We’ve got a big weekend coming up at ACC with the Christmas Makers Market on Saturday from 10am-1pm, and the Alphington Open Studios event also on.

If you’d like to pop past on Friday night between 5-7pm you can help us celebrate the opening of the salon exhibition at ACC that is part of the Alphington Open Studios weekends. Our salon exhibition includes works from all the artists with their studios open over the next two weekends plus works by other local artists. It should give you a lovely snapshot of what’s on offer … Share a drink with us, admire the art, collect a map (if you haven’t got one in your letterbox already) and then plan to take a neighbourhood walk and visit local artists in their studios over the next two weekends. Find out more here.

Then come back on Saturday morning for our Christmas Makers Market. We have 25 stallholders who have been busy making lovely things. This is a great opportunity for you to buy local and support your neighbours creative endeavours this year for Christmas presents.

We hope you can make it!

It has been lovely to have people back at ACC … here’s some pictures from our preserve makers. So … put some medlar jelly, cucumber 🥒 pickles and tomato 🍅 relish on your must buy list this Christmas! Our makers market is coming up next Saturday 27th November. Pop past from 10am-1pm for a sausage sizzle kindly run by the Ivanhoe Rotary, some family friendly Christmas craft … and local shopping. We’ll have 25 stalls all run by people from the neighbourhood selling locally made things … how lovely (and a GREAT way for you to have a more sustainable Christmas by reducing your ‘shopping miles’ through locally made gifts). Hooray!

This week we are looking forward to welcoming back our peer support playgroup friends! I wonder how they have grown …

We are taking Monday and Tuesday off, but are looking forward to getting some more programming up and running in the next few weeks. Here’s what’s on the cards from our discussions this week:

• Japanese playgroup is returning onsite … it will be lovely to see Maimi and the families and especially to see how much the children have grown!

• Matthew is resuming guitar lessons onsite on Monday and Wednesday evenings.

• We are welcoming a new counsellor to ACC. Martina who has recently moved to the neighbourhood will be here one afternoon/evening a week.

• Our Wednesday daytime book club is going to meet in person in November.

• And finally we are looking to resume our Women in the Shed program in a couple of weeks - hooray! Maylei will be taking both classes and Kalimna has been in contact with everyone that was booked in in Term 4 (and 3 I think) to see who would like to get cracking before the end of the year.

It is pretty nice to start doing things in person again, and we are looking forward to a slow and steady resumption of activity.

If you are part of a group that has a plan and haven’t chatted to us yet just give us a call or send an email …

Some of the great kids who come along weekly to Japanese playgroups …

We held our AGM on Monday night. It was on zoom and was a great chance to revisit all the super things we did in 2020/21.

I presented a slide show that showcased the events, programs, activities and community arts/outreach projects we did in the last year - Kalimna’s gorgeous photos made it very lovely!

Thanks to those that came along. If you too would like to find out more about what was achieved in the last year at ACC you can check out our Annual Report here.