Coorong District Council in South Australia is stopping visitors in their tracks with a 30-metre high silo mural, developed as part of the Creating Coonalpyn project.
Each minute, up to three cars are pulling over in Coonalpyn to view the towering mural, snap their #siloselfie and share it across the social media world.
In many cases they are staying long enough to spend money in the town too, propping up local cafes, the hotel, service station and even the RV friendly caravan park.
In 2014, a region-wide arts focus had recently been borne from a desire for Council to beautify its newly built civic centre, and an overwhelming response to this project highlighted a surprise desire from the community to invest in arts and culture.
With support of Council’s Chief Executive Officer, the leadership team responded and was quick to identify the operational Viterra silos at Coonalpyn as the perfect blank canvas to create something incredible.
The $100,000 ‘Creating Coonalpyn’ project was born.
Completed in March, the mural was painted by world-famous artist Guido van Helten and depicts ‘a new hope for the future’, with striking images of five local children towering high on the face of the silo cells.
Coorong District Council Chief Executive Officer Vincent Cammell said this project brought about a sense of community pride and belief for the future.
“We have new businesses opening their doors, more jobs being created, accommodation booked out, inaugural events starting up and so much more.”
The project recently won the 2017 National Awards for Local Government in the Arts Animates category – adding to a list of other State Award gongs for the council.
The council now has its sights set on its next renewal by arts project – Long Story Short – recently securing funding to develop what is sure to be the next success story.
