This has my vote for most sublime mobility project of the year.
A team of Karachi vehicle decorators has transformed a Melbourne tram to bring the experience of a journey on a W-11 Karachi mini-bus to the streets of Melbourne. Vibrant dancing colour in hand-cut sticker collage, sparkling reflection of sculpted stainless steel panels, and dazzling flashing lights. The tram is complete with conductors from Karachi & Melbourne, the music that you would hear on the Karachi W-11, and a special edition of collectable tickets that feature popular Urdu poetry seen on the side of buses and trucks in Karachi.
Since the mid 1990s, Mick Douglas has led a project called Tramjatra in which tramways communities and artists of Melbourne & Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) have explored relationships between their cities through the medium of tramways – a transportation mode shared from their British imperial past. After a decade of artful interventions there’s now a Tramjatra book. It unfolds a story of friendship, dialogue and imagination, and the potential of tramways to connect people together in their differences.
