Wall Space Gallery is proud to partner with local community builder Ollie Milling to present Street Memo, a project that centres care, wellbeing, and accessible art experiences. Shared through the familiar format of public posters, the project engages with ongoing conversations around wellbeing while fostering introspection, connection, and collective reflection.

Street Memo can be experienced in both public and personal forms, allowing visitors to engage with the work on their own terms. Extending the conversation beyond the gallery, Street Memo includes an optional mail-out component that sends artworks and other materials directly to participants, encouraging safe and meaningful reflection within the comfort of one's home. 

Presented on the exterior wall of Wall Space Gallery, Street Memo remains freely accessible to the public, inviting engagement in shared community spaces. On view until September 2026, Wall Space Gallery is excited to exhibit two iterations of the series to explore new ways of experiencing art, resilience, and wellbeing.

In what follows, Ollie Milling shares the meaning and inspiration behind the Street Memo project in a discussion with Moira Power of Wall Space Gallery:

Moira Power: Can you tell us a little about yourself? How did you start making art?

Ollie Milling: I’ve always been making things in one way or another. As soon as I could hold a pen, I was drawing on myself, and I started putting work up around my home with tape and thumbtacks wherever there was space.

That same instinct still drives what I do now, but it has moved outward into public space. I don’t see the work, or the impulse behind it, as something that stays with me once it is made. It becomes what it is meant to be when it is placed somewhere and encountered by someone else.

Street Memo grew out of that impulse, alongside ongoing questions about public space, wellbeing, and how ideas move between people when they are not confined to one place or format.


Power: You seem to favour the term “community builder” over “artist.” Is there a reason for this? 

Milling: Although one could consider me an artist, I tend to favour the term community builder because my work is not complete until the community joins the conversation.

For me, the community is both the inspiration and the medium. Without community involvement the work remains a draft.

Many of the questions I explore are tied to issues that affect the community in one way or another. They might begin with a personal observation, but they rarely end there. My research, writing, design work, and artwork help me flesh out those questions, but I view them as process work rather than finished works.

The work begins when someone encounters it and forms their own relationship with it. That relationship might take the form of reflection, discussion, disagreement, curiosity, or something else entirely. Whatever the response, it becomes part of the work. My goal is not to change the community, but to build upon what is already there.

Installation view of Street Memo.

Power: How did the Street Memo project come about?

Milling: I found myself thinking about how public space is often full of communication, but not always the kind that invites reflection or care. At the same time, I was thinking about wellness and how it is spoken about in structured or formal ways, often behind barriers and paywalls, even though people are constantly navigating it in much more informal, everyday ways.

Street Memo became a way to bring those ideas into the same space. To place questions about wellbeing directly into public view and see what happens when they are encountered in the middle of everyday movement and life.


Power: What themes are you exploring through Street Memo?

Milling: Street Memo explores wellness and the many forms it can take. I am interested in the different ways people understand wellbeing through their own experiences, cultures, values, and communities. The project does not aim to define wellness, but rather to create space for reflection around a topic that affects everyone, even if it looks different for each of us.

Installing Street Memo at Wall Space Gallery.

Power: Is there something specific that drew you to posters as a medium for this project? 

Milling: After facilitating community art workshops and studying advertising, I came to two realizations. The first was that many people feel disconnected from contemporary art, not because they lack understanding, but because artists and viewers are often working from different visual languages.

The second was that most people already understand the visual language of posters. We encounter them every day in public spaces. They ask for our attention, communicate quickly, and exist alongside daily life.

As someone interested in community building, posters felt like a natural fit. They allow the work to meet people where they already are rather than asking them to seek it out.


Power: Can you tell us a little about the mail-out component of Street Memo? How does it work, and why did you decide to include it? 

Milling: The mail-out is a free monthly mail club that people can sign up to. Each month the list resets so everyone has an equal opportunity to join, as long as they have a mailing address.

Subscribers receive a package in the post that can include posters, stickers, letters, and other small works or printed material. It is designed as a slower, more personal extension of Street Memo that moves the work out of public space and into people’s homes.

The reset is important to the project. It keeps the mail-out open and rotating rather than fixed or exclusive, so access is continually redistributed rather than locked behind a permanent list.

Power: Street Memo moves between public spaces, private homes via its mail-out component, and now a gallery context. How might these different settings shape how the work is encountered or understood?

Milling: Street Memo moves between public spaces, homes, and galleries because there is no single way to access wellness, and there is no single perspective on what wellness looks like.

The project is rooted in the understanding that people approach wellbeing from different cultural backgrounds, life experiences, values, and material realities. What supports one person may not support another. Wellness is not a fixed destination, nor is it something that belongs to a particular institution or demographic.

Street Memo is an acknowledgment that conversations around wellbeing have always existed and are already happening, and it is an invitation to continue them. By existing across different contexts, Street Memo creates multiple points of entry while allowing people to engage with the work from their own perspective and on their own terms.

The gallery is another point of access, but it also signals that these conversations belong within cultural institutions. Presenting Street Memo in a gallery is not a departure from the street or the mail-outs, as those differing perspectives are part of what gives the work meaning.


Power: What interested you about presenting your work on the exterior of Wall Space Gallery? 

Milling: What drew me to Wall Space Gallery was how closely its approach aligns with the intentions behind Street Memo. Accessibility, community engagement, and critical reflection are all central to the project. Presenting the work on the exterior of Wall Space Gallery feels like a natural extension of those ideas. It allows the project to remain public-facing while also contributing to the conversations that the gallery is already fostering within the community.

Past installation view of Street Memo.

Power: In a world that can sometimes feel increasingly disconnected, what role do you think projects like Street Memo can play in fostering reflection and connection?

Milling: Projects like Street Memo suggest that we are not actually disconnected from each other, even when it feels that way. More often, connection is already there in the background, but it is not always acted on or initiated.

I think a lot of disconnection comes from hesitation rather than absence. If there is a way to connect, then connection is already possible. It just requires a first step, and sometimes that step needs to be made easier or more visible.

Street Memo tries to do that by placing small openings for interaction into everyday spaces. It is not trying to manufacture connection, but to make it easier for people to notice that there is already humanity around them, and that engaging with it is simply an action within reach.


Power: What do you hope people carry with them after encountering Street Memo?

Milling: What I hope people carry with them after encountering Street Memo is a sense of awareness and agency in how they relate to their own wellbeing and the world around them.

Some parts of the work invite reflection, especially when someone recognizes something in themselves or questions whether the ideas presented fit or contradict their own system of wellness. Series One comes from my own approach to wellbeing, but it is not meant to be universal. It is offered as prompts rather than conclusions. Other parts encourage action through communication, curiosity, and asking more questions of the people around them.

Whether it leads inward or outward, I hope it creates a small shift in how someone notices themselves and others, and leaves them considering what they already know about their own wellbeing, and what they are still figuring out.


Power: Thank you so much for sharing this with us! You can sign up for the Street Memo mail-outs and learn more information about the project HERE. 

“Former hallway doodler, aspiring art director, and lifelong go-getter. From childhood scribbles to intentional design, I've always created to communicate. While some of my work is simple and fun, the majority of my work connects to deeper concepts and meaningful stories. Every piece I create is a step toward building empathy and inviting others to connect through visual expression.” – Ollie Milling