PODCAST:

The Scrappy Elephant, a creative reuse center in Charlottesville, aims to keep art and craft materials out of landfills and make them accessible to the community at low costs. 

TRANSCRIPT:

Stella Shoemaker:
You are listening to WTJU Charlottesville. For arts this week, we talked with Sarah Sweet from The Scrappy Elephant about some of their classes and their Sixth Anniversary Event.

Sarah Sweet:
My name is Sarah Sweet, and I’m the owner of the Scrappy Elephant.

Stella Shoemaker:
Wonderful. So first of all, Sarah, welcome to WTJU. Thank you for having me. Of course! Can you tell us a little bit about The Scrappy Elephant.

Sarah Sweet:
Yes, The Scrappy Elephant is what is known as a “creative reuse center”. So, our mission is to keep art and craft materials out of the landfill and get them back to the community for as low cost as possible. So, we are almost 100% donation based. We have a shop where you can fill up bags of supplies. We have a studio where you can rent a table for an hour and a half and just play and create and use all of our materials and have fun, and then we have a classroom that is currently being used mostly for summer camps, but we have year-round classes for artists of all ages.

Stella Shoemaker:
This store is definitely something that I wish existed when I was younger growing up here, so I was super excited to see that it exists now. For our audience, what is creative reuse?

Sarah Sweet:
So creative reuse is, you know, basically taking something and giving it a new use. But creative reuse centers our mission is really just keeping materials that can be used again out of the landfill, and just getting them back to the community at as low cost as possible, so that more people can afford to make art.

Stella Shoemaker:
Can you tell us a little bit more about, like, how did the store begin and what made you want to get into the creative reuse effort?

Sarah Sweet:
Yeah, so I used to be an art teacher, and then in 2013 I became a mother, and as soon as I saw my daughter, I just freaked out about climate change, well, the climate crisis rather. And I started looking for ways that I could marry my love of art, and something to have a positive impact on the environment. And I discovered a creative reuse center on a trip down to Nashville, and I just fell in love with the concept, and decided that we needed one here in Charlottesville.

Stella Shoemaker:
It’s true. It’s very true. Yes, definitely filling an important niche. And I also want to mention before we get too far, you have two locations, right?

Sarah Sweet:
Yes, we recently opened a second location down in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Stella Shoemaker:
And, am I right, you all also have an anniversary coming up! What are you doing to celebrate?

Sarah Sweet:
It is our six-year anniversary. We do a birthday party. So august 15, we’ll do free crafting. We’ll have a big craft fair out front. Just local artists selling their amazing work. We get cookies, and then we have lots of sales. So if you are available August 15, from 10 to 2, it’ll be a lot of fun.

Stella Shoemaker:
Scrappy Elephant also offers year-round art classes. Can you tell us more about those?

Sarah Sweet:
Oh my gosh, we have so many different kinds of classes. We have some classes during the fall, winter, and spring that are series classes. You know, we have series where you can learn to sew, we have drawing and painting series. And then almost every weekend there’s just short classes: everything from watercolor, to needle felting, to learn how to crochet, learn how to knit. Our mending classes are becoming very, very popular, mosaic classes. Just a little bit of everything. The mindful doodling class is kind of looking at the world in a different way and just kind of putting your thoughts into images as opposed to writing. The- In Lynchburg, the leather wallet is something that I would really love to learn. But yeah, there’s just a little bit of everything. And most classes start at age 12 and go to whenever.

Stella Shoemaker:
For your classes, are the supplies provided by you all?

Sarah Sweet:
Oh yes, I mean, most of the teachers, I encourage them to get as much as they can from Scrappy to teach the class, so reuse is kind of an integral part of almost all the classes. You don’t need to bring anything; just yourself and a good attitude, or even a bad attitude.

Stella Shoemaker:
What is something you wish more people knew about sustainability?

Sarah Sweet:
I feel like people might have the idea that it’s like all or nothing, and we can’t live that way. Like we have to understand that if we all did one little thing, like what a major impact on the environment that would have. And yeah, it’s uh- It’s scary, but there’s hope.

Stella Shoemaker:
Beautiful, very beautiful. This is our last question. Is there anything else that you want to make sure we mention?

Sarah Sweet:
Even if you don’t think that you need art in your life, you should consider come taking a class at The Scrappy Elephant because art is scientifically proven to lower cortisol levels, and we need to like calm ourselves down, and then we can go out in the world and make it a better place. And art is a very powerful way to do that.

Stella Shoemaker:
For more information about both locations and this week’s classes and events, go to scrappyelephant.com. Arts this week is supported by the UVA. Council and Piedmont Virginia Community College, PVCC Arts presents a rich array of dance, music, theater, and visual arts programming. Learn more at pvcc.edu. For WTJU, I’m Stella Shoemaker.