American design collective Rebar was invited to create a public artwork for Urbanity:(Re)Engaged as part of the City of Sydney Laneways festival in 2011 by Amanda Sharrad and co-curator Justine Topfer while they were both based in San Francisco. The curatorial brief and vision for Urbanity:(Re)Engaged was to inhabit and activate urban space with artworks produced at the intersection of commissioned public art and the spontaneous creative. The curatorial idea was to explore the tension between these two instances of art occurring in the public realm. Three artists were brought to Sydney from the United States, all with high profile creative practices involving street art (Barry McGee), guerrilla knitting (Magda Sayeg) and design/placemaking activism (Rebar), along with First Nations artist Brook Andrew from Melbourne. ​

American design collective Rebar create adaptable streetscape art projects and events at the intersection of design, art and activism, to question the hierarchies, use and ownership of urban pubic space. Based in San Francisco, Rebar are most renowned for blueprint urban guerrilla art interventions such as their Parklets that take over curb-side car-park space with greenery and seating for the general public. These projects led to a global use of the idea by local councils to enhance greening of the urban environment as can be witnessed throughout Sydney today.

For Urbanity: (Re) Engaged, the collective created the installation Bubbleway, providing colourful modular 'social furniture' that spanned thirty meters along Bulletin Place. The installation was an invitation to the general public to stop, site, linger, converse, socialise and truely inhabit the lane in a new mode that challenged its use a a simple pedestrian thoroughfare. 

Images: City of Sydney