This week is Neighbourhood House Week, a great week to stop and reflect on all the fabulous things we do, and remember why we do them!

At ACC we hope to contribute to creating and supporting a strong and connected community … and along the way we want to:

• Enable individuals to live well, and lead healthy, active, creative and sustainable lives

• Nurture community connections, and

• Action a fairer society for all.

Our program of events and activities all contribute to achieving this overarching goal (our vision) and these objectives.

For example, our Arty Gardening program encourages participants to live more sustainably, be creative and get outdoors and do some physical activity through gardening. It ticks lots of boxes!

Our Ukulele Group enables people to live well by learning new skills and doing something they love, encourages creativity through music and enables participants to make friends with fellow musicians.

Our food collection for the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre is all about playing a part in actioning a fairer society for all.

And we run our weekly morning teas to nurture community connections between locals. We also sell the Friends of Baucau coffee to nurture community connections - at the organisational level - connecting ACC with the Friends of Baucau. And … by selling the coffee via Juliet at the milkbar we are also creating a meaningful three-way partnership/community connection and supporting her small and valued local business along the way. Wins all round right!

This week to celebrate neighbourhood house week we thought you might like to join us for morning tea on Friday. If you are around please come along from 11.30am for a cuppa, some cake and a chat. We’d love to see you!

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.