By Jamie Salter
The Community Connections Through Art exhibition is a celebration of local artists and creativity, featuring, crafts, children’s activities and a multicultural lunch.
The event aims to showcase artists from within the City of Casey and surrounds who have experienced adversity through illness, injury, disability or other significant life events.
The exhibition was held at Uniting Place in Hampton Park from Friday 4 March to Sunday 6 March.
Coordinator Lyn McBain said the event was a huge success.
“We had a lot of people come through our doors who were thrilled to be able to have an enjoyable evening mixing and taking in the local art,” Mrs McBain said.
“It was a fabulous weekend – we had just under $2,000 worth of art sold.
“We also had a lot of live music throughout the three-day event including saxophone and piano performances.”
About 120 people attended the VIP lunch on Friday 4 March, which had drinks, catered finger food and live music.
On Saturday and Sunday, the event opened to the public and had 80 and 60 people attend respectively.
Gardeners from the community garden cooked up a barbecue on Saturday and 70 scones were quickly snapped up, washed down with Devonshire tea.
On Sunday, a multicultural lunch was shared, featuring crowd favourites paella and roti bread, as well as many more dishes from across the globe.
The Carers Hub (a group of carers who meet weekly at Uniting) sold $200 worth of hand crafts and Uniting also accepted $200 worth of donations to go towards church programs.
Mrs McBain said Uniting Place will now work with local artists to create an ongoing hub where artwork can be showcased.
“We had a really hard working committee for the last six months that put this together, the event wouldn’t have been possible without them,” she said.
“I hope we can have another event again next year.”
The free art exhibition was supported by a City of Casey grant in conjunction with Hampton Park Community House.
