Time flies when you are having fun!

We’re now putting together the program at ACC for next year and as always, we are interested in your ideas.

If you have a skill you’d like to share through a weekend workshop or through a regular activity please let us know (eg. our Visible Mending Club runs monthly thanks to Serene offering to share her skills).

If you have been to a course or program somewhere else that you think would be super for our community please let us know (eg. it was thanks to recommendation that we met Gordon who now runs our Sewing Machine and Overlocker Maintenance workshops annually ).

Just email info@alphington.org.au or give us a call on 9499 7227 and we can talk about how to make it happen!

And as a taster … new things on our radar for next year include:

• Movie Club - once a month on Tuesday afternoons we’ll head over to Westgarth Cinema on the train to watch a film together.

• Podcasting 101 - a short ACFE course (we have funding to support this program thanks to RCLC - our lovely neighbourhood house colleagues in Richmond)

If you are interested in joining in these new activities just look out for our new program that will provide details of how to register. It should be out by early December …

Lovely to see local events like the Fairfield Primary School art show starting again after the Covid hiatus.

I (Leanne) made some stools for them to auction off (even though my kids aren’t there anymore) and added a bit of spruiking of our lovely community centre into the event in the banter that went with the auction!

Hope you went along … aren’t we lucky to live in a such a great creative community.

A quick reminder that we have the Alphington Open Studios event coming up. Join us for neighbourhood drinks on Friday 25 November from 5-8pm to celebrate 🎉 our creative neighbourhood and check out the art in our gallery. Then head out to the studios that are open across the neighbourhood on Saturday and Sunday for two weeks.

Also … we have the Alphington Makers Market here on Saturday 26 November, 11am-2pm. We have about 25 stallholders booked in. Come along and start (or finish) your Christmas shopping …

This week is National Recycling Week and we’ve been celebrating recycling in our programs. We kicked off with Visible Mending Club on the weekend and sent along some fabulous potential mending supplies for the group that Anne had kindly donated (patches and lace and all sorts of interesting things) … then offered a range of fun recycled craft activities for playgroups … and will finish the week mixing up recycling with gardening … making recycled seed packets for seeds we’ve saved from the garden and also potting up some of the lettuce seedlings we’ve been growing - again in recycled pots and tins.

And we made this great sign as well! Just for fun. Using a whole range of donated/recycled things we had hanging around … so Happy National Recycling Week.

We are very excited to have recently received a State Government Living Local grant to update our back garden to create a lovely indoor/outdoor creative arts space that will make the most of this part of our site that needs a refresh,. It will also increase wheelchair accessibility here at ACC. We have lots of people with mobility issues who attend ACC regularly.

Our local MP Kat Theophanous came along to Friday morning tea to officially announce this grant of $143,500, and also announced a surprise - an additional commitment of $100,000 from the Labor Government for ACC if they are re-elected.

As you possibly know, our core funding already comes from the State Government, with additional reliable support from Yarra and Darebin Council - but to do all the things we do we are always applying for additional funding and grants: So we are pretty thrilled that the State Government is recognising all the good things we do and investing in community building through neighbourhood houses via grants … and election commitments.