This week I attended a ‘community conversation’ event with the Commissioner for Ageing, Gerrard Mansour and sat next to/caught up with Anne who comes along to ACC on Fridays and is responsible for the gorgeous yarn 🧶 bombing around our centre.

The Commissioner talked about some of the prerequisites for ‘ageing well’. In particular he mentioned:

1. A positive attitude. Under this broad heading he talked about maintaining your self-belief that you are a valuable person as you retire and lose your long-standing value as an economic contributor in society, being open to the capacity to learn new things (like how to zoom and use myGov to upload your digital vaccination certificate!) and also being open and willing to accept support when needed (just get that hearing aid or that walker so you can keep participating in your community). Which leads to …

2. Social connections. He noted that since the pandemic he has seen three distinct cohorts in the over 60s - those that are raring to go and get out travelling overseas or around Australia in their caravans ASAP (or are back at neighbourhood houses the minute we open our doors), those that are balancing risk and vulnerability eg. attending events but wearing masks or going to outside events, and also a group that is still too worried to turn up.

And he expressed concern about those being left behind - those older Victorians who have become even more isolated because of their worries and fears about the pandemic and those who have not had the capacity to communicate and connect during lockdowns as much as others because they are not digitally literate.

I thought all these ideas were very interesting to think about, particularly in the context of our neighbourhood house where we actively create the space in our community to encourage social connectivity, care for the most vulnerable and promote opportunities for life long learning.

The conversation was attended by a suite of politicians … and it is great to know that they are hearing these messages, and real life stories from older Victorians - including stories from Darebin residents at the forum who shared their lived experience of being left behind …

Alphington Show was so much fun this year! We had glorious weather and lots of people came along and joined in. The pony rides were a real hit and our show entrants were super talented.

We’d like to thank our partners Alphington CWA. It was terrific to run this event together.

We’d also like to thank our friends from the Preston Garden Club for judging (along with the CWA) and Nelson Alexander for helping us publicise the event AND for providing a prize. We had 16 people get a hole in one on our mini-golf green and go into the draw to win the $100 LaTrobe Golf Club voucher… and many more spent quite a while trying!

This year we had 29 entrants in our family friendly, funny and somewhat shambolic dog show. The calibre of entrants was very impressive … we saw the most amazing trick - a dog who retrieved a tissue from a tissue box when their owner sneezed. Beyond impressive! We’d like to thank E and A Salce on High Street Thornbury for the prizes.

We had around 15 stallholders in our makers market with lots of lovely things to buy. We love running events that support local makers.

Finally a big thanks to our volunteers. We had some new helpers this year and along with some old favourites! And we really couldn’t do all the things we do without you.

Oh, and congratulations to all our prize winners … thanks once again everyone!

See you next year!

Last week we decorated seed packets together … marigolds … and filled up our seed library with the gorgeous packets.

This week we welcome Clare Mannion to run our Friday morning program. Some of you will probably know Clare - her children were at Alphington PS.

We’ll be looking forward to exploring some more Arty Gardening projects together in the coming months and tapping into both her gardening knowledge and arts background. Welcome Clare.

If you are interested in gardening, engaging in garden based arty activities outdoors with others or keen to have a neighbourhood chat you can join us in the garden from 10am on Fridays, followed by morning tea at 11.30am.

The final artist to feature in our outdoor gallery is local photographer Kalimna Mohamed.

Many of you will know Kalimna from ACC - but did you know she is a professional photographer in the rest of her life? This is why we have such gorgeous photographs that capture all the things we do at ACC - we consider ourselves very lucky!

The gallery on our fence features a selection of photographs she has taken from previous dog shows - capturing the personalities of a raft of our neighbourhood furry friends and their owners.

Next time you are out for a walk come past and check them out - and scan the QR code or follow this link to find out more about Kalimna’s work.

And a final thanks to Yarra City Arts for supporting this street gallery project! It has been a wonderful addition to our neighbourhood for the last year.

International Women’s Day is a great day to acknowledge the history of neighbourhood houses - which came about in the 70s and early 80s as a result of women getting together to help each other out - particularly when it became acceptable to return work after having children, but there was limited practical infrastructure in place to support and enable this to happen. Occasional care/crèche and babysitting clubs featured heavily in the first iteration of many houses … ACC for example had a babysitting club - with special tokens that acknowledged how many hours you had done. We still have them stored away in our archives!

It’s also a great day to acknowledge some of the wonderful women who work and volunteer and join in here, and support us - making our centre what it is today.

These photos are from the last year … women like Anne volunteering in the garden, Louisa sharing her amazing art skills in our community, Elaine, Manu and Monica making preserves to help us fundraise, Lee undertaking fabulous community art projects that we all enjoy, Annie and Silvana supporting Kinfolk and joining in our community market, Maylei teaching women new skills in the shed, the women in our shed, our politicians, our sponsors like Lee from the Community Bank on Queens Parade, lovely Maria across the road (and Betty - I don’t have a photo of Betty), Anne yarnbombing, Sharyn and Virginia hanging art for our recent exhibition, our morning tea participants, our playgroup facilitators Maimi, Sue and Gianna and the playgroup families - mostly mums. Shirley and the line dancers (sorry I didn’t include a photo) and the families that joined in our grow local, cook local workshops. And our staff including Kalimna, Jill and Suzanne. Also our committee including Heather, Anne, Michelle, Kate and Jane. And then there’s also the broader neighbourhood house network …

It is a truly fabulous experience working in partnership with so many wonderful, dynamic women every single day.

So hooray for women I say!! And happy International Women’s Day. Our house certainly wouldn’t be the same without you.