Hi friends, remember … this year if you’ve come home from holidays and your parsley, coriander or silverbeet has bolted you can feel happy instead of sad … and take the opportunity to save the seeds for our new Street Seed Library.

The library was installed by Darebin Council around November, and is all about encouraging sustainable food options, connecting up us locals with backyard veggie patches (we’ve all pretty much got one of some description right?) and building community connections through sharing and caring.

Not sure how to save seeds? Just jump on the interwebs (google, YouTube etc.) to find out exactly how and when to harvest and package your seeds, and then … when you are next passing by, you can leave them in our Street Seed Library for someone else to collect. And at the same time you can see if anyone has left seeds that could be your next crop. Neighbourhood loveliness … neighbourhoodliness!

Our new brochure is out. We’ve created a trimmed down version for semester 1 2021. You can read it here. It is jam packed with old favourites like playgroups and choir and new ideas including a range of short courses, workshops and events you can book in to.

• Women in the Shed is back on Monday (for beginners), Tuesday and Thursday for 6 weeks in Term 1 and 2.

• Our free Access All Abilities Bowls program run with Alphington Bowls Club is back for 6 weeks in term 1 and 2.

• Our new Drawing in the Shed short course will also run for 6 weeks in Term 1 and 2. Run by local artist Louisa, this is a low-cost opportunity for all members of the community to develop the observation and co-ordination skills necessary to make creative drawings in any style. It will cover contour drawing, creating creative compositions, drawing with perspective and more.

• In 2019 we had Gordon come along and run a sewing machine maintenance workshop. It was a fantastic morning and so we’ve rebooked him this year. On Saturday 1 May he will run a sewing machine maintenance workshop and then on Saturday 17 June he will run an overlocker maintenance workshop.

• Local Manu is keen to share her Indian cooking skills with us … starting with a chai tea making workshop (Sunday 9 May). $20. Book here.

• Our History Walk is back! Join local Anne and other history buffs for a stroll around South Alphington on Sunday 16 May from 2pm.

• And finally … Home maintenance 101. It’s a maintenance kind of year it seems … and on the weekend of 19 & 20 June we’re offering a two day workshop (only $50 with Learn Local funding) all about building home maintenance skills. How to unblock a drain, how to stop a cistern running, how to fix a hose leak, how to hang pictures and fix cracks in plaster. How to fix windows that stick … (depending how old your house is the list goes on and on right?).

Book in online today.

Darebin Council have developed an interactive map that shows places where you can connect with nature, shop, travel sustainably and grow and source food.

Our seed library is on the map. And the self help bike repair station at Darebin Parklands is in there too.

Here is the link so you can check out what else is listed and hopefully discover some new handy local resources.

At ACC we try to offer a wide range of opportunities for people to meet their neighbours, to make friends in the community, and to build, explore and share their skills and knowledge.

We run a number of activities that are self-led or run by a generous volunteer. These include Czech and Slovak Playgroup, Ukulele, Line Dancing and the like. For these programs we ask all attendees to contribute $5 per week (no matter how long the session lasts) to keep the lights on and the heater heating etc.

We also support a number of micro-businesses that provide services that fit in with our programming goals. Small business owners/sole traders running these programs set their own fees and we support them with low room hire rates (again $5 per attendee) and publicity. These programs include Jane’s Group Harp, Cat’s Lego Club and Matthew’s Guitar Lessons (about to start up).

Then we run a number of tutored programs, where we spread a small bucket of money that comes from Darebin Council and Yarra Council as widely as possible, prioritising community building and community need.

In the first half of 2021 we will fully subsidise Jill to run our very successful and long-standing AAA Bowls program (a partnership with Alphington Bowls Club) and Jenny to oversee our Friday community morning program that includes Community Craft, Gardening Group and Morning Tea on the Corner.

Then with the remaining program funding we will partially subsidising our tutored/supervised Community Shed sessions.

These programs will cost $5 per hour per participant (still a bargain) and we’ll need a minimum of 6 people booked in by the term for them to run.

Of course, we also tap into other funding where ever possible. We always have our eyes open and our ears to the ground … last year we partnered with MyTime to support our Peer Support Playgroup for example. And we get one-off grants from wonderful community support organisations such as Clifton Hill/North Fitzroy Community Bank who have previously provided funding for our Community Lunches and our Gardening Group … and this coming year will be supporting our History Group (more to come on this).

Our full program for 2021 will be out next week, and we’ll be featuring some of the new things on offer at ACC (and some old favourites as well) in our newsletter in coming weeks (with the links to book in).

We hope you can find something that you will enjoy being part of, and we look forward to seeing you onsite in the new year. Our programming will resume in the first week of February.

At ACC we are committed to demonstrating and promoting a lighter footprint on the earth as best we can. And we were absolutely delighted to be the recipients of a Yarra Valley Water grant - in the form of a plumber - who has been working his way around our centre improving our water efficiency last week and this week.

He’s changed taps in the kitchen and cisterns in the bathrooms - mostly invisible changes that make a difference to how much water we use, as well as installing a very visible new water tank to capture the rainwater from the roof of the community shed … so that we can water our community garden in a more sustainable way.

We’re pretty excited and very thankful to Yarra Valley Water. And we’re looking forward to now remodelling our community raised garden beds so that our gardening group can start growing leafy greens and other food crops that contribute to local food production and support things like low food mile cooking programs and community food relief.

Our new water tank mid installation …