Cross Pollination

By Pavement Print Studio

City North Festival 3-5 Oct 2025

RMIT Project Space, Carlton

Pavement Print Studio is a mobile screen printing initiative that brings collaborative printmaking directly to the streets. Built on a bicycle trailer and equipped with Japanese Surimacca printing technology, the studio creates opportunities for spontaneous creative exchange between students and the public.

As a graphic design teacher at RMIT's Brunswick campus, I developed this project to give Associate Degree students real-world experience in community engagement, technical printmaking, and collaborative art practice. The studio operates as both a learning environment and a public installation, with students facilitating all aspects of the printing process.

For the City North Cross-Cultural Festival in October 2025, we created an immersive gallery installation featuring our mobile studio alongside multiple print workstations. The centrepiece was a monumental 3m x 10m wall of "collision prints" - artworks created by overprinting symbols and images from different participants, generating new meanings through visual layering.

Throughout the weekend, visitors collaborated with students to design and screen print their own symbols. Each participant took home a print whilst contributing to the growing installation, creating a genuine exchange of ideas and labour that embodied the festival's themes of cross-cultural dialogue and shared futures.