WARRNAMBOOL’S successful Laneway Festivals will continue to revitalise the CBD’s forgotten corners with another event this weekend combining art and horticulture.
Saturday’s instalment of the Hidden Histories Laneway Festival series unveils a permanent hanging wall garden in Ozone Walk as well as featuring the Come Sit A While With Me exhibition.
Put together by Well For Life project facilitators Julie Poi and Becky Nevin-Berger, Come Sit A While With Me features the stories of seven people who have suffered brain injuries, as told through their own artwork.
Poi said that during Saturday’s laneway festival, visitors will be encouraged to sit at the eight different stations along Ozone Walk and look at the picture books that tell those stories.
“We’re trying to create an intimate lounge room scene because these are very personal accounts of the participants’ (lives),” she said.
Poi said the Well For Life participants had each focused on different elements of their lives, with some recounting their lives prior to their brain injuries, some on what happened next and others detailing their passions and hobbies.
While visitors take in these personal stories, they’ll be sitting near the laneway’s newest addition — a hanging garden featuring native plants, including some rare and endangered species only found in the south-west.
The garden’s designer and builder Jamie Hayden said the garden took three days to set up and featured an automatic watering system.
He added he would like to see similar gardens installed in other laneways, but only if the adjoining property owners were on board.
“I had good feedback while I was putting it up, people saying ‘it’s beautiful’ and ‘well done’,” Hayden said.
Tomorrow’s event starts at 10am and runs until 1pm in Ozone Walk, weather permitting.
