Portal Postcard Project

What was the inspiration behind launching the Portal Postcard Project in the Surf Coast? When it became evident that Victoria would be in Lockdown for some time Surf Coast Shire Council knew that the Arts would be vital in helping to ensure well-being. As Arts Officer, I saw that we needed to support not only individual practitioners whose incomes would be severely impacted, but also the well-being of the wider community. Whilst there were a plethora of fabulous offerings online from arts practitioners and organisations across the world, our own artists were about to lose the most significant arts event run by the Shire – The Surf Coast Arts Trail, and few of them had the skills to pivot their own work online without support. That’s how #Portal was born. #Portal Postcards grew out of early recognition that our community needed to be able to do more for their wellbeing than screen-related activities during lockdown. We wanted to create a COVID-responsive arts program that would support individual artists and the community connect. We soon discovered that one of our Arts Trail artists, Deirdre Boeyen-Carmichael, was painting these spectacular postcard-size paintings and gifting them to isolated members of the community and we loved the idea. A few mornings each week activist and artist Deirdre would paint the sunrise from the same location and record information on the back including time, wind direction and tide. Each postcard was a time capsule, created during a time that was new and uncertain, and for some people very lonely. Deirdre wanted to give people hope and joy and connect them to the glorious natural world we are so lucky to call home, and we loved this. With her permission we decided to take the project Shire-wide.

How did you engage the postcard artists? We contacted our registered artists directly and shared the story of Deirdre’s individual postcard project. Artists were given five blank postcards with the knowledge that three of their works would go to vulnerable/isolated members of the community and two would return to them from other participating artists. Through social and print media and the PORTAL website the general public were also encouraged to get involved. On December 16th 2020, PORTAL will launch an online exhibition of selected works on the website www. surfcoastartstrail.com.au

How did you link up with the recipients? The Surf Coast Shire distributed the postcards to artists and used their Positive Ageing Client mailing list to send out approximately 150 postcards.

What has been the response and feedback? We have had fantastic feedback from artists who participated. Some attached a little note of thanks and others with a message of how the project has helped them focus on something positive during lockdown and social distancing. The project has not only benefited the recipients of the postcards but also the artist’s themselves. The joy of giving and joy of creating has been such a positive thing in such a negative time and provided a sense of purpose and connection for artists and recipients.

Is this a project that is time limited or could continue indefinitely? With the upcoming exhibition, this particular project has an end date but the hope is that more artists and the public will take inspiration like we did from Deirdre and send mini-artworks to people they think may need a pick-me-up. The fall-out from COVID on people’s mental health can’t be underestimated so if people can brighten someone’s day by sending them a beautiful postcard they lovingly made, we encourage that 100%. We can’t put an end date to that.

6. What have you learned from this project? The generosity and compassion to take the time to create a postcard, an original artwork, not once but five times is not lost on me. We had about 50 artists send us their work and the detail and effort that went in to these 250 postcards was amazing. It’s opened my eyes to the vast talent we have right here on our door-step in The Surf Coast Shire.

Finally a BIG shout out of thanks to our lovely local area coordinator Michelle Conn for all of her hard work seeing this beautiful little project through to completion.