Made With Love Market Bazaar - January

A photo of me, taking photos.

For my market post this time around I wanted to focus on some of the lovely ladies who tirelessly and passionately organise each market. These women organise and communicate with stallholders, take care of public relations and publicity, do their crafty thang, run their own stalls each and every time as well as their own lives, households and regular day-jobs.

Possibly they are crazy for all of this, but more likely they are fabulous and this town is so much the better for all of the effort they put into this market.

Put simply, they are awesome chicks.

Claire and Baby Boudoir.

Lisa and Lisaloo.

Sarah (who is going to kill me for posting this photo but I think it's cute) and Turning Trixie.

Michelle and Rock My Roll.

The market also features a variety of other local artists, crafters, musicians and food stalls. It is held in the ArtsCape building at 45 Jackson Street, Wynyard on the second Saturday of each month. To check out some of the other stall-holders and goings-on from January's market, click on through here and have a good gander. It's worth it, if I do say so myself - and I'm not just saying that because I took the photos!

And now, here's the crux of the matter and why I'm so blatantly singing the praises of this little local market. Pretty soon the local council will start charging fees that ArtsCape can not afford. This community arts centre was started over six years ago by Michelle and is currently lacking sponsors and funding. As things stand, if ArtsCape can't pay these bills, then it will shut down.

The importance of a community arts centre in a small town like ours can not be overstated. This centre encourages local artists by giving them a voice and a space to create. You only have to look at the success of the Made With Love Market Bazaar over the last year to see some of what has been achieved. And that is only the tip of the iceberg.

But here is the beauty of technology and the internet, because it also provides support to causes like this. If you click on this link, you will find an amusing photograph of Michelle. Not only is it funny, but if you then vote for her, she has the opportunity to win $1000 worth of financial support which will go towards paying those local council bills. It's as simple as clicking your mouse (and perhaps sending the link on if you can, so others can click their mouses as well). Michelle was short-listed into the final 20 and now must make the last cut of 10 in order to get the funds. She wrote about it here.

Voting closes on the 7th of February.

I know a lot of you reading my blog aren't locals, but if you value community and the arts, if you value grass-roots regional cultural development (oooh, don't I sound academic?!) - if any of those things are important to you, we'd appreciate your support (and all it takes is a click to vote and a couple of clicks to share the link).

Thank you for reading and thank you for your support! xx