Public Assembly is collaboration between Lynda Roberts and Ceri Hann.
We are a socially engaged arts and design practice. The core of our work is based around facilitating group workshops intended to activate creative thinking. These often occur in areas that are located in public buildings and venture into public space. The nature of these activities ranges from group participation in jewellery construction through to beach raking to battery powered electronic device re-configuration and sound performance.
Our practice is driven by our desire to enable others with skills and inspiration to creatively engage with their immediate environment. We work towards this by devising participatory workshops and immersive lo-tech public art installations. We provide these as a form of performative art to educational institutions (RMIT); Local Governments (Moreland, Geelong and Dandenong City Councils); Arts & Cultural Organisations (SIGNAL; Melbourne City Library; Splendid) and independent curators (Rolling Stock; Seven Thousand Oaks Festival; Cultural Value) within the public domain.
We are both professionally engaged within the delivery of academic subjects and art programs within RMIT University Melbourne, with Public Assembly acting simultaneously as our arts laboratory. For 2012 Public Assembly is working towards the conversion of a Bedford Ice-cream van into a mobile workshop and presentation space.
Below is a link to our Flickr photo page of projects and adventures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/publicassembly/sets/
Lynda Roberts
Lynda Roberts is a design and arts practitioner interested in the strategic development and creative production of cultural events and community spaces – with an emphasis on socially driven collaborative processes and temporal outcomes within the public realm.
Drawing on a background of architecture, public art and education, Lynda’s current practice ranges in scale from urban curation to the wearable object. Her work strives to empower and engage a range of stakeholders by developing frameworks or armatures that act as platforms for prompting conversation and establishing an empathetic awareness of one’s environment.
Over the past ten years, Lynda has gained experience across a variety of projects – from facilitator of a public art and design incubator within Melbourne Central Shopping Centre, to arts + décor manager for the Great Escape / Cockatoo Island Festivals to the design of FBi radio and Metro Screen facilities in Sydney.
Ceri Hann
Ceri Hann is a Melbourne based arts practitioner/teacher. His practice often avoids categorisation – the outcomes of his creative process are intentionally defused in the wonder of everyday life.
Recent directions have seen a move toward establishing systems that enhance the conditions for participatory idea generation. The use of low tech devices such as overhead projectors and line marking tools are used as a medium enabling mutually inspired activities for people that may not consider themselves artists.