How This Hoodie Is Making a Difference

Featuring the work of AIME mentee and Artist in Residence, Maddie Williams.

The hoodie is a symbol of people from different walks of life coming together to meet in the middle, to imagine and make a fairer world.

Founded by Jack Manning Bancroft, AIME Mentoring uses imagination and structured mentoring to unlock the potential of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids in Australia and others outside the margins globally. ‘Making Space’ is the theme of this year’s AIME art initiative with a mission to alleviate educational inequity, targeting “the structural inequity kids from outside the margins face in art.”

“Working together, we make space in unexpected, necessary and valuable ways that will bring marginalised kids and artists together.”

Sounds pretty cool, huh? So how can we get behind them? Well we thought you might like to see this art for yourselves on your very own hoodie with artwork designed by AIME mentee and Artist in Residence, Maddie Williams – a proud Wiradjuri and Torres Strait Islander descendant.

Her artwork, ‘Escalation’, was inspired by her family's experiences during the devastating bushfire season of 2019 and 2020 as well as the global pandemic.

"This artwork shows how quickly things can escalate and how a community can be as one”, she says. “The bushfire season had a devastating effect on land of the Wiradjuri people and many of the other mobs in the affected areas. The names and meeting places depicted around the edges represent the affected mobs. After the crisis of the bushfires, coronavirus followed, putting us all into lockdown for a period and spreading panic, fear and sickness. For many Aboriginal communities, this meant complete lockdown of many towns to protect their elders and the community as a whole.”

Shop the look

AIME is turning the space on their most iconic asset, the hoodie, into a mobile gallery, to show that there is space for young marginalised artists to have the same access to opportunity that others enjoy. Now is the chance for you to proudly show your support by wearing the specially designed hoodie featuring Maddie’s artwork to highlight and educate people about the inequity of kids pushed outside the margins, that exists in Australia and the world.