By now we hope you have wandered past ACC on your daily walk and noticed the new art on our fence in the Alphington Neighbourhood Gallery.

If not, you should! The artist we are featuring this month is local Steph Briggs. The works on the fence include illustrations from a book that documented lots of familiar scenes from 2020, called ‘The year we stayed at home’. She also has some delicate sketches of houses from the neighbourhood and beyond (some done on commission if you are interested in documenting your own lovely house).

You can find out more about Steph here.

This community arts initiative is supported by Yarra City Council (thanks!).

Steph’s fur baby Leo is one of the stars of the exhibition.

Steph, Leo and Angus popped past on their lockdown walk to check it out.

This week was Education Week and we were thrilled to get a grant from the Victorian Department of Education to run a couple of podcasting workshops here at ACC to help mark the occasion. Alphington Primary School embraced this opportunity, and on Wednesday sent 12 grade 6 students along to have a crack at using our new equipment under the guidance of local podcaster and author Tony Wilson.

It was a super fun day and the students walked away having made two podcasts each. We’re looking forward to the next group coming on Friday (fingers and toes crossed).

Today some pictures of Mark from Pacific Australis placing beautiful natural stone paving in our front garden. We’re very excited that this is finally happening. Once Mark is done we’ll finish off the area next to the building with a pergola - thanks to a Federal Government Stronger Communities grant.

We’re hoping to make our front garden a more attractive and handy place for playgroup families and other users. Particularly in COVID times when being outdoors is safer than being indoors.

The pergola out the front of the shed has been fabulous, and we’re hoping our front garden will also be much more multipurpose when this work is complete. The final element we’ll be adding is a new cubby and sandpit - which has been ordered and should be arriving in a few weeks.

After COVID, and a year of not running the ever popular Alphington Open Studios weekend in the last week of November, the artists involved are keen to get going again this year (scheduled for 28-28 November for anyone who likes to diarise such things), but are also rethinking the event somewhat and contemplating new possibilities… and as such they are seeking new artists to join in.

So, if you are:

• a local practising artist (2D or 3D artist or photographer) with a studio in Alphington and would like to have your address on the map,

• a practising artist who lives nearby in surrounding suburbs who would be interested to joining in, or

• a local emerging artist keen to join in a group exhibition over the weekend,

please email us here. And someone from ACC or an artist already participating in the Alphington Open Studios weekend will be in touch. Be brave. How exciting!

Fred Colla was one of the artists exhibiting at ACC as part of the Alphington Open Studios weekend in 2019

One of the nicest things about the programs run at a neighbourhood house is that they typically emerge from the local community.

We love helping people in the neighbourhood incubate their workshop idea, share their hobby or even share their professional talent with their neighbours, and it’s rewarding to think that our house has helped many people kick off their small business.

Currently Matthew is running regular guitar lessons and Manu recently ran the Chai Tea Workshop, the first of many cultural cooking experiences she hopes to share. Louisa is sharing her talents through the Art in the Shed classes and even the sewing machine workshops run by Gordon this term were a recommendation from another local, Louise, who told us how great he was.

And, now is the time of the year we ask you to put your thinking caps on, as we embark on program planning for second semester.

If you have a workshop or short course you’d like to run yourself for the community please email or call us on 9499 7227 and talk to Leanne. If you have any recommendations for a great workshop or activity you’ve been part of elsewhere and can send us the contact details for who ran it please also let us know. Or any other ideas of things we should do … we’re fans of new ideas here at ACC!

We’ll be working on the program early June, with a plan to have our brochure out and ready for letterboxing by the time school holidays roll around.

We’re looking forward to your input.