Exhibition at Studio 85

Hey Maker! has some talented friends... Helle Jorgensen and Phil Barron to name a few!
They are having an exhibition of their work at Studio 85.
'Tinkerings and Sunday Paintings' will be on from the 28th July -10th August. It opens on Saturday 28th between 1 and 4pm.

Helle Jorgensen's beautiful natural fibre and found object crochet pieces.

Phil Barron's Nimbin landscape, oil on book cover

a most wonderful day

Our little morning tea today, held at the beautiful Studio 85, was humming with goodness and excellent conversation.
Delicious food, and crafting. Sweet little children. And friendly supportive faces. Oh you creative folks sure are pretty and smiley and just simply lovely.
Thanks for coming and sharing morning tea with us. Let's do it again soon.

wordless* Wednesday

1. The little crochet rocks that are part of the giveaway on our Facebook page. We will draw the winners tomorrow at our morning tea.
2. The blossoms in our yard - some will be picked for tomorrows morning tea. Oh I do love these blossoms. The fruit never happens, but the blossoms and bare Winter branches are enough for me.
3. Just a field in our valley. This is the view us country folk have while waiting at roadworks. Yes, feel sorry for us won't you...

*posted by Ellie. I do try hard to be wordless, but words keep tumbling out of my fingers......

A Hey Making Morning Tea - you are invited

Please come along and spend some time with us.

We are gathering at the beautiful Studio 85 this Thursday morning (19th July). 10am - 12noon. 

Share some home baked treats and enjoy a cup of tea. Some wonderful conversation and a bit of crafting are sure to happen as well. 

Everyone invited, children welcome. 

Corner of 85 Murwillumbah St & Police Lane, Murwillumbah. The entrance is on Police Lane - the blue door, head on upstairs. We'll put the sandwich board out for you to see.

We will be doing pom pom making - you can join in or bring your own craft.

If you haven't made a pledge to our Pozible campaign yet, you can do it on the day - share the feel-good factor with a wider audience!

Please bring your own cup (or jar) for tea drinking. And if you'd like to show off your baking skills we'll never say no to another cookie.....

Hope to see you there for a fun Hey Maker Gathering. Bring your friends.

{Don't worry if you miss out this week, there'll be many more gatherings to come.}

xxxx

ps - we are past 60% on our Pozible campaign. Yah! Can you help us get to the finish line. We only have 6 days left.

details - small things make big things happen

So, we are in conversations with a landlord in our sweet little town. Not giving any hints away - it's a beautiful space we're looking at for our first pop up shop.

Details are being refined and re-refined and over-thought and re-thought. There's a lot of thinking and planning and dreaming happening. A lot. A lot.

There's a lot of excitement building. The possibility, the chance to make something happen in our beautiful town. To open a shop door, instead of seeing one close. To forge connections with the other shop owners, with the community, with the locals. 

To build bridges between our town and your town, or your city. With our creatives who live here, and more creatives who live somewhere else. 

Workshops are being organised and planned and designed. Pretty shop displays are being pinned and pinned. Obscure street art is being dreamt about and giggled over. Gatherings are being planned. Cakes are being made....

And pom poms - yep. We're making them too. But we want to make more; well we want more reasons to make more.

So, many of these dreams can't happen without us reaching our Pozible goal. Without it we'll still forge ahead and make things happen, in a different way. But with all that Pozible cash - well. The possibilities are beyond these dreams. To be able to set up a pop up space, to pay artists and creatives, to source beautiful crafting, making and art materials to use, to present workshops and seminars, to have visiting artists stay in our town.

While are dreams are big, we know that we are not the only ones dreaming it. There are many in our town who want to share in our dreams, in our space and our gatherings. There are many who will benefit from the creative gatherings. There are many who want to help bang Murwillumbah onto the modern creative map. Will you help us. 

We are half way to our Pozible goal. We need YOUR help to push us to the end. There are lovely rewards (apart from the feel good factor) that we will be making with our own hands and hearts. 

So, please pop on over and watch our video. Did you know we didn't know how to make videos before we made this. Just another facet of our creative selves. And please make a donation to our cause - it's far bigger than 5 creatives sitting around a table. It's a gathering, a connection, a social and economic change for a community (and remember our community is bigger than we all think. You're our community). Please, share this with your community - ask your friends to make a pledge as well.

Happy happy Sunday dear friends xxx

*image from here, one of my favourite quotes by Margaret Mead.

crowd funding for creative projects

Crowd funding describes a collective group of people who donate money to support efforts initiated by other people. A lot of people making smaller donations to help a dream take shape; rather than being funded by a loan or overdraft. Crowd funding supports many ventures, from movies, new software programs, musicians launching their career or going on tour, artists preparing for an exhibition, journalists (and bloggers) writing their words, and more recently crafters and makers and yarn lovers. Go read this great post by a Pozible success story, Kylie Gusset. She raised almost $40,000 to start up her Australian 'sheep farmer to knitting needles' project

We want to continue to offer our workshop and pop up events in our beautiful town, but to fulfill just a few of the many ideas we have, we need more funding than our kids' piggy banks! Our creative and arty gatherings and workshops are more than just a fun place to hang out and "do some art" (though that's enough on it's own). We started our events as a way to offer Murwillumbah and Tweed Valley residents something to do in town on a weekend, weekday or evening. More than this, we know that by offering different and exciting activities and events we will become a drawcard for visitors from further afield. Hey Maker has humble aims to be a push towards what will be a long journey of turning around the economic situation our town is currently experiencing. We know Murwillumbah is a grand place to visit, to live and to enjoy - we want to share this is everyone else.

Our vision includes inviting creatives who live within the Tweed Valley to share their skills and love of their craft, as well as entice nationally recognised creative people to come and hang out here for a little while (artist-in-residence and seminar style events).

Mostly we just want to make things, and share and connect. And to do it all while building some momentum about our little town.

Our goal of $11,700 is enough to start our ideas and put them into action. To rent studio space, to hire halls for workshop events, to buy art supplies, to establish an online presence, to pay our creatives and artists and designers, and to put the word out there in the wider community to invite people to visit our town, and stay a while.
{Our workshops won't always be free, but they will always be the best value and the most fun and presented by the most passionate creatives}.

our biggest community {thanks blog-land}

Community is not just the people around you, in your street or your town. It's not just the people you connect with through similar interests, skills or lifestyles. Community stretches far and wide.
Sending this Pozible campaign out into the far and wide community has really reminded me that we share so much across a broader distance. That community is wherever you connect and however you connect.
I want to say a big thank you to those who have written blog posts, and shared about our Hey Maker Pozible Campaign on your sites. I love that people are supportive of things in their wider community, and notice how the ripple with reach them, even if they don't live within our community space.
In no order (and I'm sure I've missed some, shout out if I didn't add you to this list), super thanks

3 Things
Sang the Bird
Paravent
Meet Me At Mikes
Rabbit and the Duck

and there's been so much wonderful support on facebook too. Yah and Yah to community support and crafty loving.

ps - there'll be a giveaway on facebook in the next two days. 
Have you pledged your support on our Pozible campaign? We need all the help you can give - pledges start from $1....

{creative spaces} pompoms for pledges

Today we've been making lots and lots of pompoms... We're making pompoms for pledges! Doesn't that sound fun. 

We're hanging our window display for our Hey Maker Pozible campaign art installation. Every pledge is represented by a pompom in our window display. Lots of pompoms to keep making! Our campaign launched last week, with our beautiful video (made by Jo and Belinda). Go watch it if you haven't seen it. We're raising funds to open a grand space for crafting creating inspiring making learning teaching gathering connecting and simply hanging out in a pretty cool place. We're also working on the slow project of Renewing our home town of Murwillumbah. Lots of good things. 

You could help us out, you know. While you're watching the video make a pledge - every little bit helps (and some big bits too!). There's prizes for pledges and then we get to make more pompoms and put them up in our window display. We'll share more pics of the window as it's progressing - its warm and fluffy and woolly and colourful and fun. 

What are you making? Go check out the other makers at Creative Spaces - always a good and inspiring place to hang out for a little while.

{check out our Hey Maker facebook page, lots more updates over there}