un-fiction: the great bates street light up

Who knew that plastic rubbish could be so beautiful?

You will remember from an earlier post

that I found Raewyn Pope and her magical lights at a local polytech student art show. Soon after that blog entry, I introduced Raewyn to a regeneration project working to light up a notorious state house street with magical Xmas lights as part of a bigger 'Xmas at the Pa' celebration.

.......and the result was a magical transformation of 'normal' xmas lights into amazing light installations of glowing lego, coloured plastic plates, icecream lids and recycled softdrink bottles. [Raewyn pictured right]

As well as making recycled lights out of plastic junk, whanau worked very hard to make wooden cultural motifs and mascots for their houses which they painted with the help a local artist in the community. Help was also provided by Matua George (pictured left) on the drill, Les the school caretaker and local whanau members who came and helped on the skill saw.

Instead of pine trees and reindeer, which never sat very well in 25degree NZ summer heat, they created Pacific Island and Maori flowers, symbols and flags.

Yesterday local fireman helped install all the lights and wooden structures on their down time this morning and local tradespeople chipped in for materials..it was a real community effort.

Finally, after weeks of planning the Xmas at the Pa event happened and the whole group ended the night by watching the houses light up to amazing effect.

The original idea, and all the hard weeks of legwork and project planning was down to another group consisting of Edmund Hillary Primary School leaders, community workers from Papakura District Council, and local police as part of the Awhi Wraparound Project.