Report from the Trash to Treasure Workshop :-)))))))

 

Good morning from Glenrothes in Fife where the sun is streaming through the front room, or as some would say lounge, window.

On Saturday 2nd August Unique Dyslexic Get Creative ran the third in our series of creative workshops. This one was called trash to treasure and was all about up cycling old furniture, which in this case was old tables, into fabby new tables.

The mission statement of Furniture Plus :

Helping Furnish the People of Fife.
Furniture Plus will achieve this by:

• Providing low cost, quality goods and furnishings to low income households in Fife, thereby alleviating furniture poverty.

And

• Providing employment and training opportunities to strive to alleviate social exclusion

As with all the other workshops we had a little get to know each other session at the start in which we shared our experiences of dyslexia. I also did a little awareness raising of the social model of dyslexia, challenging the medical model of dyslexia and of the positives of being dyslexic. 

We ran this workshop in partnership with Furniture Plus here in Fife and facilitated by Clarabella Christie who was a brilliant facilitator with a wealth of experience in up cycling.  Below are some picture of the old un re cycled tables.

 

 

 

As you can see all the tables were just boring old tables lol.

Of course the first thing we had to do was to prepare the tables to be up cycled. This involved a lot of elbow grease sanding them all down.

 

 

 

 

 

 
Then began the creative and fun bit actually designing the new look of the tables. There was a lot of materials and paint to choose from and Clara was on hand to support and offer advice on what to do.

Here is a few photos of the finished items which, I think you will agree, certainly look fabby. I think you can see from the smiles on everyone's faces how much they enjoyed the day and what they all achieved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think everyone went away with ideas for re cycling old furniture in their homes.

I had a very busy day and was shattered after it believe me. Not only did I up cycle my own table I was taking photos and film and chatting with everyone there. I also did one dyslexia screening using Quickscan. This showed the person had many of the indicators for dyslexia.

Here is some of the feedback we got:

I had fun, and enjoyed meeting others like myself and sharing with others there

Happy

Inspired

Included, free to express myself

Belonging / idea provoking / included

Happy and not alone with my dyslexia

Happy and more confident

Good banter and love doing anything creative

I got chatting with the people at Furniture Plus as well. They secured some funding to run some free workshops themselves. Looks like they will be running another one for us but for parents / carers and kids 14 years old and over.

The idea is to up cycle something for the children's rooms.

Next workshop August 18th at Cupar Youth Café in Cupar Fife. This one is all about creating, recording and editing music. We still have some spaces available for this workshop if anyone is interested. Its free, lunch, travel expenses and some funding to assist with the cost of any child care  or other caring costs.

Anyway that's me away, hope you enjoyed reading this blog as much as I enjoyed writing it and taking part in the workshop itself.