“Urban Source has been Vancouver’s number one choice for alternative art materials for over 15 years. We collect from over 100 different local industries, diverting safe, useable off-cuts, discards, misprints and over-stock from the land fill. Materials are then sorted, organized and prepared for the store. Most importantly, we come up with a variety of innovative uses for everything we collect.

Artists, designers, teachers, students, daycare workers and families rely on us for providing one of a kind art materials. Local industries are happy to have us haul away their unwanted goodies thereby reducing their disposal costs.”

Every city needs one!

“Welcome to CREATES, Warwickshire’s first creative recycling centre for schools, pre-schools, further education and community groups. As a new initiative linking arts and education, the CREATES resource has thrown open its doors to a new world of creative possibilities for Warwickshire’s schools and communties. The vision was inspired by visits to the ReMida Recycling Centre in the municipality of Reggio Emilia in Northern Italy, which promotes the idea that waste materials can be resources.”

CREATES aims to encourage children to find new ways of re-using waste materials, promoting a positive attitude towards recycled goods, and encouraging new opportunities for communication and creativity. A wide range of materials from huge cardboard tubes, to small shiny plastic shapes, donated by businesses and industry can now be used to inspire young minds and ignite fascinating creativity in the classroom and beyond.”

COMMENT: “Just to let you know we have changed our name.
We are now called WEAVE warwickshire’s enviro-arts vision for education. Our new website is under construction but you can still contact us on www.thinkcreates.co.uk“.

I would like to introduce you to REcircle Creative REuse Center. A progressive recycling program in Brussels, Belgium.

“We have established relationships with several manufactures throughout Belgium to rescue beautiful waste from being discarded as useless and unnecessary. We then bring them to our center and sort them by type, color, size or other commonalities. They then become AMAZINGLY cool objects and materials that children and artist alike can use for a variety of creative projects, thus closing the recycling circle.”

Excellent diagram!

“We are not alone in our journey of giving objects a new life. We have been and continue to be inspired by many others who have been making these beautiful things available to other communities throughout the world. Check out our LINKS page.”

At the conference, I had the pleasure of meeting the cooridator of REMIDA Perth, Ms. Elissa McAUliffe. She is passionate about the program, the inportance of recycling and expressions of creativity. I hope to visit REMIDA Perth someday and participate in one of Elissa’s workshops. Take a peek at their Gallery and check out how REMIDA Perth celebrates REMIDA Day!

Do you have any questions you would like to ask her?
Stay tuned. I am hoping to feature an interview with Elissa in the weeks to come.

“ReMida is a scrap yard in Randers where trash and scraps from the industry is left. Here there is material for several practical and musical projects, and the different materials encourage the imagination of the pupils. It is inspired by a similar project in Reggio Emilia, a Northern Italian provincial town where the educational foundations is about stimulating the child’s ability to immerse itself and acquire knowledge about things and events. It is the day-care institution Midgaard that has started the initiative, and all schools and institutions in Randers can make use of the storage. Apart from the day-care institution Midgaard, institutions in Roskilde, Hirtshals and Vandel also participate in the test project with ReMida.

Several workshop activities are a good way of including the musical/practical dimension in the school. This gives the pupils the opportunity to be creative themselves. It can be permanent or temporary workshops that you establish, apart from the purely technical visual arts room, where you can make kites, masks, models, drama, games, stories, movement, etc. Workshops can also be established outside, where the pupils can make food, build caves, find insects, take care of gardens, etc. The possibilities are limitless.

The little initiatives in the everyday life can for example be morning song, story of the day, game of the day, poem of the day, riddle of the week, etc. The little things can be just as important as larger and more expensive projects.

You can make educational projects about architecture and the aesthetics of the surroundings. Let the children help decorate or let them make little models of their dream classroom. A lot of inspiration can be obtained from the children in connection with rebuilding and redecoration.

The storyline method is based on the children’s own knowledge of the world and the pupils’ creative and argumentative thinking is appreciated. Pupils are active in the learning process and they learn through ex-periences by investigating, exploring, reflecting, debating and acting.”

From an article titled “On the road of asethetics towards better edcuation” written by Educational Environment Consultant and Architect Ulla Kjærvang, The Danish Centre of Educational Environment (DCUM)