The Child Who – Windows on Bridge

This is the second project we’ve done with the wondrous Anne Braunsteiner (check out her 2021 installation Punk It Up). For The Child Who Anne has created a vibrant artwork on the window next to Gravity Bikes, using vinyl offcuts. It was quite a jigsaw-esque challenge!

It is a simple idea, letting the child within you take hold of the world around it. Or it seems simple, but the world is complicated and busy, so the child hardly gets time to show themselves.

My idea for the window was equally simple – a child who plays, dreams and imagines – and might see their world in different colours.

The title comes from a book I recently read by Jeanne Benameur, where a child wanders through the forest (amongst other places in their dreams) with an imaginary friend. The child touches the trees to listen to their secrets, and their preparations to make new leaves.

Working at the window on Bridge Street felt like that – the window was complicated in a disrupted world, yet the stories floated around, maybe even secrets? as well as a sense of our ‘own’ resilient community, with so many different colours.

Ann. 2026

And also to say Thank You! – to the team from MakeShift Spaces, to Victus Cafe for their window space, and to the people of the street – for their smiles, their friendly gestures and words. It is what I enjoy most – the small pieces of joy to take with me, feeding my own inner child and telling that story to my tree… for it too is will grow new leaves.

Anne was inspired by a contemporary poetic fable written by Jeanne Benameur – The Child Who. The story begins in an anonymous French village with a boy who loves to wander in a forest where his mother may have disappeared.

Many thanks to Victus Coffee & Eatery (at 111 Bridge Street) for letting us beautify the windows of this little shopfront.