Papergirl Newcastle + Novel Magazine

Papergirl Newcastle from Krishna Muthurangu on Vimeo.

The team at Novel Magazine recently produced a video documenting Papergirl Newcastle’s debut.

The project launched on August 11th with an exhibition at Settle Down Cafe. The project included over 400 works created by roughly 70-80 artists. After a two-week exhibition period, all of the work was freely distributed to Newcastle-pedestrians by a local team of papergirls and paperboys.

Papergirl, which began in Berlin in 2006, was birthed out of a desire to make art more accessible to the public. Art student, Aisha Ronniger, along with her peers, were brainstorming new ways of making art available to larger audiences, in response to Berlin’s crackdown on pasting posters in public spaces, equating the act to graffiti and vandalism. The idea of distributing art to the masses via bicycle, à la American paperboys, came up and thus began Papergirl.

For over five years, the project has encouraged important discussions on art: its commodification, transformative power, and accessibility. The project has gone international, to cities like Cape Town, Bucharest, Sao Paolo, San Francisco, Portland, Vancouver, and New York.