Vine about it.

Yay!

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After the latest action by the Melbourne Revolutionary Craft Circle in Footscray, one of the local papers, The Star, wrote a story about it. Including a lovely bad ass guerilla crafter pic!

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So almost a year on and some philistine (guessing the landlord..) cut it off!  Clearly not happy with the community questioning the ongoing waste of such a precious resource the local landmark was destroyed.

The MRCC was clearly not going to let this go unresponded to.  So a few days later we were out again, this time armed with bright green wool and tummies filled with Pho.

What the hell is going on?
Why is this block still empty?
Why are there 11 other vacant sites around the primary school?
Why does the State Government continue to believe the outright lies of the property industry that the housing crisis is driven by lack of land?
Why do we still allow this waste of our most precious resource when there’s over 100,000 people every night in Australia with no place to live, let alone call home?

We’ve had enough.

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I bet you been hearing a whole lotta talk from the housing/building/development industry recently about how the reason housing is so expensive is ’cause there’s not enough houses.  And – my favourite excuse – that the industry hasn’t got enough land to build on.

The politicians, of course lap this up.  Given that the majority of them aren’t actually trained classical economists, and a fair amount of them get some pretty nifty donations from the industry and a decent percentage probably make a reasonable income from property investment.  It all makes sense to them.

And land rezoning is about the easiest thing a politician can do.  It doesn’t require any legislation and they get a cool photo op with a spade and a pretty yellow sun hat.

UNFORTUNATELY this is all a bunch of bollocks.

Thanks to Tohm Curtis and his recently released report commissioned by Earthsharing Australia, we can now quite conclusively demonstrate that the issue isn’t supply it’s speculation.

Any idiot can tell you that if you have a resource and you want to make it more valuable, you don’t sell it all at once, you drip feed it into the market.  That is exactly the issue facing our housing market.  Far from the real estate industry’s advertised vacancy rate of 0.7% in inner Melbourne, the actual vacancy rate is 7%.  To put that in real terms that’s 2,317 properties empty in central Melbourne during Australia’s worst ever housing crisis.

This speculative vacancy is what’s really driving the housing crisis.

So while there’s over 200 Melbourne University students without a home, there is enough housing vacant in Carlton alone to house every single one of them.  And it’s their parents’ generation that is doing it to them.

At the start of last year there were 38,000 existing residentially zoned blocks of land vacant in Melbourne being help by the six big developers.  This year Brumby gave a massive handout to the development industry and rezoned another 90,000 blocks of land for residential purposes.

NINETY THOUSAND

So has anyone noticed the price of land drop this year? Didn’t think so.

Of course the majority of that land was already owned by the developers so the rezoning made them overnight bajillionaires.  And no, they won’t be building affordable housing, they’re building more suburban mcmansion ghettos which will be drip fed into the market to ensure they can charge the maximum amount for each and every one of those houses.

Our generation has come aboard the space ship of planet earth but all the seats are taken and we are left squeezing in the aisles.

The time has come to get real angry about this.  Not angry and irrational, but angry and organised.  Anyone keen to help out with creative action on this issue (and there are so many fun, beautiful things we can do!) should get in touch.  We’ll be getting together in the new year to plan what to do.

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Holy crap!

Yay!

Anna won $3000!!!!

Woohoo!

And those of you who know Anna will know that she’s working on a full length craft documentary so this prize money will probably see the project finished. Yay!

Congrats to all the awesome entrants. Especially the Shocking Stuart crew who filmed a cardboard box inspection across the road from a real house auction. Well deserved second place. They’re even auctioning it on Saturday in Fitzroy somewhere. Sorry I don’t know the details, will try and update this post when I do.

Thanks to Earthsharing Australia for organising a great idea for a film competition. Can’t wait to see the entries for next year!

The revolution is SO happening and it’s a fun one and a beautiful one.

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A reminder to come check out the I Wanna Live Here housing affordability short film comp finals tonight. Not only is the Craft Cartel running a market but there’s a craft film in the finals!

Yip, the ever awesome Anna Brownfield made s short film about the Melbourne Revolutionary Craft Circle anti-land banking action back in August and it’s one of the finalists to win $3000!

We even got in The Age. I suspect the journalist that interviewed me is a closet radical crafter. I hope to get her along one day. Maybe we have imbedded journalists in radical craft actions?

See you tonight!
Wed Dec 3rd
The Order of Melbourne
Level 2, 401 Swanston St (opp RMIT)
6.30-9pm

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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!

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