Fundamentally these projects, overtly and/or covertly, find
their foundation in CULTURALjamming [Link2]
Trees are painted blue in Australia as part of the Blue Tree Project, a mental health initiative dedicated to raising suicide awareness and breaking the stigma surrounding mental illness. The bright, unnatural colour serves as a visual reminder to check in on friends and speak up if you are doing it tough. Click here for images.
Where it Began
The movement was inspired by a heartfelt tribute to Jayden Whyte, who tragically lost his life to suicide in 2018. In 2014, Jayden and his friend had played a lighthearted prank by painting a dead tree blue on his family's farm in Western Australia's Wheatbelt region. Following his passing, his family and friends began painting trees blue in his memory.
The movement was inspired by a heartfelt tribute to Jayden Whyte, who tragically lost his life to suicide in 2018. In 2014, Jayden and his friend had played a lighthearted prank by painting a dead tree blue on his family's farm in Western Australia's Wheatbelt region. Following his passing, his family and friends began painting trees blue in his memory.
What the Blue Trees Symbolize
- Sparking Conversations: The shocking blue colour is intended to make people stop, look, and ask questions. This provides an easy, non-confrontational way for people to talk about mental health and ask, "Are you really okay?"
- Spreading the Message: It acts as a permanent visual cue standing in the community that it is "OK to not be OK".
Strict Ecological Guidelines
To ensure the movement protects the environment, supporters and official councils follow strict rules when choosing to paint a tree:
To ensure the movement protects the environment, supporters and official councils follow strict rules when choosing to paint a tree:
- Only dead trees are selected.
- They use non-toxic, water-based outdoor paint so that wildlife or surrounding flora is not harmed.
- They ensure the trees do not serve as important nesting habitats for birds or contain hollows for native animals.
You can find hundreds of these trees across the country. If you or someone you know needs support, you can reach out to Beyond Blue or Lifeline Australia.
The original REDreadTREE initiated by the Launceston based artist, Ray Norman, came about as a result of a confluence of ideas. The Landcare organisation was seeking a means to draw attention to 'Rural Tree Decline' in the Midlands as a part of the Decade of Landcare initiative.
Coinciding with this a group of artists were looking for opportunities to install 'ecoLANDMARKS' along the Midlands Highway. The REDreadTREE was to be the precursor for that and simultaneously serve a Landcare cum LANDliteracy [Link] purpose.
Since the installation of original REDreadTREE there have been a number of community responses and reactions to what has become an exercise in PLACEmaking cum CULTURALlandscaping – click here to read more.
Given almost every strategic determination made by Local Governments are to do with PLACEmaking and LANDuse it follows that in making these determinations on behalf of a Community of Ownership & Interest the ability to read and comprehend a site's/place's ‘placedness’ is of fundamental importance. Consequently, LANDltercacy is of fundamental importance to appropriate LANDuse and PLACEmaking determinations. Typically, these issues are already in evidence subliminally to some degree.
Nonetheless, when there is acknowledgement of the need to be mindfully cognisant of LANDltercacy’s value in strategic planning and policy determination the likelihood of more purposeful and amenable PLACEmaking becomes a given – LINK.
LANDltercacy is the ability to read a landscape: to appraise the state of its health and how it is functioning. Thus, knowing how to address any issues relative to its ongoing purposefulness as a secure living place is an imperative. Places are occupied and cared for by humanity – not owned ... colonised maybe but not owned.
"Our world faces a true planetary emergency. I know the phrase sounds shrill, and I know it's a challenge to the moral imagination.”... Al Gore. 'Climate Emergencies’ have been declared all around the world and governance since then has essentially been sitting on its hands defending the STATUSquo!
The Place in Another Context
Nonetheless, these trees will provide an ongoing reference for the so called regeneration of the clear fell. And ONEstump painted RED can be a 'marker' to watch
At the margins of a CLEARfell coupe it was possible to imagine what had been cleared and what biodiversity was present within it. These trees were protected from logging because they are in a stream side zone and thus must remain. That is something that is not ALWAYS respected but it was here.
There is a need to pay attention and watch because otherwise turning a BLINDeye the dystopian degradation is likely to persist unabated. By-and-large up to now it has and there are politicians who claim to represent COMMUNITY INTERESTS and who are advocating and sanctioning industrial forestry and CLEARfelling.
By 2009 it is possible to visit this site from your computer and WATCH! Simply go to GOOGLE EARTH and enter the coordinates. That was not possible in 1999 – well not to everyone - and albeit largely ignored it is increasingly possible to interrogate 'places' via internet platforms and watch THISplace!
In the end it is a matter of being LANDliterate and 'place sensitive' towards seeking sustainability in the CULTURALlandscaping we participate in when creating HOMEplaces.
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