I was genuinely saddened to hear that Bryson House Arts & Play Scrap Store is to close this June.
Because this is not just the loss of a warehouse.
For decades, the Scrap Store at the Play Resource Warehouse has been one of those rare pieces of civic and creative infrastructure that quietly made creativity more accessible. And for a nominal fee or annual membership, teachers, youth workers, artists, arts organisations, community groups and facilitators could walk through its doors and leave with the raw materials for workshops, projects, festivals, school activities, play sessions and ideas that otherwise may never have happened. And help the planet at the same time. Because we know, not everything needs to be new.
Part of the quiet brilliance of the Scrap Store was that it challenged the depressingly widespread disposable consumer culture. It recognised that imagination does not begin with pristine materials arriving in plastic packaging. Often, it begins with remnants, offcuts, unwanted party-favours and promotional objects and the unexpected textures on discarded rolls of wallpaper, all waiting to be transformed into something else entirely. One person’s recycling became somebody else’s puppet, sculpture, costume, workshop, theatre set, sensory resource or school project…
Read the rest of the CAPtain’s Blog at the link below.
Don’t Scrap the Play Resource Warehouse – a plea and petition
And if you’d like to add your name to the petitio, you can do so at the link below.
