Transforming rubbish into resources

Gifts to the UWCSEA Annual Fund have funded the establishment of a Creative Reuse Centre on East Campus, which has been designed to promote the notion that waste materials can be resources.

Ben Morley , Head of Infants writes:

The Creative Reuse Centre is located in the new-look Infant Indoor Playground. The hope is that it will promote the notion that waste materials can be resources. The idea is to collect, display and distribute alternative and reclaimed materials obtained from the community, with the aim to reinvent their use and meaning, promoting creativity and collaborative play.

The idea was inspired by Remida, a cultural project associated with the principality of Reggio Emilia in Italy. The ongoing focus of the project being to represent a new, optimistic and proactive way of approaching environmentalism and building change through giving value to reject materials, imperfect products and otherwise worthless objects, to foster new opportunities for communication and creativity.

The Creative Reuse Centre will, hopefully, become a genuine community initiative at UWC East, with parents and older students involved. The Grade 4/5 LEAP Service group has already been charged with stocking, promoting and organising the centre as it becomes established.

At the same time, we are also continuing our exploration of a Pop Up Playground area in the Infant Indoor Playground. This is a designated area of the playground stocked with loose parts (such as cardboard boxes, tyres, fabric, pipes, wooden offcuts etc.), collected from the local community. Again, the idea is to promote creative, imaginative and collaborative play using non-commercial, open-ended resources.

Both of these initiatives are in line with the vision of fostering a responsibility towards sustainability with our youngest learners at UWC East and will, hopefully, encourage them to develop a respect for objects, the environment and each other.