City North Festival: Our First Major Activation
5 October 2025 · By Pavement Print Studio Team
City North Cross-Cultural Festival was where everything came together. Over three days at RMIT's Building 94 gallery on Cardigan Street, we engaged more than 150 participants in collaborative screen printing exploring cross-cultural communication through symbols and visual language.
The project was part of the festival's "Shared Signals - Stories in Translation" theme, celebrating the ways we communicate, miscommunicate, and find meaning across cultures. Our question to every participant was simple: "What does today look like to you?"
What We Created
The project produced a monumental 3m x 10m wall installation of overprinted works whilst each participant took home their own collaborative print. The core concept was right there in the making process: one person's symbol printed over another's creates cultural collision and new meaning. Sometimes harmonious, sometimes contradictory, always producing something neither party anticipated.
We set up multiple workstations including our bike trailer studio, Handerude mesh printing technology, and laser cutting capabilities. The space itself was bright and open, and by the end of the weekend the installation had grown into something genuinely spectacular.
Who Came Through
Everyone from children and community members through to RMIT leadership, City Council representatives, and the RMIT Creative Spaces team stopped by. We had RMIT students including several from graphic design who spent quite a bit of time with us, artists, and interested festival-goers keen on design who could see the relevance and opportunity to do some print work.
Representatives from RMIT Creative Spaces were impressed with the setup and the idea, connecting with us about future work together. Organisers from the City North Festival came through to make a print and chat. We also had a councillor from Melbourne City Council stop by.
What We Learned
The weekend demonstrated that Pavement Print Studio successfully achieves its core objectives. The installation itself became a significant visual artwork, with the wall providing both context and inspiration for the collaborative printmaking activities.
Engagement ranged from institutional stakeholders to general public, children, and fellow artists, demonstrating the project's ability to bridge different audiences. The concept of participants taking home prints whilst contributing to the growing collection worked exactly as intended, creating genuine creative dialogue.
By the end of Sunday, the Pavement Print crew were exhausted but feeling good. We'd built something with real momentum for future applications at events like Brunswick Music Festival, RMIT Open Day, and Melbourne Design Week.
Technical Details
The setup included:
- Mobile bike trailer studio with solar power
- Handerude mesh printing technology for real-time screen creation
- xTool laser cutting for stencil production
- Large format printing press
- Permaset AQUA® Glow Pink and Glow Orange inks
All prints were 200 x 180mm on card stock, designed by participants and printed collaboratively on site. The weekend proved the concept works and established Pavement Print Studio as a genuine autonomous entity with demonstrated public appeal.
Tags
- city-north
- festival
- carlton
- collaborative-printing
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About Pavement Print Studio
A student-led mobile printmaking project from RMIT Associate Degree Graphic Design, bringing collaborative screen printing to public spaces.