KEEP THE LIGHTS ON IN THE LIGHTBOX
Donation protected
WINNER
2020 ARTS NORTHERN RIVERS "YOUR BIG IDEA"
We are Dashboard Animals, Arianna Bosi, Peter Castaldi and our dedicated team of artists and arts workers. Arianna is the Creative Director and co-producer and Peter is the Executive Producer and co-producer.
The InSideOut Lightbox is our current community based project. The funds raised from this campaign will go directly to keeping this project alive.
The InSideOut Lightbox is unique, portable platform for participatory community arts, one we set up in our local shopping centre carpark, wedged between Target Country and Coles. Think of it as a beacon for local people, enticing them to watch new, original, entertaining, mixed-media shows without travelling much further than the local shopping centre, or having to mortgage their houses for the cost of a ticket.
OUR VISION
- is to create a welcoming local environment which encourages unexpected and surprising creative collaborations.
We have already proven that we can do that. Now we just have to keep it going.
Won’t you help us keep the lights on?
WHY WE NEED YOUR HELP
We need to keep the lights on in the InSideOut Lightbox. We’re asking you to help cover the continuing costs of rent, technology, staging and program development.
The response from our locals, shop owners and residents alike, as well as the artists tells us that we have to maintain this space; a place where local ideas and new creative projects are encouraged, developed and put to work; to create works out of the project that can be toured throughout the region and beyond.
And we already have projects in development for the space:
Experiments in Live Cinema which will allow the Dashboard Animals creative and writing team to devise more live projected performative pieces for both kids and adults. We have a slate of projects in the pipeline, several of which are designed for children and families.
More monthly Lightbox Showcase Exhibitions - bringing together our on-going collaborations on a regular basis.
Artists-in-Residence - Inviting local artists to take up residence in the space and over a month create unique site-specific exhibitions, in collaboration with our Artistic Director, Arianna Bosi. Local DJ Monsieur Diop has completed our first residency with Immersive Immersions, an experimental, performative, music based exhibition.
Young people’s workshops to harness the energy and digital knowledge of the local teens to foster their creative abilities and create exhibitions tailored to their needs; don’t just skate past us, drop in a create with us!
Workshops for younger children in performance, shadow-play, digital storytelling and show creation.
We also want to increase our technical capabilities with upgraded projectors and high-end screen film to cover the glass on the windows; upgrade our software to fully accommodate the needs of both our workshop participants and our collaborating artists and to ensure that we are at the cutting edge of software, for both sound and vision, and to develop our content creation pathways with creative collaborators to facilitate scalable high-end performance and exhibition outcomes.
We aim to build revenue streams for the ongoing creative works, through ticketing to shows and workshops, through sponsorship, and through other channels of support. So far, Dashboard Animals has covered all costs with support from our staging partner North Coast Events.
OUR STORY
We’ve always been interested in film and theatre, the pleasure they give audiences, and where the two art forms intersect. We call this ‘live cinema’.
We were going about our business when, like everybody else, we came up hard against ‘the C word’: coronavirus. Overnight, the performing arts seemed to collapse. Projects we’d been working on stopped dead. No audiences, no shows. Sure, you can always watch films online but you miss out on the collective experience. Plus, films are difficult to make when everyone’s socially isolated.
The pandemic caused chaos but, strangely, it also created unique and unusual opportunities. Whilst everyone else was being forced to pivot to on-line, virtual and the small screen, we decided to go in the opposite direction to the biggest screen we could find, in the most public space possible, the local shopping centre car park. So, we took over a disused gym, for what we thought would be a 10-day pop-up in our local shopping centre.
Covid left the local shopping centre, like many others, with lots of empty sites, one of them that gym. The space and the car park were dark. All the lights went out early.
We decided to put a new lick of light into a drab, deserted place.
We turned the old gym into a LIGHTBOX SHOWCASE EXHIBITION site; from InSide we rear-projected Out. We invited local artists working in screen, digital media and performance to help brighten up the Covid restricted car park; and a very happy, surprised and delighted crowd of locals came down and took part in our first InSideOut Lightbox Showcase Exhibition at the end of August
We discovered on that first weekend that it made sense. Artists signed up and locals came to watch. Everyone donned the mandatory masks and, in the middle of the Covid Crisis, we created a space where locals could experience local artists in a whole new way, in a whole new setting. So we decided to keep going.
Eight weeks on, we have run 3 Lightbox Showcase Exhibition weekends, staged a work in progress of our first Experiment in Live Cinema, What is Four, and worked with our first Artist in Residence, Monsieur Diop on Immersive Immersions – a sensorial installation experience.
We have made the events free and by donation and we run all our sound through WiFi headsets which means all the local wildlife–including the neighbours–can enjoy a weird, peopled, but silent light-filled experience.
WHY IS THE LIGHTBOX #ONLYINOCEANSHORES
Ocean Shores is a dormitory suburb, in the Byron Shire, known affectionately as ‘Open Sores’. Population 6000 +. It has one primary school, 3 cafes, a country club, no high school, one shopping centre and a dry hire community centre which offers everything from Jiu jitsu to acting classes, from pizza to tap.
Oh, and it has us. We live here.
There is no permanent creative cultural, exhibition or exchange place in Ocean Shores, yet it has one of the largest population centres in the Shire. We wanted to change that, and give something back to the community. We have turned what was an empty shopfront into a collaborative exhibition and performance space within the shopping centre precinct, one that attracts both audience and artists. As an on-going activity our aim is to support and grow an arts and cultural environment, where everyone assumes there is none.
Why the car park? Why not a more obvious ‘civic’ space like the primary school? Because there’s nothing more democratic than a car park; at some point everyone will use it.
Plus, a shopping centre itself is full of prompts to buy and consume, not to enjoy and engage in any sort of cultural or creative way, and yet it’s always full of people. Many, many more people walk through this car park, than ever walk through any gallery. It’s not that the “gallery” or “art” experience, in some form, is unimportant to them, it’s just that it may either be out of their realm of experience, inaccessible or just lower on the needs list than pork chops and sushi.
So, we say, take art and entertainment to where the people are. Get them to gather and share in a nice big dollop of colour and light and new experiences alongside the red-spot specials.
2020 ARTS NORTHERN RIVERS "YOUR BIG IDEA"
We are Dashboard Animals, Arianna Bosi, Peter Castaldi and our dedicated team of artists and arts workers. Arianna is the Creative Director and co-producer and Peter is the Executive Producer and co-producer.
The InSideOut Lightbox is our current community based project. The funds raised from this campaign will go directly to keeping this project alive.
The InSideOut Lightbox is unique, portable platform for participatory community arts, one we set up in our local shopping centre carpark, wedged between Target Country and Coles. Think of it as a beacon for local people, enticing them to watch new, original, entertaining, mixed-media shows without travelling much further than the local shopping centre, or having to mortgage their houses for the cost of a ticket.
OUR VISION
- is to create a welcoming local environment which encourages unexpected and surprising creative collaborations.
We have already proven that we can do that. Now we just have to keep it going.
Won’t you help us keep the lights on?
WHY WE NEED YOUR HELP
We need to keep the lights on in the InSideOut Lightbox. We’re asking you to help cover the continuing costs of rent, technology, staging and program development.
The response from our locals, shop owners and residents alike, as well as the artists tells us that we have to maintain this space; a place where local ideas and new creative projects are encouraged, developed and put to work; to create works out of the project that can be toured throughout the region and beyond.
And we already have projects in development for the space:
Experiments in Live Cinema which will allow the Dashboard Animals creative and writing team to devise more live projected performative pieces for both kids and adults. We have a slate of projects in the pipeline, several of which are designed for children and families.
More monthly Lightbox Showcase Exhibitions - bringing together our on-going collaborations on a regular basis.
Artists-in-Residence - Inviting local artists to take up residence in the space and over a month create unique site-specific exhibitions, in collaboration with our Artistic Director, Arianna Bosi. Local DJ Monsieur Diop has completed our first residency with Immersive Immersions, an experimental, performative, music based exhibition.
Young people’s workshops to harness the energy and digital knowledge of the local teens to foster their creative abilities and create exhibitions tailored to their needs; don’t just skate past us, drop in a create with us!
Workshops for younger children in performance, shadow-play, digital storytelling and show creation.
We also want to increase our technical capabilities with upgraded projectors and high-end screen film to cover the glass on the windows; upgrade our software to fully accommodate the needs of both our workshop participants and our collaborating artists and to ensure that we are at the cutting edge of software, for both sound and vision, and to develop our content creation pathways with creative collaborators to facilitate scalable high-end performance and exhibition outcomes.
We aim to build revenue streams for the ongoing creative works, through ticketing to shows and workshops, through sponsorship, and through other channels of support. So far, Dashboard Animals has covered all costs with support from our staging partner North Coast Events.
OUR STORY
We’ve always been interested in film and theatre, the pleasure they give audiences, and where the two art forms intersect. We call this ‘live cinema’.
We were going about our business when, like everybody else, we came up hard against ‘the C word’: coronavirus. Overnight, the performing arts seemed to collapse. Projects we’d been working on stopped dead. No audiences, no shows. Sure, you can always watch films online but you miss out on the collective experience. Plus, films are difficult to make when everyone’s socially isolated.
The pandemic caused chaos but, strangely, it also created unique and unusual opportunities. Whilst everyone else was being forced to pivot to on-line, virtual and the small screen, we decided to go in the opposite direction to the biggest screen we could find, in the most public space possible, the local shopping centre car park. So, we took over a disused gym, for what we thought would be a 10-day pop-up in our local shopping centre.
Covid left the local shopping centre, like many others, with lots of empty sites, one of them that gym. The space and the car park were dark. All the lights went out early.
We decided to put a new lick of light into a drab, deserted place.
We turned the old gym into a LIGHTBOX SHOWCASE EXHIBITION site; from InSide we rear-projected Out. We invited local artists working in screen, digital media and performance to help brighten up the Covid restricted car park; and a very happy, surprised and delighted crowd of locals came down and took part in our first InSideOut Lightbox Showcase Exhibition at the end of August
We discovered on that first weekend that it made sense. Artists signed up and locals came to watch. Everyone donned the mandatory masks and, in the middle of the Covid Crisis, we created a space where locals could experience local artists in a whole new way, in a whole new setting. So we decided to keep going.
Eight weeks on, we have run 3 Lightbox Showcase Exhibition weekends, staged a work in progress of our first Experiment in Live Cinema, What is Four, and worked with our first Artist in Residence, Monsieur Diop on Immersive Immersions – a sensorial installation experience.
We have made the events free and by donation and we run all our sound through WiFi headsets which means all the local wildlife–including the neighbours–can enjoy a weird, peopled, but silent light-filled experience.
WHY IS THE LIGHTBOX #ONLYINOCEANSHORES
Ocean Shores is a dormitory suburb, in the Byron Shire, known affectionately as ‘Open Sores’. Population 6000 +. It has one primary school, 3 cafes, a country club, no high school, one shopping centre and a dry hire community centre which offers everything from Jiu jitsu to acting classes, from pizza to tap.
Oh, and it has us. We live here.
There is no permanent creative cultural, exhibition or exchange place in Ocean Shores, yet it has one of the largest population centres in the Shire. We wanted to change that, and give something back to the community. We have turned what was an empty shopfront into a collaborative exhibition and performance space within the shopping centre precinct, one that attracts both audience and artists. As an on-going activity our aim is to support and grow an arts and cultural environment, where everyone assumes there is none.
Why the car park? Why not a more obvious ‘civic’ space like the primary school? Because there’s nothing more democratic than a car park; at some point everyone will use it.
Plus, a shopping centre itself is full of prompts to buy and consume, not to enjoy and engage in any sort of cultural or creative way, and yet it’s always full of people. Many, many more people walk through this car park, than ever walk through any gallery. It’s not that the “gallery” or “art” experience, in some form, is unimportant to them, it’s just that it may either be out of their realm of experience, inaccessible or just lower on the needs list than pork chops and sushi.
So, we say, take art and entertainment to where the people are. Get them to gather and share in a nice big dollop of colour and light and new experiences alongside the red-spot specials.
Fundraising team (2)
Peter Castaldi
Organizer
Arianna Bosi
Beneficiary
Elysha Mitchell
Team member
