TOM Sevil is up a laneway inspecting some 1970s graffiti. He likes these places. He’s a stencil artist, graffitist and graphic designer, but also something of an archaeologist, because the work at hand here is but a fragment, partly buried beneath rich layers of history.

In white house paint applied with a brush, not an aerosol, this graffito no longer makes sense. It says: Frazer is a bottled toad in a trust – and there it ends, forever to remain a mystery, its final words obscured by years of others’ graffiti.

This fragment, a bastardisation of a phrase from Shakespeare’s Richard III, is more poetic than most of the illegible tags scrawled about the laneway. It might once have had something insightful (but misspelt) to say about Malcolm Fraser, then prime minister of Australia. But in this world of laneways and rapid-fire guerilla action, the scrawls, tags, posters and stencils are all ultimately temporary.

For Sevil, quality and longevity aside, it is all about political action.

Read the full article.

This blog was always going to be a part of the People’s Tour project but it’s taken a while coming.

Now that it’s here, there’s a bit to catch up on! I thought a short history of the project to date was a good place to start.

May – August 2008: just another student project (not!)

Under the expert tuition and support of Media and Communications Lecturer Lisa Gye at Swinburne University, the People’s Tour project was devised as my “Media Project” subject in a Masters of Media and Communications.

It was a pass/fail unit of study whose brief was suitably broad:

plan, design and execute the creation of a substantial media project.

There are many mashups, audio projects and ideas that inspired the project, but most of all it was my curiosity and delight in seeing tour guides find “freedom within the form” – letting loose their creativity to curate a tour of anything, as long as it passionately interested them (and hopefully their chosen audience). And I like that such a project came out of a university subject that allowed a similar amount of freedom…

Sticky carpet of Melbourne venue The Tote: as featured in A tour of rock

I started by roping in six friends to help me out. To explain the project and help Tour Guides brainstorm a tour, I made a Tour Guide Guide, handed it to six friends and recorded them doing their magic! Followed by profuse thankyous for their time and creative energy…

• A tour of the imaginary past by Bree McKilligan
• A tour of rock by Nicole Hurtabise
• A tour of Merri Creek for people looking for inner city quiet by Lucy Foley
• A tour outside my comfort zones for people with anxiety by Juli Stopp
• A tour of Coburg for people scared to go north of Bell Street by Felicity Grey
• Geek sleek chique tour for people looking to hide in Brunswick by Francesca Sculli

These first six People’s Tour audio tours and the website was submitted in August 2008 and peoplestour.net was born.

Some interesting new media projects that also came out of this subject are What house is that? and Sports Without Borders. (Swinburne students, got more? Tell me and I’ll add them…)

November 2008

My lecturer Lisa Gye and her partner, Darren Tofts go beyond the call of duty to record a tour of the Preston Market before it gets developed on a Saturday morning. And do their shopping at the same time!

February – March 2009

Community Radio 3CR uses the People’s Tour format as the outcome of a radio training project with residents of Carlton Flats.
Disclosure: I volunteer on the 3CR Web Team, so finding me to talk about the project was easy

The radio training project was funded by the City of Melbourne’s Carlton Flats Arts Project.

I came along to the first session to explain the project and brainstorm and then over five weeks,  3CR trainers Elanor McInerney and Nicole Hurtabise trained residents on scriptwriting, interviewing, audio recording, and audio editing and exporting.

Six more wonderful, eclectic tours were made:

• A tour of the Elgin Square walkups by Maurice Wilson (with the cutest Tour Guide pic ever, right)
• A dog’s tour of Carlton and beyond by Tom and Ella the dog
• A tour of old neighbours by Joyce Stuart
• A tour of children’s laughter by Ruth Rogers-Wright
• A tour of the Carlton Neighbourhood Centre by Maria Ibrahim
• A tour of attitudes to public housing by Rosanna Fuentes

February 2009

A funding application from 3CR Community Radio to the Office of Public Records Local History program is successful, hooray!

Planning begins for four tours on underground and/or activitist histories of Melbourne:

1. A musician’s life by Irine Vela, the working life of a musician in Melbourne
2. A tour of anti-eviction sites in Brunswick in the Great Depression by Iain McIntyre
3. A tour of lesser known street art galleries of Carlton by Tom Sevil
4. A tour of The Maribyrnong River by Jenny Lee

March 2009: on the airwaves

People’s Tour Guide Ruth Rogers-Wright, her daughter, and producer Nicole Hurtabise are guests on ABC 774 Sunday Breakfast with the lovely Alan Brough.

Alan talks to Ruth about her tour of children’s laughter, tries to get the inside story from Ruth’s daughter Rose, and tells us some personal faves from the tours so far – A tour outside my comfort zones (Alan also hates flying) and A tour of the imaginary past.

All six tours of Carlton and Carlton Flats are also broadcast on 3CR radio’s DIY Arts Show.

June 2009

Since moving to Melbourne in 2006, its annual Fringe Festival has become my favourite festival (and there are many to choose from, believe me!).

One of the great things about Fringe is its accessibility – it is an open-access arts festival which means everyone that applies to be part of it, gets in. And which means all the gems get in, all the rough beauties get in (and hopefully get polished), and yes, all the ordinary stuff gets in too – but everyone gets the chance to shine, and learn a lot from the experience.

And so the open call for Fringe Festival artists got me thinking about making the Local History tours “live”, 3CR and the four tour guides agreed and now it’s all happening…

September – October 2009: Facebook, Flickr, Fringe

Become a fan of People’s Tour on Facebook and check out photos from past tours on Flickr.

For the first time ever, People’s Tours audio tours are being done as three live walking tours and one “sit-down” tour.

It kicks off with a free launch this Saturday and a walking tour for every Sunday afternoon of Fringe.

Tour #1 Irine Vela of The HaBiBis tours her life as a working musician in Melbourne – from her first song as a bitter 16 year old, One day I’ll kill myself, to her award-winning work for Melbourne Workers Theatre and Greek band The HaBiBis. Saturday 26 September, 7 pm. FREE. Find out more

Tour #2 Stencil artist Tom Sevil takes us off the beaten latte track of Lygon Street, Carlton and into its back alleys to find remnant political graffiti and street art from the 70s to the present. Sunday 27 September. Find out more…

Tour #3 Making Modern Melbourne author Jenny Lee explores the long history of a short river, The Maribyrnong. Jenny’s walking tour starts above the bend in the river that is the site of the now-defunct Commonwealth Explosives Factory, and takes in sites of Indigenous settlement, industry around the river and the current McMansion invasion. Sunday 4 October Find out more…

Tour #4 Activist and author Iain McIntyre goes back in time to Brunswick in the Great Depression, when thousands of Melburnians were thrown out of their homes. Walk the sites of some of Melbourne’s fiercest anti-eviction battles (now the sites of some of Melbourne’s fiercest real estate battles and rental inspections) Sunday 11 October. Find out more…

All walking tours are $10 and the sit-down tour with Irine Vela is free.