Trash or sculpture? This community store wants to change the way you think about trash.

Shanti Mathias visits Christchurch’s Creative Junk Institute, where cardboard tubes and curtains can find new life as works of art created by children and adults alike.

When I log into Creative Junk, I don’t know where to look first. Should I check out the dragon hanging from the ceiling? An intriguing aisle filled with empty containers, from Milo cans to CD cases? Stacks of old craft books? Cardboard tubes of different sizes?

Every niche in this dusty warehouse in the industrial area of ​​Addington in central Christchurch is crammed with belongings. And almost all of it is recycled: Creative Junk is a response to the idea that crafts and art are expensive hobbies that can be found in upscale fabric stores and art stores. Instead, this 43-year-old public institution collects unwanted materials, mostly from businesses but also from the general public, and sorts them to find new life in great art. Sometimes that art is hats or CD sculptures made by preschoolers; in other cases, it is created by adults and displayed in artists’ studios.

“It all started with cost efficiency,” says Christine Gayton, who has been manager of Creative Junk for the past 20 years. “People wanted to find a cheaper way to get resources for early childhood education centers.” They started knocking on the doors of local businesses looking for cardboard, fabric, paper, labels—anything that was destined for landfills and that kids could use for art and play. Filled garage, then prefab home; Creative Junk moved to its current location in Addington 16 years ago. “We still don’t have enough space!” says Gayton.

Gayton’s office is cluttered with decades of work; A sculpture in the shape of a milk bottle cap hangs on a bulletin board, and a Christmas tree ornament made from a cone holding a string sits on the windowsill. As we speak, regular volunteers are showing up looking for assignments. “You have to deal with different personalities,” she says.

The young man has been volunteering for just two hours a week for the past nine years; he started while still in school, which young people with disabilities can attend until they are 21 years old. After leaving school, he continues to come, helping clear out the chaos of the warehouse so it can be used. Gayton tasked another volunteer with autism with unwrapping some cardboard boxes; a predictable task that he enjoys. Another volunteer, an elderly retired woman, comes several days a week. “It’s all the little things that help and keep it functioning.” Creative Junk also works with MSD to pay wages to young people in need of work experience – most of whom have gone on to find full-time jobs, something Gayton is proud of.

Instead of pricing items individually, prices are set by volume, with a small bag costing $13 and a large bag costing $16. Members, who may be teachers or family members, receive lower prices. “At many craft stores, things can be quite expensive, even if you only need a few things,” says Gayton. “But it’s very different here: we have some of the same things as Spotlight because people bring them, but we also get other things.”

Like what? Well, the electrical manufacturing group used to give them round gray foam stickers, production scraps. “The kids loved it, they love anything sticky – and funnily enough, anything that’s shaped like a circle.” Supplies have stopped since the company moved overseas, but the desire for circles can be satisfied with spheres from a roll-on deodorant. The sale of real estate and the downsizing of older people also turned out to be a boon. Gayton laughs as she recalls a community member who, when moving to a smaller space, sent her personal items hoping they would be useful: first her dentures, then her late husband’s hip replacement. “It was definitely one of the most unusual things I’ve ever seen. I thought, ‘What can we do about this?'”

But almost always something can be done about it. “Creative Junk was a very valuable place to collect corrugated cardboard, shoe boxes, fun fur, leather, various textured resources and wallpaper, sound objects—the list was endless,” says Gail Carson, who developed resources for blind and low-income people. teaching vision for many years, like tactile books. Now retired, she volunteers at Creative Junk to help keep things neat and organized.

The unusual variety of materials stocked at Creative Junk is great for creativity, says Gayton. “Adults sometimes think too much, but if you offer children something, they will get answers. It’s a creative game.” She loves seeing children’s eyes light up when they see their decorated recycled clock start ticking again or turn on a lamp surrounded by shiny CDs.

But adults also find great potential in paper and fabric stores. Gayton recently attended the World of Wearable Arts exhibition in Wellington and was delighted to see a sculpture made from curtain tape transformed into structured wings by artist Donna Allfrey. Allfrey heard about Creative Junk 35 years ago when her children were young. In 2009, she decided to start submitting her creations to WoW. “From cricket pads to beading, I used Creative Junk for most of the materials for my creations,” she says. Making curtain tape is her favorite at the moment.

“It was so great – it could have been thrown into a landfill, but now it’s on stage at the World of Wearable Arts,” says Gayton. I look at the photo on her phone, enlarged to where the curtain hooks would fit, and wonder: when I walked past a row of somewhat faded curtains earlier, I couldn’t imagine that they could become something so different from their original purpose .

In some ways the model doesn’t seem scalable; As much as I can imagine a bunch of kids going crazy with hot glue guns, jam jar lids and glitter, will these items end up in landfill? “It might end up in a landfill anyway,” says Gayton; This has been a problem with funding applications in the past. “People will come and use it for a few years, but at least it’s been used in the meantime.”

There is too much garbage for recycling to be the only solution to the problem of widespread waste. However, there is interest from other places: Junk Monkeys in Auckland promotes games with second-hand objects, and a similar, smaller initiative started in North Shore in Oakland. With support from the community (mostly from the Rath Foundation and gaming funds), Gayton was pleased to see parents and even grandparents coming to Creative Junk, playing and creating things from the center when they were younger. She loves seeing people wandering through the warehouse, mesmerized, discovering the potential in the shelves of eclectic and useful items. “He’s trying to bring about this change in approach to look at things not as rubbish but as opportunities.”