Future Craft Collective Mission:




The future craft collective is about inspiring children to get crafty, to create beauty, while simultaneously teaching them ways of minimizing our impact on this earth.  It's about understanding ways of recycling, reducing, reusing, and at the same time, making some really cool stuff.  
Throughout the craft sessions, kids will discover ways to create a world in which the belief in handmade looms larger than the messages of the marketing machine.  In this era of relentless advertising and planned obsolescence, the time has come to infuse our children with our own messages of creative living and sustainability.  This message too can save a kid from a lifetime of seeking contentment through consumption.
The future craft collective wants kids to understand the thrill of making it themselves.  We want them to look at the used goods all around them not as trash, or as items to be tossed in the recycling bin, but rather as raw materials in their crafty creative pursuits, thereby allowing them to experience the innovative feeling of instilling new life into old objects.  
From the idea, to the completion of a project, to showing it off in public, we can teach children to recognize the value and pride and indeed the thrill in saying "Thanks, I made it myself."  And the even greater thrill of utilizing old-fashioned ideals of resourcefulness and ingenuity and of finding the hidden life in abandoned materials.
in addition to making some really cool things we'll cover:
-why is there so much?  understanding that less is more.
-what are retailers doing to the value of handmade?
-the pride of making it yourself.
-the joys of creating personal style.
-the value in knowing the ability to create is within his/her realm.
-tapping into a kids' inherent desire to create.
-recognizing the marketing machine of a consumer culture.
-spreading the love and celebrating the thrill of handmade.

Each session stands alone with a lesson in sustainability and a hands-on project, which will lead to a greater understanding of the thrill of consciously crafting.  A follow-up discussion of each project will lead to greater understanding of the thrill of handmade, the need to minimize the impact and the necessity of creating rather than consuming.

Monday, April 28, 2008

This ship is sailing

Future Craft Collective just finished up its first month of afterschool classes and all agreed it was completely awesome. Seriously, every member to the one used that word again and again (and again). The classes were all about deconstructing, reusing, upcycling, creating, stitching, laughing, singing, even eating cupcakes for one special occasion and oh yeah, sewing.

We learned about The Story of Stuff and sustainable crafting and owning your own style and using less and seeing more and making it ourselves and innovation and improvising and each member walked away at the end of each class with some really cool handmade items: ransom note t-shirts and t-shirt skirts, appreciation banners, recycled journals and our own little ugly dolls. (and we mean that in a nice way) All this in the name of not only learning a truer, deeper meaning of value and worth, but seriously honing some mean sewing skills in the process!!

Round two of afterschool classes is starting up on May 5th.
Classes will be held each Monday in May from 3:30-5:30 p.m.
In the sewing studio on DeVerne just off of S. Lamar at Bluebonnet.
Check out the blog for camps and other info about the Collective.
This next session will be $85.00 plus a $10.00 supply fee.
Posted by at 1 comment:

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

gratitude banner


gratitude banner, originally uploaded by ramonster cowpoke swankwear.

today we made family gratitue banners in class. the banners have pockets for each family member, plus one for friends and extended family, and one for the universe. each time someone thinks of something they are grateful for, they can jot it down and stick it in the appropriate pocket. this serves us in many ways- we can visit the banner and look in our pocket to read all the ways we inspire gratitude in our family members AND we can reread all of our previously written notes of gratitude to remind ourselves how full our lives are and how much we have to be grateful for...
thanks to the amazing and always inspired bernadette for introducing this to us. i'm grateful to have you in my life, bern!!!!

Posted by at 1 comment:

Thursday, April 17, 2008

upcycle, re-T


upcycle, re-T, originally uploaded by ramonster cowpoke swankwear.

our april future crafters had an afternoon of attacking a pile of old t-shirts to see what they could come up with. we worked with patterns for both a skirt or a handbag, or they had the option to take a t-shirt who's artwork was less than inspiring to them and embellish the heck out of it.
everybody left with something totally unique and they had a great time making the stuff.
i felt lucky just to be there and bear witness to this cool posse of kids going to TOWN on this big old pile of shirts that otherwise would have been languishing at the bottom of a drawer, taken to goodwill (or the dump?), or used as a rag.
these kids got a glimpse of creating their own brand! way cooler than anything they could buy at target!
i'm totally inspired by these kids and the energy and enthusiasm they bring to their projects.
the future IS now, my friends!! wa-hoo!!

Posted by at 3 comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)