This silo art was the start of Tumby Bay’s journey into the art world and the world of murals and street art.
It all came about after a Bendigo Bank Business breakfast; talking about communities re-imagining themselves, thinking outside the box and creating something extra to help create and drive an increase in tourism and improve the local business economy through this extra tourism. We thought let’s use quality art as a hook because that was a difference to other coastal towns. We focussed on quality artists, because even though people might not like all the art work, it is a product by the world’s best. The philosophy has been that people will travel a long way for quality, but they won’t walk across the street for average.
Silo murals were a new thing, so we as a community group, Tumby Bay Progress Association, decided that a mural on our silos could help tourists turn off the highway and journey to Tumby Bay. We realised that silo murals would be huge so we wanted to do something extra, and the idea of the street art festivals was born. This allowed visitors to not just view the natural beauty of Tumby Bay, but also view quality art. We were successful in obtaining a $75,000 South Australian government grant via the Fund My Neighbourhood scheme. That fully paid for the silo mural and the development of the surrounds.
We realised that we knew nothing about silo art or murals so we went to Australia’s best street art company – Juddy Roller, who had started the silo mural trails in Victoria, extending into South Australia. We realised they knew how to make it work, and so our journey into the art world began. The concept has been hugely successful in how it has allowed our tourism in the town to improve exponentially without detracting from the huge assets that we already had in Tumby Bay.
For the silos art, Juddy Roller put forward 6 artists to choose from that they thought had the skill level required to paint the silo mural. A community selection panel of 12 people from a broad cross section of the community was pulled together. They selected their choice which was Martin Ron from Argentina. Martin is one of the world’s rock stars in the mural world.
Our brief to Martin was for him to tell the world was what was special to him about Tumby Bay and what would his lasting memory be of Tumby Bay.
Martin came to Tumby Bay a couple of weeks beforehand to experience the town and its essence. He watched the kids swimming and jumping off the jetty and thought that was his lasting memory. The committee approved this vision and now we have Martin’s mural. More detail is out at the silo viewing area.