Coming up soon! Put the dates in your diary … This year this event is supported by the Community Bank in Queens Parade.

So much fun at Community Lunch this week celebrating Diwali - with Meet sharing her Punjabi culture with us. Fabulous food, clothes and dancing! Thanks Meet.

We are excited to once again be part of the Alphington Open Studios Weekends - coming up in late November. Numerous local artists are opening up their home studios, and there will also be artists here at ACC and at the Parklands (in the office/management area at the end of Separation Street). Put a place holder in your diaries to take a trip around the neighbourhood!

This year the event is supported by our wonderful friends at the Clifton Hill/North Fitzroy Community Bank on Queens Parade. Bendigo Banks really do have a fabulous community model for banking that gives back up to 80% of their profits to the community.

If you have kids at schools, you play sport with a local club … or come along to places just like ACC, you will have benefited from them for sure!

Alphington Open Studios is a fabulous way to support local artists and also learn more about art processes - from painting to pottery to 3D sculpture. You can find out more about the artist involved at www.alphingtonstudios.com.

We are coming up to school holidays, which start at the end of this week - but we have a packed agenda before then. In addition to all the regular things we have:

• Preserves Group - Tuesday at 1pm. We’ll be cooking some tomato chutney and finishing off our lemons if you are keen to come along.

• Movie Club 🍿 - Tuesday 6pm we’ll be meeting at Westgarth Cinema to see Touch. It looks like a fabulous film and anyone can join our movie club!

• Meet The Candidates - Wednesday at 7pm to meet the local ward candidates for the Darebin Council election. Find out more here.

• Alphington Arts - Thursday 7.30pm. We have life drawing coming up. Clare has organised a model.

Last week we had a great time with our impromptu ‘Lemon Cleaner DIY’ workshop and a lovely visit from our neighbourhood house colleagues on Wednesday. We also had Jill Post, who is the Greens candidate for Yarra pop in for lunch on Friday. It is always great to share what we do.

For more information on all of these things check out the posts and photos below.

Term 4 starts on Monday 7 October - and we look forward to seeing you then.

I hope you have a lovely week.

Leanne

Last week we had our last session of Crunch for the term. It has been such a fabulous new program, and it has engaged a different cohort of locals - it is always nice to make new friends! Crunch will be back next term for another 6 weeks, starting Thursday 24 October.

Speaking of art, did you go to Art for All this weekend? I went along and saw so many people I knew - what a great event hey? We are so lucky to have so many fabulous parents in our community who run community events like Art for All and the Alphington PS Fete.

On Friday we were joined for lunch by our local State MP, Kat Theophanous. She came past to check out the renovations that were primarily funded by two State Government grants (with a bit of our own savings in there to top it up). She was very impressed with all the changes we made, and we also had a great chat about neighbourhood house funding, and how the State Government could continue to support us into the future.

This week Julie Johnston who runs the North East Neighbourhood House Network is taking some of our colleagues on a bus tour of all the Darebin neighbourhood houses … so we will be looking forward to them popping in on Wednesday for morning tea. I will be showing off all the changes we have made recently and talking about the programs we run here to meet our local community need, and also talking about the way we try to present ourselves in the community to build community engagement and establish a sense of place.

Speaking of which, have you seen the new ‘vases’ on the fence - a little celebration of spring for you to enjoy next time you pass by.

Coming up this week our Lemon Cleaner DIY mini-workshop on Thursday morning at 11am. $10. Clare will show you how to make your own environmentally friendly lemon based cleaner … and explore some other ideas for keeping your house fresh and environmentally friendly using things from the home garden. It will be low key and lovely! Find out more and book in here.

Also, click on the links below to find out more about our VCE Exam Help sessions that will run on Saturday afternoons in October. We are also offering a Meet The Candidates session or the upcoming Darebin Council elections.

Also, check out the learn to bowl opportunity sent through from Anne and the Alphington Bowls Club. Coming up this weekend.

Finally … our next Alphington Arts session is coming up next week - on Thursday 19 September at 7.30pm. We are going to be doing life drawing with a model this time - so it should be super fun! If you are interested in joining in you still can here. We have this session, and two more coming up next term.

I hope you have a great week and look forward to seeing you soon!

Leanne