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.

Friday, May 16, 2008

Upcycling




That's my new favorite word: upcycling. It's about taking something that's considered trash and making it into something totally cool or beautiful or all of the above combined with useful. I first heard the word from Virginia Fleck. I thought she made it up. I thought perhaps it was inspired by her amazing mandalas made from plastic bags but but she said she got it from someone else. Regardless of where it comes from, the word AND the concept should definitely be spread far and wide.

At Future Craft Collective's after school club Kathie came up with a great upcycling project for the girls using plastic grocery bags. The thing was, when Kathie went to her cupboard to find plastic grocery bags, the cupboard was bare. When she called me, same thing. She had to search a few houses before she stumbled upon a stash and that alone seemed like a good sign. The fact that most of the people we know are no longer amassing huge piles of plastic bags means there is definitely a shift.

But the bags she did find were definitely happy to be discovered. And the girls in the club were happy too. Check out this amazing little snap purse made by my own ten year old daughter and gifted to me at the end of the class. I love this thing and it is seemingly rather durable as well. I've tossed it around quite a bit in the past couple of weeks and it is still not only looking real good but holding up nicely too.

I love recycling and reusing and reducing and man oh man do I love upcycling too.
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1 comment:

DC said...

This was an ingenious and creative re-use and up-grade for a plastic grocery bag. My daughter saw the one she brough home sitting on the counter and exclaimed, "I love the bag I made!" Thanks gals!

May 19, 2008 at 7:06 PM

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