A Brief History of ARTillery
ARTillery 2008
The very first ARTillery festival was a one-day event held at the Bakery, Perth, on 6th December 2008. The 2008 festival had several components:
• In the afternoon, a range of workshops were run to engage Under-18s with human rights issues in an artistic way. There were drumming workshops, song writing workshop, screen printing workshop, theatre workshop and street art workshops. The afternoon ended with a performance from local band, Boys! Boys! Boys!
• This was followed by a multi-art event, including performances from local musicians The Bullet Holes, Luna Parade, and The Chemist, cultural music from Afghanistan and Africa, swing dancing, a contortionist and much more. The MasterPEACE art exhibition was held in the gallery adjoining the Bakery complex.
• The ‘actions’ included a 3m long petition calling for a Human Rights Act for Australia.
Approximately 150 people attended the festival.
ARTillery 2009
In 2009 ARTillery expanded to a month-long festival and included:
• Arts Activism Forum Launch;
• Bootcamp under 18s event;
• Against the Beat music gig;
• Spoken Word event; and
• masterPEACE art exhibition.
The events took place all over Perth from 10th November – 10th December 2009, culminating in the closing party of the exhibition on International Human Rights Day.
Overall the festival was attended by approximately 560 people, about 90% of whom were young people (12 – 30 years of age). At least 30% of attendees overall took action on Amnesty International campaigns at each event including:
• Petition for a Human Rights Act for Australia;
• Petition to reinstate the Racial Discrimination Act (Demand Dignity);
• Petition for the State Government to implement a National Plan of Action to Stop Violence Against Women; and
• Signed letters to CEO of Shell on the Niger Delta campaign (Demand Dignity).
ARTillery 2010
ARTillery 2010 was a 10 day festival held in Perth, Brisbane and Melbourne. Approximately 900 people attended the festival and 40% of those attending participated in Amnesty actions.
In Perth, 5 events were held:
• Launch: a forum connecting arts activists from different NGOs, and showcasing ARTillery artists;
• Spoken Word event: partnering with Cottonmouth for an evening of spoken word artists addressing themes around the Burma campaign;
• Masterpeace exhibition: local artists created an artistic work around one of AIA’s ‘individuals at risk’;
• Lapse 24 hour performance experiment: artists were challenged to produce a performance piece on Women’s Equality in Iran including dance, music and theatre; and
• John Lennon Tribute Gig: artists from leading Perth bands combined to produce an hour long set of John Lennon covers to celebrate World Human Rights Day.
Approximately 750 people attended the Perth events.
Photos from the 2010 festival
Four events were held in Melbourne and Brisbane:
• My Tehran for Sale (Brisbane): a viewing of the film addressing women’s human rights issues in Tehran;
• Masterpeace exhibition (Brisbane): featured a number of artworks by Queensland Schools Students and Young Burmese Refugees currently living on the Thai-Burma border to raise awareness of the Refugee Campaign;
• Against the Beat (Melbourne): a dance and DJ workshop celebrating freedom of expression, with speeches highlighting the lack of free expression for women in Iran;
• Masterpeace (Melbourne): a photo exhibition showing several refugee families and the way they have integrated into happy ‘Australians’ after the hardship of their journeys, to promote the refugee campaign.
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