Today we put our latest exhibition on the fence for the summer holidays and it features photos and memorabilia relating to the Alphington Bowls Club.

1921 was a pretty great year in Alphington. The Alphington Paper Mills opened for production and the Alphington Bowls Club opened their doors. This year the club’s centenary celebrations included a retrospective exhibition of photos, stories and memorabilia at the club house which we are now sharing with you on our fence. It is pretty interesting to:

• Check out the people who attended the opening of the bowls club in 1921.

• Meet Les (perhaps the club’s best bowler) and Myrtle – they won 36 club championships between them.

• Ponder the rules that framed the Alphington Ladies Bowls Club when it was created back in 1928, and were still in place in 1972!

• Speculate on the cause of the fire that destroyed the original club house in 1951 … The ladies had a picture night that finished at 11.30pm, the fire was reported at 2.45am …

• And admire the bowlers’ uniforms over the years.

If you are keen to see the whole package of information that the club produced you can download it here. Or pop past to see the images in a larger format on our fence.

Enjoy! Thanks once again Yarra Arts for supporting the Alphington Neighbourhood Gallery.

We run 5 book clubs here at ACC and have a couple of spots available in the 3rd Monday and Tuesday of the month groups along with one spot in Thursday evening in 2022.

So … if you are interested in joining a community book club here is your chance.

It costs $60 per year to join. Your group will read 10 self selected books. The book sets with notes are provided by Darebin Libraries.

Keen? You can join here.

Thanks to everyone who came along for Christmas lunch. It was a funny old day - sunny ☀️ one minute and cloudy ⛅️ the next - but we shared a lovely meal together - cold meats and salads, including lettuce from Sandra and Jim’s garden, nasturtium flowers from ours, pickles made by our preserves group and a delicious Gusto passion fruit sponge kindly donated by Anne.

Manu came along early to help us set up - thanks Manu! Jim won the lucky door prize and shared his chocolate winnings.

Don’t forget to come along to the Alphington Bowls Club at 7pm on the 19th of December to enjoy some Christmas Carols with your neighbours.

We’ve been delighted to contribute to expanding the artists involved in the Alphington Open Studios weekends this year with our salon exhibition featuring works by all the open studios artists along with a wonderful mix of works by other local artists both established and emerging.

At ACC (with help from Yarra Arts) we’ve been exploring ways to engage with local artists and activate our hanging space and this exhibition has enabled us to demonstrate the potential of our building and has also opened up conversations about exhibiting in our space.

As a result, in 2022 we’ll be looking to hold more regular community art exhibitions that enable a unique mix of artists to exhibit together.

It is just wonderful to be able to celebrate the creativity in our community.

We had a steady stream of visitors over the two weekends. If you enjoyed this exhibition, or are an artist who would like to join in next time, keep an eye out for future dates and details in our program (out before Christmas).