Mitchell Shire Council is inviting locals to come together for a community craft project to support 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence.
16 Days of Activism is an international campaign to challenge violence against women and girls that runs from Friday 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women to Saturday 10 December, Human Rights Day.
The One Billion Stars Project is a community project devised by Maryann Talia Pau, a weaver artist living on Quandamooka Country in Queensland.
The purpose of weaving stars is to continue nurturing global conversations of how to end violence using the joy and healing power of the arts and traditional crafts.
The initiative had an original goal of one million woven stars for the 2018 Commonwealth Games but received more than 2.4 million stars from over 15 countries.
In 2021 they aimed higher with the One Billion Stars Project bringing thousands of people together to weave one billion stars for violence-free communities by 2032.
Now Mitchell Shire Council is inviting everyone to contribute to 500 Stars for Mitchell.
The finished installation of 500 stars will be displayed during the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence from November.
Mitchell Shire is experiencing very high levels of family violence with a family violence police incident rate of 2,515.5 incidents per 100,000 people for the year ending June 2021.
By comparison, the incident rate for Victoria in the same period was 1,399.3. The incident rate in Mitchell Shire was 180 per cent higher than the state-wide rate.
For Mitchell’s geography and demographics, its rate is unusually high and has been consistently high over a long period of time.
A video with instructions on how to make the stars is available on YouTube.
To be included in the display, stars need to be delivered by Tuesday 8 November to one of the following locations:
- Broadford Living and Learning Centre
- Broadford Library and Customer Service Centre
- Kilmore Library and Customer Service Centre
- Seymour Library and Customer Service Centre
- Wallan Library and Customer Service Centre
- Greater Beveridge Community Centre
