enviro arts programs

Working with the community with the overall intention of conserving our natural resources, keeping things from landfill and reducing our collective carbon footprint, BOSS events, workshops, and our previous celebratory World Environment Day Festivals showcase creative and practical ways to respectfully enjoy our Earth.

We are now working with Julie Paterson's collaborative menindee memorial loop project. It's another craftism project raising awareness of the millions of fish deaths in the Menindee Lakes on the Darling River.

The project involves stitching 100 random cross stitches on a postcard sized piece of cotton fabric. The final artwork will contain 1,000,000 cross stitches representing 1,000,000 fish. (We've already stitched almost 4,000 fish)

Everyone's welcome to participate, and we can provide all materials.

Come and join the Thursday Night Creatives who meet weekly from 6pm at the CWA Hall. Everyone is welcome.

We're also participating in the Tamborine Mountain Arts Trail offering slow stitching activities at the Grand Chameleon between 10am and 4pm on the Labour Day long weekend Saturday 3 May, Sunday 4 May and Monday 5 May. We'll be at the Grand Chameleon. 

These are free with all materials provided, and no registrations required. 

In 2024, we ran community weaving sessions linking in with the Reclaim the Void project. With the intention to 'weave country whole', our these rugs were woven from discarded bed sheets and using hoops created from ag pipe. Our contribution of 35 rugs will form part of an enormous 40m x 40m textile dot painting made up of thousands of rugs.

We would love to hear from you with your ideas for workshops, whether this reflects skills you're happy to share or skills you would like to learn.

Enviro Arts Creative Workshop Programs focus on using natural resources and those items which may normally make their way to landfill. They support our aim of finding new homes and uses for old and / or damaged items through our growing Recycling Register. 

As well as building community cultural capacity through the development of opportunities for our local artists and creative skills for the community, workshops produce an increased awareness of how to creatively upcycle, reuse and repair common objects.

 

Some past workshop examples of using and upcycling items include:

• jewellery created from discarded salad servers, postage stamps, bottle tops, aluminium offcuts, credit cards, old fabric and lace
• new mosaic platters from old and broken or unloved plates
• batik tools created from paper towel rolls, potato mashers, nails
• revamping old clothes with fabric dye and batik
• leadlight garden stepping stones using old window glass and concrete
• garden ornaments and household items from old steaming baskets and CDs
• artwork from stencilled records
• guitar picks from plastic store cards
• no sew tote bags created from old tshirts
• junk orchestra instruments from rubber thongs, bins, pipes, coke bottles, ironing boards, bottle tops etc
• festival decorations from aluminium and metal cans and bottles

Creative skills shared include:

• jewellery making using jewellers tools and heat guns
• mosaic skills and techniques
• glass cutting skills and techniques
• basket weaving and sculpture with natural fibres
• felting, fabric dyeing and batik techniques 
• making music from improvised instruments

Ideas for future workshops include creating:

• coffee tables from cable spools
• stringed musical instruments from biscuit tins
• spoon rings from silver cutlery
• decorations from plastic bottles
• more rugs and bags crocheted and woven from old t-shirts and fabric