Reflection Meeting (11 June 2020) Summary
What’s Happened
Paint the Streets kicked off on the 16th of April with a visioning meeting, and has gone through a broad decentralized cycle of visioning, planning, preparation, and then some decentralized action. Arts guides and videos as well as a regular sunday stencil session on zoom have been created to support rebels to create artistic stuff, and small stencil and poster-making groups have popped up around Australia. There have been paste-up groups operating in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra and Adelaide, and the high-risk Affinity Group formed in Adelaide for Paint the Streets has spray-chalked and pasted up on 3 council buildings, netting themselves an ABC radio interview.
We held a reflection meeting to go over what has gone well so far, what hasn’t gone so well, and what we might do differently in the future.
The Attendees
| Where | What they’ve done |
|---|---|
| Adelaide | Painted up 3 council buildings with an affinity group |
| Sydney | Putting up posters with tape, risk-averse |
| Adelaide | Doing Paste-ups |
| Mornington (Vic) | Is a postering machine |
| Adelaide | Set up the council-painting high-risk AG group |
| Melbourne | Thinking about organizing high-risk actions and media stunts |
| Central Coast NSW | Paste-ups around Sydney and Central Coast |
| Westside Melbourne | Made a mistake of publicly sharing paste-up plans which caused group to be met and followed by a large group of cops. Been doing lots of paste-ups and stenciling |
| Melbourne | Been making posters and stencils and working on M&M |
| Melbourne | Sharing arts resources online and sharing arts know-how |
| Sydney | Postering and making stencils and posters. Enjoying solo postering. |
| Bondi (Sydney) | Made lots of posters. Been putting some up, looking for paste-up crew. |
| Melbourne | Making arts resources available, holding sunday stencil sessions |
| Melbourne | Been doing some coordination work with Vic actions group and been doing paste-ups and stenciling with local group |
What Went Well
General Feedback
- Great
- Loved it
- Could eat it for breakfast
Artistic Support:
- The guide was super handy
- Sunday Stencil Sessions
- Love the designs / stencils available.
- Good messaging advice provided
- Developed new skills
Artistic production:
- Impressed with the creative versatility with poster printing.
- Customizability
- Making posters is fun / relaxing / addictive
- Enjoyed synthesis of creative and intellectual experience
Mobilisation:
- Reactivated local group - made them excited and active
- The campaign has activated lots of rebels
- Able to get involved in multiple disruptive actions with Adelaide high-risk AG while being a completely new rebel. Enjoyed that every member of affinity group brought their own strengths.
Decentralisation
- Impressive potential of spontaneous decentralised actions
- Autonomy encouraged
- Being part of a big decentralized nation-wide action
- First experience of good national collaboration
- Making connections with people across the country
- Meeting new people
- Sharing of inspiration from the collective
Timing
- Framing of phases of project (pre-production, emphasis on preparation)
- Not rushing led to effective action
- Putting time into helping others has helped with purpose and how
What Didn’t Go So Well
Match-making:
- No clear way of connecting with other people - need a callout system.
- Struggling to find people to help
- Didn’t get to experience high-risk action because of lack of AGs ready to take on action
- (Sydney) Have 200-300 posters, 10 big banners - need people to help put them up
Too many people:
- Having too many people doing paste-ups together - small groups worked better
- Some meetings too big and unwieldy
Don’t tell the authorities:
- Going public with postering plans (via Facebook) summoned police and ruined a paste-up run.
Timing:
- Timeframes and phases were unclear.
- Cycle was not synchronized and well-communicated
- Did we go to reflection too early?
What We Might Do Differently Next Time
If risk averse
- Can use sticky tape to reduce legal risk
- Nervous people can make / prepare the posters
Need MORE
- Stickers
- Reverse Graffiti - not illegal, good for learning to handle stencils
- People
- Affinity groups
- Strong, agile, form identity
Paste-up logistics
- Having a good place to meet and debrief away from target site.
- Having a lookout to watch for aggressive bystanders.
Amp up the Messaging
- Go back to basics - get more serious
Coordination
- Separate meetings by purpose - core organizers vs all-ins.
- Separate meetings to fulfill different needs
- Need more coordination
- Adelaide coordinated within its own area, but would like to coordinate with other cities
Mobilisation
- Create pathways to engagement via poster making and poster pasting.
- Matchmaking between people who want to do the above.
Share the model
- The decentralized model of the Paint the Streets campaign would work well for other projects.
Targets
- Specific campaigns could guide creative production
Technical Support
- Support to use the Base
