About Us

Resourceful Craft 2024 is an offshoot of Rekindle, being run as a separate project by a charitable entity, and supported by Creative New Zealand. This is a year-long programme of the craft workshops you've come to know and love from Rekindle, based in community venues in Ōtautahi Christchurch and Rīkona Lincoln, with additional opportunities in Whakatū Nelson and Ōtepoti Dunedin.

Rekindle was founded in 2010 in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland by Juliet Arnott, and then relocated to Ōtautahi Christchurch in 2012. Rekindle has since evolved more than 10 different projects that have all focused on resourcefulness; some small, some as big as Whole House Reuse, and our Necessary Traditions festival. Please visit the websites or Past Projects for information about this work.

What we do

Rekindle draws people together to create and share opportunities for resourcefulness. Each project has promoted the skills and knowledge involved in creating what we need from the life within us and around us, for the wellbeing of planet and people. We engage with local resources through care and craft, this being the opposite of wastefulness. We find that craft connects us, and that it is vital for creating what we need from what we have.

Why resourcefulness?

The word resource was originally derived from the Latin resurgō meaning rise again. Life on Earth is deeply resourceful in the inherent ability of all life to continually rise again, to resource itself. Perhaps the form of life will change or decay, but it will always rise again in some shape or form.

Resourcefulness requires us to engage with our inner resources whilst strengthening our relationship with the life around us, and in this ongoing exchange we realise the inseparable nature of life on Earth. Through the lens of resourcefulness the relationship between human and non-human wellbeing is inseparable and so when we care for earth we cannot help but care for ourselves.

We live in a world confronted by social and environmental challenges. These problems are inextricably linked yet so vast and complex it is difficult to face them together. As these challenges worsen, the need to find solutions that address both human and environmental wellbeing in an interconnected manner grows increasingly vital. Professor Tim Haywood (2006) says “Resourcefulness involves the development and exercise of human capacities, and thus fulfils part of the substance of a good human life; it also eases pressure on finite natural phenomena that are needed as resources in (roughly) inverse proportion to resourcefulness.”

Our Journal of Resourcefulness Vol. 1 (2018) gives an in-depth description of various ways resourcefulness can be seen. A free PDF is available.

Current project

Our current project is the Resourceful Craft Workshop. This involves sharing resourceful craft skills such as basket-weaving, felting, and green woodworking, using local resources for the wellbeing of people and planet. As part of this work we run the Craft Opportunities programme which enables participation for people who would otherwise have barriers to accessing this.

For a sense of why we focus on resourceful craft, please see the film below.

Our Support

We offer support to craftspeople whose practice is inherently resourceful so they can build and strengthen their careers in craft. We work with dedicated practitioners who wish to both develop and share their skills in this way.

Our work is part-supported by Creative New Zealand & Te Matatiki Toi Ora Arts Centre for which we are hugely grateful. We also run other workshop programmes supported by Christchurch City Council and Selwyn District Council.

About Us

What we do

Why resourcefulness?

Current project

Rekindle's journey towards Resourcefulness

Connect

Our Organisation