Collaborations

Collaboration between Melissa Spratt and Tal Fitzpatrick (2023-2026)

Delivering socially engaged textile projects that explore socio-political issues like climate justice, safety and public space, community wellbeing and belonging.

Tal Fitzpatrick and Melissa Spratt are both textile artists based on the Gold Coast. They met in 2023 while taking part in the INCUBATE* Residency at Placemakers* and shortly thereafter they were both accepted into the 2023 Generate GC program where their collaboration began. Since they have delivered 4 socially-engaged craft based projects including: ‘The City Speaks Softly’ presented by BLEACH* Arts Festival (2025); ‘Crafting for Climate’ supported by the City Gold Coast (2025); ‘Threads of Belonging’ presented by Everybody Now (2025) and ‘The City Speaks Softly’ presented by Somerset StoryFest (2025). 

Each of these projects involved delivering participatory craft driven workshops that invited participants to learn new skills (finger knitting and embroidery), share their stories, connect with one another and work with the artists to co-create new work. These projects all had public outcomes, with the two iterations of ‘The City Speaks Softly’ being installed on street pole banners in multiple suburbs on the Gold Coast.  

Driving all these projects is the artist's belief that art can help foster a strong sense of agency within individuals and create a sense of belonging within groups and that craft is a medium that makes people feel safe, seen and cared for.

CRAFTING FOR CLIMATE

The Crafting for Climate community quilt project was presented with support from The City of Gold Coast Climate Resilience and Sustainability Unit and the Arts and Culture Unit. 

Inspired by the City’s Climate Resilience and Sustainability strategy this quilt is a vision for our city’s future co-created by 58 residence including lead artists Tal Fitzpatrick and Melissa Spratt. Created in late 2025 through a series of free community workshops delivered in Upper Coomera, Broadbeach and Coolangatta this quilt symbolises collective action and reminds us that today’s choices shape the city our children will inherit. 

The workshops included a presentation by the Climate Resilience and Sustainability team, finger knitting sharing circles where participants spoke about their hopes and aspirations for the city's climate future, embroidery skills sharing and the creation of their own unique quilt square and a hands-on seed bomb making experience. 

The finished quilt will be on display across Gold Coast Libraries throughout 2026.

THE CITY SPEAKS SOFTLY

The City Speaks Softly (2023-2025) is a collaboration between artists Melissa Spratt and Tal Fitzpatrick that uses the comforting nature of textiles to explore how art can soften our experience of public space. This socially engaged project seeks to shed light on how art might create moments of gentle sensorial reprieve. Utilising street pole banners as a broadly accessible site for a creative intervention with the potential to gently surprise audiences.

The built environment can be overwhelming and at times feel unsafe. This project seeks to shed light on how art might create moments of gentle sensorial reprieve and to explore the potential to gently surprise audiences.

The project combines Tal's appliqué textile practice with Melissa's finger-knitting to create banners that can be displayed on street pole banners. These text driven banners are created in conversation with community thought the process of a facilitated workshop that involves conversations and craft-based skills sharing.

Exploring the narrative idea of finding the city’s voice, the project considers who gets to speak into public spaces and plays with the potential of giving the city a voice that centres softness, kindness, femininity, accessibility and inclusion.

This project has the potential to bring together diverse communities and create a soft space for open conversations about complex local, social, personal and political issues. With the goal of creating public artworks (in the form of street pole banners) that speak to these issues and reflect back a community’s concerns and aspirations thought the display of the banners on street poles. 

BLEACH* FESTIVAL 

The City Speaks Softly (2025) by Tal Fitzpatrick and Melissa Spratt was presented by BLEACH* Festival 2025. This project was presented by BLEACH* and Experience Gold Coast through the EGC Art Fund and developed in support from Generate GC, a City of Gold Coast program through the Arts and Culture Unit.

Tal and Melissa created 5 textile banners for this project using text they gathered from the local community through a workshop they facilitated at the Broadbeach Community Centre during the development stage of this project.

The five banners were scanned, printed and installed on over 50 street poles around Broadbeach Cultural Precinct, Burleigh Esplanade, HOTA, Kurrawa Park and in Broadbeach for the duration of the 2025 BLEACH*Festival between the 31 July - 30 August 2025.

Photos by Scott Chrisman and Melissa Spratt