Upcycled Paper Sewing Class: Cards, Gift Tags or Bookmarks

Hi, I’m Helen – and I’m the Founder of the A Kindsugi Future Studio space. This space is all about being a place where people can come along to multiple types of workshops and activities, and where they can learn not only new skills and how to make creations for themselves, but to also have the opportunity to share these skills and creations with others too.According to the World Health Organisation, Australia and the rest of the world is currently facing a loneliness epidemic – and one which I’m keen to address a little differently to a lot of other initiatives out there. Instead of seeing loneliness as something that individuals need to take on themselves by ‘being more social’, we see it as an issue that society needs to systemically adapt to by creating more access to opportunities that can again build our sense of belonging and purpose (i.e. the antidotes to loneliness). Just like we adapted to industrialisation and becoming sedentary by learning more about the importance of physical activity for humans and creating new infrastructure accordingly (think gyms, sporting clubs, creating more parklands), I believe the same is needed for now in terms of the importance of purpose and belonging.At A Kindsugi Future workshops and at the A Kindsugi Future Studio, we aim to cultivate the ethos of doing kind things not only for ourselves, but for others too. We incorporate this into all of our activities to make the opportunity for this ethos more accessible, and we believe this is an important part of modern-day place-based infrastructure where possible.My background is over 10 years in policy and program development in health and human services across the community, government and private sectors, and I’ve otherwise always been passionate about innovation and finding new ways of doing things. I’ve also experienced the deep despair that comes with feeling a lack of belonging and purpose despite being surrounded by people, and feeling lost not knowing how to find my way out of those feelings. So I’m on a life journey to help as many people find a way out, and back on track with access to meaningful and important ways to feel belonging and purpose in the current day. I could chat about this all day - feel free to reach out if you'd like to talk more about these ideas too :-)