Big West Festival 2009

Big West is a curated, multi-art form, multicultural festival staged biennially in Footscray and surrounds. The theme for the 2009 festival was ‘Home is Where the Art Is’, and explored the place of art in the everyday, how notions of art change depending on the cultural lens, and art as life (versus hidden in galleries and shrouded in theory).

We knew that the festival program included a large contingent of craft-based work (guerrilla knitting, woven architectural installations to name but a few) and our design needed to reflect this. The resulting festival identity playfully captured the image of a typical suburban home, complete with a trio of seagulls as wall decor. The image was entirely handmade utilising the skills of the local knitting club (bless their woollen socks). As you flicked through the pages of the program guide the wallpaper designs changed, as if meandering through different rooms in an actual house.

The festival identity was used across a long list of promotional material for the festival, and we even got to hang on to ‘Sid the Seagull’ as a keepsake. Apologies to Mum for never returning the knitting needles.