Lighting up the Lantern Prototype

Here's Ken O'Regan's lantern prototype glowing in the dark....

Photograph: Ken O'Regan

Sparke Street is going to look amazing!

Bright Sparkes Update

Inspired by the street name, Bright Sparkes involves a lantern-lit community gathering in Sparke Street, Georgetown. Bright Sparkes will light up the area with sparkling lanterns for a special community street event which has been assisted by the City of Newcastle's Make Your Place community grant program. Residents can mingle on the street, meet more people from their immediate neighbourhood, and enjoy the sight of tea light-lit lanterns.

 Images: Carolyn McKay

Sparke Street is a quaint, narrow, residential street in the small suburb of Georgetown that began as a residential area in the late 1800s for industrial workers. Sparke Street is named after William Andrew Sparke, a Newcastle alderman and mayor in 1872, who ran a large butchering business at Honeysuckle Point. In 1870 he built a large home ‘Webland’ in Blane Street (now Hunter Street) that was demolished in 1905 to make way for the Frederick Ash building. W.A. Sparke died in 1891.

Newcastle artist Ken O’Regan has designed a cottage style lantern and is facilitating a lantern-making workshop on Saturday 3 September 2011 for Sparke Street residents. On the following Saturday 10 September, residents will decorate the street-side exterior of their homes with the lanterns, and the section of Sparke Street between Christo Road and Moate Street will be closed to traffic from 5.30 – 7.30 pm for a street party.  

The Bright Sparkes concept was the inspiration of community cultural worker, Brian Joyce, coordinated by Carolyn McKay, artist and recent returnee to the town of her birth, assisted by L!vesites and involving many Sparke Street residents.

Drafting reminder flyers and posters

As the dates for the lantern-making workshop (3 September) and the actual street event (10 September) draw close, I'll be working with Council to print and distribute reminder flyers and posters for the neighbourhood. Here's a bit of the draft flyer:

Lantern Prototype

Artist Ken O'Regan has designed a prototype 'miner's cottage' lantern for the Bright Sparkes event - how lovely is this?!

Photograph: Ken O'Regan

And I just enjoyed seeing his amazing studio space:

Progress: paperwork and prototypes

Bright Sparkes is coming together ... the paperwork has been collected, copied and forwarded to Council and I'm looking forward to meeting artist Ken O'Regan in his studio on Friday to check out his lantern prototype.
It's only a month til our lantern-making workshop on Saturday 3 September, then the big night on Saturday 10 September.

Googling 'lantern'