Over four days in May 2026, eighty members of the public joined us across eight workshops at M-Pavilion RMIT Brunswick to design, cut stencils, and screen print their own contributions to a shared visual system. The 631 prints that resulted were installed as a single accumulating field at Balam Balam Place in Brunswick, running through the final days of Melbourne Design Week. All eight workshops sold out immediately with waitlists forming for every session.

The project was held together by a design system developed by Pavement crew — a grid of nodes, paths and network motifs that gave participants a shared visual language while keeping each person's contribution distinct and readable. Oli aligned the grid structure with the polka dot pattern in the carpet at Balam Balam Place, and built in margins that create the illusion of a continuous network when prints are installed flush together. Individual compositions scaled up into something neither any one participant nor the studio could have made alone.

The workshops drew a wide range of people — graphic design graduates, working designers, secondary school teachers, people just curious about screen printing — and the conversations that happened across the printing tables were as much a part of the project as the prints themselves. The network motifs weren't just aesthetic. They reflected the actual connections being formed through the process of making together.

Melbourne Design Week 2026. Workshops at M-Pavilion RMIT Brunswick, exhibition at Balam Balam Place. Supported by Brunswick Design District, Permaset, Ball & Doggett, Gildan Brands Australia, Heaps Normal, RMIT Creative, RMIT Graphic Design Brunswick, and RMIT VE Creative Industries. Photography by Elena Hogan, Anya Hawley and Aan Ko.