Creative Community Spaces #4
Together we can make great things happen!
In these ‘Creative Community Spaces’ articles I aim to share my journey in organizing creative workshops and fostering community groups. In sharing my own experiences — the triumphs, the challenges, and the setbacks — I hope to inspire others, in some small way, encouraging them to forge connections and establish spaces that nurture our communities for the future.
PROJECT CREATE - A community space in the making
It has been 3 months since we began using our newly cleaned and refurbished home education community space and it’s wonderful in so many ways. It’s amazing what we can do when we come together for a common purpose; when we give freely our time and resources and just get shit done. The space, which was initially filled with junk and rat poo, is now filled with creativity and life. The early stages of the process included a lot of hard work cleaning, clearing and dreaming. Next came creative projects to bring our community together, and filling the space with furniture and resources. Now, we are at the stage of evolving our community though implementing workshops and activities based on our children’s interests and creating new processes for shared decision making.
SPACES & WORKSHOPS
From the early dirty rooms and mess, the space has come so far. Ideas have evolved and we have now collected resources and set up lots of different spaces. These include a book sharing library, second hand shop, art room, hang out space, tinker room and more.
BOOK SHARING LIBRARY
Through donations of books from families involved, we are building up a sharing library. We operate the library on a ‘give a book - take a book’ honesty system.
THE ART ROOM & MAKER SPACE
We are gradually building up a wide range of resources for art and craft which have either been collected or gathered from local buy nothing groups. These materials are free for all to use in our art room and maker space.
I have been running a weekly ART CLUB where I offer art project ideas based on different creative techniques and we make art together. For the next 8 weeks we are looking at lots of different printing techniques. It has been such a pleasure seeing how our art space is evolving and all the creative project embarked on.
COMMUNITY KITCHEN & MEETING SPACE
The central space in the building is a kitchen, meeting and hang out space. This is where we come together to make lunch and have our co-op meetings.
GARDEN
We are gradually converting a unused outside space into a community garden. So far we have added big planters filled with herbs, vegetables and flowers. We plan to add larger vegetable beds, a fire pit, benches and a large table to create an outdoor seating area.
TINKER ROOM
This room is a work in progress. We have lots of tools and old electronics for the children to pull apart and experiment with. For the younger children, they love just smashing things up but we are finding that the older children, who attend our home education co-op, are looking for something more. They want to build and create. So our next step is to implement some electronics workshops for them as well as creating a woodworking space.
SPORTS & GAMES
In the large warehouse area of our space we have pool and ping pong tables along with bikes and scooters.
PLAY ROOM
One of the smaller rooms we have converted into a play space dedicated to younger members of the group. We have a big cubby house, dress up costumes, books and toys.
D&D GAMES ROOMS
Each week we run a Dungeons & Dragons and board games group for about 15 children in our home education community. The children involved have taken ownership of their space and added posters and decorations to their rooms.
SECOND HAND SHOP
We have opened a second hand shop which is run by the children in our community. Collectively they worked out how the shop would be run, they wrote their own rules and staff jobs. All the money that they raise will go to buying equipment for our community to use whilst at Project Create.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY - The opening of Project Create
To mark the opening of our space and celebrate all we have achieved as a community, we held an open day for friends and family. It was wonderful to welcome the wider community into our space.
During this time we held an Acknowledgement of Country with Deanne Hanchant, a life-long Adelaide Hills local. Deanne is descendant of the Tanganekald and Ramindjeri (Ngarrindjeri) peoples of the Coorong through her grandmother, and of the Barkindji peoples through her grandfather, Deanne also has family connections to the Narungga and Kaurna people. She works as a consultant for Aboriginal employment and development with a background in education, archaeology, ancestral remains and SA history. During her talk to us she shared the history of possum skin cloaks and a boomerang which had been found in our local area.
The children also shared some of the activities we have been doing at Project Create which included a choir & band performance, art exhibition and opening our second hand shop.
IMPLEMENTING SHARED DECISION MAKING
Our next step, as our space evolves, is to implement a better system for shared decision making with a focus on centering the children’s voices in the running of our space. In the past a lot of our decisions were being made over a group message WhatsApp chat. This meant that the children’s voices were being lost in the process, with the adults taking over the majority of decisions and planning.
We have now implemented a morning meeting at the beginning of each co-op session where we will check in with each other, plan activities for our day and have the opportunity to share exciting news, resolve disputes and plan future activities.
Making space for the children to contribute to the running of our space is super important to me, but it hasn’t been easy. It is so easy as adults, with the best of intentions, to just to take over. This is such a big learning process for me. I didn’t grow up in a family, school or community where children’s voices were ever really listened to. So I am having to be very intentional with my actions to create space for our young people to contribute in a meaningful way.
I’m so excited about the possibilities Project Create holds for the future of our home education community. But the most exciting thing is what I have learned about the power of people coming together to make shit happen. Whilst I would always advocate people vote, I don’t think we can then sit back and wait for electoral politics to save us. We have so much power in our local communities to create positive change, to build a better future and support those in need, if we just come together and get shit done. The skills I have learnt so far, and continue to learn can be applies to any grass roots community project, not just creating a home education space.
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Thanks, Eleanor X