Creative Community Spaces #6
Celebrating one year of PROJECT CREATE home education community space!
Hello my creative friends.
Today I’m writing about the growth and development of our home education community space, PROJECT CREATE, since it’s beginnings one year ago.
You can read about our first steps building the community in these two articles:
I’ll start with a little background; PROJECT CREATE is a cooperative of home educating families who work together to facilitate a range of activities, create friendships and build community. We operate from a repurposed warehouse and office space in a semi-rural area of South Australia approximately 30 minutes drive from Adelaide.
The ethos behind the space is to build a respectful and inclusive community where young people’s person-hood is respected. We aim to create a space for learning and exploring our interests whilst also supporting social justice issues and divesting for mainstream capitalist culture. Together we learn, play, create art & music, attend protests, volunteer in our community and much more. Sometimes we create a lot of mess, but most importantly, we create friendships and a sense of belonging with other home educating families and the wider community.
There have been times over the last year when it has felt like a LOT to take on; building and running this ‘third space’ for our community. All the families involved have busy lives. We home educate, run businesses, support our neurodiverse children, write books, create art and music, volunteer in the community, whilst educating ourselves about new approaches to learning and parenting, all under the pressures of capitalism to just make ends meet. I’m not complaining, we are all pretty privileged with a safe home to live in and at least one family member with a stable income. However, living within our consumerist capitalist culture whilst also putting in the work to divest from that culture and build a robust, grass-roots community space feels like a LOT.
However, now we are starting to feel the results of all our hard work and it’s amazing!
A few weeks ago, we celebrated one year of using our space with a party. It was so fun to come together, share food, dance and welcome new families into our community.
HIGHLIGHTS THIS YEAR:
DUNGEONS, DRAGONS & GAMES
We have a thriving Dungeons and Dragons scene. We have just added a third D&D table, this one all girls, to the fortnightly sessions at our space. This is a particular highlight of our activities for my son, who has been playing with the same group of friends for two years now.
On the weeks between D&D, we have recently began a board games club, facilitated by one of the parents in our community, where the children bring new games to share with their friends. With the help of the funding we received from ASDE, we have been able to purchase lots more games for our community space.
WOODWORK MAKER SPACE
This month we revamped one of the rooms to create a woodworking maker space complete with tools, a work bench and lots of materials. At our first session using the space, it was so fantastic to see the kids inspired and the room was bussing with experimentation and creativity. The tools we purchased for the space, again were made possible with funding we received from ASDE.
Over the coming months, we hope to support the children in learning some simple woodworking techniques and to gain competency using different tools, to allow their creative ideas to flourish.
CREATIVE WORKSHOPS
Throughout the last year, myself and other parents have organised a range of creative art and craft workshops at PROJECT CREATE for our home education community. One particular highlight for my son, was a series of cosplay workshops to make fantasy helmets and swords.
WE PUT ON A PLAY!
A founding ethos of PROJECT CREATE is to center the children’s voices in the decision making and activities we host. Earlier this year, one of the young people in our community (age 11) decided she wanted to write and produce a play based on Greek mythology. She then invited other children to take on the acting roles. The adults were there to support and help facilitate the making of costumes and props. Although there were a few stressful moments when the kids weren’t sure it was all going to come together, they performed the play to a audience of friends and family, and felt so proud of their achievements.
WELCOMING NEW FAMILIES
The best part of the last few months in our community has been welcoming more friends into our space. It had been so wonderful to have new families joining our co-op group, who are excited by what we have built so far, and want to contribute their skills to the community. Those skills have included facilitating board games, running craft activities, cooking, cleaning and just providing support. The core group of families, who had started the space, got to a point earlier this year where we were all feeling quite depleted. So for us to have the support of new people and the energy they have brought, has been much needed. It is so fantastic to feel that others get what we are trying to build and want to contribute.
Over the last few sessions at our co-op meetups, each family has been making a poster about their personalities and interests to share with the group as a way of facilitating the building of friendships.
THE FUTURE FOR PROJECT CREATE
I’m excited about what the future holds for our community. Sometimes I feel that the kids involved take it for granted. They don’t realise quite how special what we are building is becoming. But that’s kind of the point; for them to grow up feeling its normal to contribute to and be part of an equitable and inclusive community, where their voices are valued and where we care for others and the world around us.
If you would like to know more or have any questions about how we began our community space, leave a comment below or send me a DM.
I would love to know how you began your creative community process! Thanks so much for your time!