Tens of colourful murals have popped up in Secret Harbour’s power boxes, with pineapples, sunset scenes and jellyfish decorating the local streetscape.
The murals are the brainchild of Secret Harbour resident and professional mural artist Samantha Prentice, who came up with the idea in April this year.
Ms Prentice was driving home after work one day when she noticed one of the local power boxes had been tagged with the word “vermin”.
“When I drove past it I thought ‘I can’t have this in my suburb’ and I knew I could do something about it,” she said.
There and then, Ms Prentice got out of the car, grabbed a brush and painted a simple design on top of the graffiti.
Pleased with the results, she decided to get the local community on board to brighten up the rest of her neighbourhood giving a fresh coat of paint to the 35 power boxes in the suburb.
She teamed up with other artists, got in touch with Western Power, carried out a risk assessment and presented a detailed proposal.
Western Power agreed to allow her to paint the remaining boxes, but Ms Prentice didn’t receive any funding.
“Even though we had 35 boxes to paint, we had no money to paint them,” she said.
The group put a call out to local residents asking them to get behind the project and invited local businesses to sponsor the murals.
All of Secret Harbour is very proud of it, everyone has been involved in some way.
- Mural artist Samantha Prentice
In a matter of months, 80 residents donated to the cause, raising more than $3,800 towards the project, and several local businesses chipped in to pay for paint and graffiti coating.
Six months later most of the suburb’s power boxes have been painted with designs ranging from pineapples to old-style Volkswagen combi vans.
“It’s just been incredible, the whole community has gotten behind us,” Ms Prentice said.
“It’s just been amazing, it’s one of the best projects that I’ve ever worked on.
“All of Secret Harbour is very proud of it, everyone has been involved in some way, even if it’s just promoting on Facebook or donating $10 or coming down to help paint or buying me a coffee or beeping the horn and saying hello.”
However, for Ms Prentice the fun is far from over.
The artist and her team of volunteers are currently working on a 52-metre ocean-themed wall mural outside of the newly opened Secret Harbour Square shopping centre.
The team is also planning several activities for local children for these school holidays.
Ahead of the school break, the group will distribute 5000 maps with the locations of the power boxes to local schools to encourage younger residents to step outside and stroll around the suburb looking for colourful murals.
They will also run a competition for local children to design their own murals. The winning artists will be able to have their designs painted in the two remaining power boxes with the help of Ms Prentice.
“The Secret Harbour community have been incredible again, it’s a great place to live and I’m really proud of it, and I’m sure everyone else that live here are proud of it as well,” she said.
For more information and to donate to the Secret Harbour street art project go to their online fundraising page.