Graduation Night at Shed 107

Tuesday was a long day for Curb Collective! We rushed faster than ever to finish all our chairs in time for the graduation night on Tuesday evening and for the Finders Keepers market this weekend.

Sam and I sanded and painted two dining chairs on which we will put the butterfly cushions the group made last semester. You could feel our stress of not finishing on time, but we made it! Stuart and Mick finished another dining chair with the help of Maaike and Jeanette - one of the brightest of our collection: it's orange and red!

Miki and Dominique tried as hard as they could to finish the pair of yellow and pink chairs started at the Newtown festival, but unfortunately they would have needed more time as they refused to sacrifice quality to rapidity... You'll therefore be able to see them next term! They will be great as first pieces of the new collection!

Some students stayed after the class to set up everything for the Graduation Night. We were hugely proud and excited: our furniture looks so different when they are on platforms!

A big BRAVO to Maaike and Richard who created an amazing screen out of wooden doors found at The Bower, where they displayed pictures of the transformation of the furniture. This new way to raise awareness about reuse impressed everybody, and our only problem with it will be to prevent people from buying it at the market!

The Graduation Night was a great success. 5 different courses from TAFE Outreach graduated, among them our Shed neighbours WEAVE's construction and repair students who did an amazing job patching, fixing, organising and painting the shed and Hobo Gro who create vertical gardens in reused palettes, and, of course, Curb Collective!

And guess what? We already sold 5 pieces of furniture!!! So come as soon as you can to the Finders Keepers market on Friday and Saturday if you want to admire/buy our work, the furniture won't stay there for a long time!

 - Claire M -

Community Partnership

On Wednesday the 25th of November, Target Sustainability @ Marrickville held their annual environmental awards on the banks of the Cooks River.

Target Sustainability is a fantastic program from Marrickville council that involves 108 local businesses. The program supports, encourages, educates these businesses in sustainable business practice, services, and systems, and then supports us all some more.

Participating businesses elect to focus on areas of waste, energy, community or carbon reduction. 

This is obviously something that should be applauded - particularly amongst commercial businesses, where doing the right thing is perceivably harder on the business initially.

What we loved about the awards night was hearing how any tough times initially are now bringing in great rewards financially, environmentally and emotionally. And of course we loved the food!

The event was largely catered by Long Black Cafe from Dulwich Hill, a favourite amongst all participants, and some of our members - Check out Long Black + Green, a great blog by a fan of both The Bower and Long Black, on all things sustainable, kitchen gardeny etc.

Serendipity Icecream made us all weak at the knees with their coconut macaroon 'cold cookies'. They won the Leadership in Sustainability Award for all their efforts. They run on 100% green power, and managed to increase their production dramatically while retaining the same (if not lower) energy and resource consumption. Truly inspiring and well deserved. We should all eat their icecream in celebration!

Other winners and notable mentions included Scrambled Cafe in Enmore, vegan and yoga restaurants, St Vincent DePaul and their 50 year sustainability plan, a uniform and dry cleaning business that reuse their chemicals to reduce harmful waste and so many more! Did you know that there's a SUPRE with a community garden for their employees among (one of several great initiatives they have).

(Richard, Maaike, Fiona Byrne (The Mayor), Oliver (Board Director), Greg)

The Bower were finalists in 3 categories, but mentioned in nearly all as many other businesses came to us to furnish their offices, shop displays etc.

Ultimately we won The Community Partnership Award, and we're absolutely thrilled. As a co-operative and a not for profit we work with a huge variety of people on a regular basis. A big thanks to the membership and volunteers, without you not only would we not win an award, but we couldn't achieve what we do. 

More recently we've been lucky to seek out other partnerships in the community, and we look forward to sharing more of our plans as they come to life.

Our thanks go to Marrickville Council, for the Target program, the awards night, and connecting so many local and inspiring businesses.