The Women Kind Collective
The Women Kind Collective (aka. The Women’s Shed) was established after receiving funding from the Commonwealth Governments Black Summer Bushfire Recovery and Resilience Funding, to provide opportunities for women of the Manning Valley bushfire effected communities to come together and find space in healing and recovery through connectedness and empowerment within community with other women.
The project empowered local women through a means of connection and capacity building through programs, workshops, classes and upskilling, and through the sharing of these skills; it invited local women to share their skills and knowledge with others and learn new ones along the way whilst establishing meaningful new relationships in a safe and supported space. The project also provided a space for healing and recovery through connection with other women, as in line with the latest trauma recovery research.
The project was funded from June 2022 until March 2024. The project offered barista training for women and young people, to support skill building, along with local employment opportunities. The program also implemented further social enterprise; offering the consignment sales of local women makers wares within the space.
Programs included: Love, Peace and Harmony Meditation, Art with Irene, Craft and Connect, The Book was Better Book Club, the “I’m off to Book Club” Social Book Club and Women’s Circles. Currently, additional workshops and activities are booked each month, including belly dancing, water colour painting, repurposing clothing and op-shop tour, Indigenous art, SafeTalk program, Halloween decorating and pumpkin carving, to name a few.
In 2023 Women Kind Collective Hosted The Weave to Heal Arts Project –
Weave to Heal – Arts Mid North coast – Creative Recovery Project
Watch the beginning: training in creative recovery for local community and artists
WEAVE TO HEAL – Jill Watkins
The weave to heal workshops undertaken on the 16th, 17th and 18th of February 2023 enabled 24 people to experience and engage with Saori weaving.
Saori is hand weaving that emphasises and prioritises creativity and free expression. No rules, no fear – just pure absorption and immersion into weaving and working with yarn and threads. This ‘non-technique’ is meditative in nature and aims to build a clearer expression of your human self from the process itself and the resulting handwoven cloth.
The participants whom attended the workshops were all women, and from ages 15 years and over.
There were participants from the black summer fire affected communities.
Women whom lost everything, women who stayed to fight the fires to save their home and women who were traumatised by the “watching” and “witnessing” the impact on our community and its members.
The beauty of working in the round facilitated inclusion and sharing. I believe there were new friendships created and new networks made and stories told.
Each weaving was unique, an incredible thing to watch individuals as they are given the same tools, same palette of materials, and we end up with very different artworks from each person.
The Amazing Works will be displayed at MVNS from April 2026 – stop by and take a look during our opening hours.
