The province’s first non-profit “Creative Reuse Centre” launched this past weekend in downtown Victoria with over 1,000 people attending during the opening weekend.
The centre is called Supply Victoria and it’s a non-profit that redistributes used art, office, and school supplies through its low-cost supply store. It also offers programs and creative reuse classes to youth and adults.
Executive director Ashley Howe says Supply Victoria is like a thrift store for art supplies with everything from paint, brushes and paper, to bottle caps, pompoms, books and more.
“This is an affordable and more sustainable option and alternative to traditional art supplies,” she said. “There are amazing resources for artists, students and teachers here.”
ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS
Howe says the concept is unique to Victoria, with only a handful here in Canada and more than 130 creative reuse centres in the United States.
“Everything is either gleaned from local business waste or donated by the community,” said Howe, whose mission is not only to offer affordable art supplies but also to protect the environment through reusing what otherwise might go into the garbage.
Supply Victoria plans to divert over 4,000 pounds of materials from the landfill in its first year of operation in its new space, putting the supplies into the hands of people who need them the most.
“So there’s a large portion of materials needlessly going into the landfill every year,” said Howe. “So we’re just acting as a redistribution center to give those materials another life.”
Supply Victoria has already been able to divert 2,000 pounds of waste from the Capital Regional District’s Hartland Landfill over the past four years.
It has done this through education and sustainable art activities with over 750 students, young and old, since its inception in 2018 through community events, workshops and partnerships with neighbourhood associations and community centres.
With a permanent location now open, Supply Victoria plans to expand its ability to capture more materials before they are discarded.
Howe says the centre will also help the City of Victoria meet its Zero Waste Plan target of reducing landfill waste by 50 per cent by 2040.
It’s a win-win for people and the environment, she says.
NEW SPACE AND LAYOUT
Creative minds will be able to find almost anything they need at a very affordable price, at least half of what you would pay in a retail store, says Howe.
Supply Victoria has 1,200-square-feet of space, including two rooms for supplies and a large open space for hands-on art education with reclaimed materials for youth and adults. It also offers space to rent to Victoria’s arts, culture, and non-profit sectors.
Soon, Supply Victoria will offer Creative Reuse Kits, described as curated take-home crafting activity packages, and launch an online store featuring reuse retail inventory with local pick-up or bike courier delivery.
You can also volunteer at the centre and gain skill-building opportunities, connecting with other creatives, Howe says.
Supply Victoria is located at 750 Fairfield Rd. and is open Thursday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Donations are accepted on Tuesday evenings between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. Interested donors can check out the centre’s website for current materials being accepted and criteria before dropping off donation.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
