Bringing a Creative Reuse Center in Austin

I have always wanted to make things.  I love learning and making things.  I love watching a project change and morph as it progresses.  I love having things around me that have been made by people I know, and knowing the object’s history.  In my work life, I manage an afterschool program for a nonprofit here in Austin.I feel pretty selfish when I think about why I want a reuse center in Austin.  I want Austin Creative Reuse to be rocking so I can go there.  I want one so I can go find amazing fabrics for the quilt I’m making for my niece.  I want to take the elementary students I work with and watch them get excited and laugh making a creation they will take home and play with.  I want students to have opportunities for hands on learning, tinkering. I want them to learn without worksheets anywhere close and to feel excited about discovering a new idea.  I want to come use a router when I need one once every few years and not need to buy one or forgo a project I want to make.  I want to know and meet my neighbors, my ‘neighborhoods’ in the big sense.  I want us to find ways to take care of central Texas.  When I’m working on a project, I want a place to go where I will happen to start a conversation with a stranger who will have an amazing idea to help my project on it’s way. Reuse Centers need to exist in the world I want to live in.The people I have gotten to closely work with on Austin Creative Reuse and ones I have met briefly during this time have been a wonderful side effect.  Austin has such a huge pool of industrious creative folks.   I look forward to others joining us and working to help this happen.