We are Emily (my partner), Eef (me) and Mila (my 9yo daughter). We recently moved into the area buying our house together to start a new chapter in our lives. The Street Library project is our offering to our new community as a “hello” and invitation to connect through people’s love for reading. We have a lot of novels that Mila has collected over the years due to her insatiable thirst for reading and would love to share these with the neighbourhood, children and adults alike.
The characters we have chosen to paint on our Street Library are from stories and cartoon series that reflect the values that our family holds – compassion, cooperation, love, adventure and most of all, strength. The choice to put strong female characters on our Street Library is a reflection of how much we would love to see more strong female representation in literature, TV and stories in general. Mila has been working on the Street Library as her Passion Project for school to highlight her love for books and as a dedication to our rainbow family, which began when her two mums Amy and Eef decided to bring her into the world. The structure of our family has continued to change significantly since and our definition for family has expanded. As a testament to rainbow families that may live in our immediate neighbourhood (single parents, absent parents, same sex partners, foster families, and many more), we hope to lend strength and support to others who worry about having to justify their family structure to the status quo of society and take courage from the strong women we’ve painted on our Street Library.
