GREETINGS!

My name is Sara Gillum. I'm a third generation Lawrencian, and I love my community. I started the project Rainbow Strings for the Lawrence Community in 2020, in response to the pandemic. At the time I wasn’t 100% sure what I was doing, but I had several goals in mind: One, I wanted to brighten neighborhoods and raise people's spirits with colorful outdoor hanging artwork. Two, as a single income family we don't have a lot of money, and I wanted a way to raise money for local groups and organizations who help people and animals in crisis. And three, I wanted to raise awareness of the problems with single use plastic and the plastic recycling process in general. 

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I still have those goals today. So far I have put in a few thousand hours of work on this project. As of June 2023, I have raised over $21,600 for our community, hosted three food drives and, by a rough estimate, made around 1600 rainbow strings. During the spring of 2022 I also put together and delivered over 300 DIY rainbow string kits for local elementary students to coincide with Earth Day, and then over the summer months I put together another 300-ish rainbow string kits and worked with both our local girl scout organization and our public library to make rainbow strings with kids. I've also created lots of other repurposed plastic artwork, including a few hundred starbursts, a 4'x8' mural, as well as contributing a completely upcycled rainbow plastic tree for Festival of Trees (a fundraising even for our local children's shelter) in 2021 and a large starburst "wreath" in 2022. I have also donated many of the rainbow starbursts to local fundraising auctions.

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I love making art with what would otherwise end up as waste, inspiring others to find beauty in unexpected places, and getting everyone thinking critically about the waste we as a society are producing. I would like to see stricter laws put in place regarding Extended Producer Responsibility and I encourage you to write to your legislators about this issue.