Article in "THE AGE" Melbourne

Gifts of love left for whoever finds
by Yasmin Mitchell, March 10, 2009

WHEN most people think of street art, spray cans and stencils come to mind. Not so for Bianca Brownlow. While the founder of the Toy Society may be sneaking through Melbourne's darkest laneways, she's hiding handmade toys, not tagging.

The aim of the Toy Society, Ms Brownlow explains, is a "something-for-nothing experience". Participants make painstakingly detailed toys, such as miniature monkeys, frowning ghosts and patchwork chickens, , leaving them on street corners, park benches and other public spaces for others to find.

A label attached to each toy invites the finder to take them home but also to let the Toy Society know they have been found, via a blog....

...Despite the overwhelmingly positive response from toy-finders, Ms Dunston and Ms Brownlow get nervous about actually hiding toys on the street. "It's quite strange," Ms Dunston admits. "It's like being a spy with toys. You're always jumpy and nervy … you have to do it with a lot of confidence, like you're meant to be there."

Similarly, even after spending a year participating in toy drops, Ms Brownlow is still nervous about being caught in the act. "I like to do it incognito. I don't like to be seen. Actually, I dropped one in (Sydney's) Surry Hills a few weeks ago and someone saw me. I didn't know what to do. I went and hid."

While she laughs that she's much too busy for world domination, she has quite a few projects in the pipeline. She's working on a couple of themed toy drops for Melbourne, including a street full of trees where each tree has a bird in it, probably on Northcote's High Street. Another project that has been playing on her mind is "a night thing with ghosts in sneaky ghost-like places in the city". Her personal goal, getting the project to 100 toy drops by April, has almost been accomplished, thanks to the worldwide Christmas drop.