The Big Issue

The Creative Workshops are back

The popular Big Issue ‘Homeless, Not Artless’ Arts Project has resumed in Melbourne after a two month winter break.  A series of visual art and writing workshops are currently underway in the lead up to a showcase multi-media performance at ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image) on December 1st as part of the Homeless World Cup’s cultural program. It will be directed by Melbourne theatre director, Adriano Cortese who directed a sell out 3 night performance season of our vendors and friends last year at La Mama’s Carlton Courthouse Theatre.

Screenprinting Workshop

Over the past several weeks screen printing workshops have been running at the beautiful Ola Cohn studio in East Melbourne courtesy of the City of Melbourne and the Council of Adult Education. The workshops are being led by Paula McLoughlin, an experienced printmaker and teacher who exhibits her own work regularly.

Big Issue Vendors, Street Soccer players and other diverse, talented folk from the Choir of Hard Knocks, the Living Room and Roomers Magazine have learned the basics of screen printing, using stencils and photographic techniques on paper, canvass bags, T Shirts and tea towels, producing some outstanding designs. You can view their work at the ACMI event in December.

Places for the screen print workshops are full.

Writing Workshop

The popular writing workshops will resume on Tuesdays beginning on 14 October led  by acclaimed Melbourne authors Arnold Zable and Alicia Sometimes who are back by popular demand. Below are Dates, Time and Place:

• Tues Oct 14  -  Arnold Zable
• Tues Oct 21  - Arnold Zable
• Tues Oct 28  - Arnold Zable
• Thurs Nov 6  (because of Cup Week) Alicia Sometimes
• Tues Nov 11  - Alicia Sometimes
• Tues Nov 18  - Alicia Sometimes
• Tues Nov 25  - Adriano Cortese.

Time: 2-4pm.  Hall is open from 1.30pm so come early for a cuppa.

Place: Nicholas Hall, to the left of Wesley Church on the other side of the Big Issue Office in Lonsdale St, between Exhibition and Russell Streets.

For all enquiries please contact the Artistic Coordinator, Mari Lourey on 0447 679 053 Mon-Wed, mari@bigissue.org.au, or leave a message at the office, 9663 4733.

Artistic Coordinator Mari Lourey is a Melbourne playwright and performer who has worked with various marginalised communities around Victoria. She first worked and performed alongside the Big Issue vendors in 2006 in Faith, a theatre production by the award winning Torch Project featuring a cast of professional and non professional actors including Annie Phelan, directed by Rachael Maza. In spite of being short-listed for this year’s Patrick White Playwrights Award and re-drafting her latest play, she is still working with them, “…because they’re a great bunch and their stories are so damned interesting it’s a privilege!”