{"id":3553,"date":"2011-09-05T06:35:34","date_gmt":"2011-09-04T20:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.melissacameron.net\/blog\/?p=3553"},"modified":"2011-09-04T18:12:47","modified_gmt":"2011-09-04T08:12:47","slug":"participation-the-day-that-was","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.melissacameron.net\/blog\/?p=3553","title":{"rendered":"Participation – the day that was"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Trading my bench - for a baked goods stand outside the State Library of Victoria. Image by Courtenay Cameron.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On Friday as the finale to the Benjamin Lignel workshop, 10 intrepid jewellery artists took to the RMIT campus and the surrounding streets to invite and encourage artistic participation between themselves and\/or their work, and the populace.<\/p>\n

Though my project, entitled Ice Your Man<\/em>, I hoped to entice strangers come up to me to take part in a conversation about men’s jewellery. How do you get people to do that? Well, I decided to bake 50 gingerbread men (and I mean men only, since it was about jewellery for men) and then invite passers-by to take one, so long as they agreed to ice it themselves. Then once they’re busy icing, just keep on talking.<\/p>\n

People were keen to do the icing, but often worried aloud “What’s the catch?” The catch was I expected them to really ‘bling’ their little man, and so I provided some pre-iced examples for inspiration. These ones ‘wore’ earrings, rings, cufflinks, large belt buckles, anklets, necklaces, pendants and the like, and were on the stand with me, and on the posters pasted to the stand to attract attention.<\/p>\n