Author: Gwilym GJ

  • Jan – March 2024 Activity Report

    Jan – March 2024 Activity Report

    The first quarter of 2023 has been busy, very busy at the Wanaka Community Workshop. MenShed Throughout the period the MenShed team came together to work on a range of community projects every Tuesday and Thursday morning. Attendance totaled 332 representing 1,162 hours of volunteer effort – 7.2 full time equivalents over the period. No…

  • Organizers for Wānaka’s Take Karera School

    Organizers for Wānaka’s Take Karera School

    Schools need to be organised and the busyness of a primary school meant the cardboard boxes that were being used by Estelle and the team at Take Karera Primary School were frequently wearing out. We offered to help out and have now made 40 x 4 litre Small Parts Boxes, 2 x Compartment Lego Boxes,…

  • School Holiday Programme visits the Workshop again

    School Holiday Programme visits the Workshop again

    We were lucky to have a beautiful sunny day during the school holidays for the QLDC Sport and Recreation’s Wānaka-based holiday programme visit in September. Everyone went home with a toolbox they’d made themselves and some hug smiles. Thanks to Allan, Taj, Alan and Barrie for all the mahi cutting the parts, making the nailing…

  • Food Stand for Wānaka Primary School

    Food Stand for Wānaka Primary School

    Debbie at Wānaka Primary School contacted us regarding building a Food Stand for their Environment Group. Barrie and the team recycled a bunch of pallets into the main body and we made our first attempt at a standard way of reusing bike wheels, something I’ve wanted to do for ages. Living in a big mountain…

  • Mud Kitchen for KidsFirst Lake Hāwea

    Mud Kitchen for KidsFirst Lake Hāwea

    Lets face it, kids generally love mud. The combination makes for great play. This week the team at the Wo(Men)Shed finished a mud kitchen. It is destined for the local KidsFirst local pre school. Designed to be located outdoors in the playground the kitchen provides easy access to a shelf, basins and of course the…

  • Wānaka Rec  Kids Holiday Programme Winter 2023

    Wānaka Rec Kids Holiday Programme Winter 2023

    We were lucky enough to have two teams of smaller builders come to the workshop last week with the Wānaka Rec Centre Holiday Programme. They bought their own hammers and used them with gusto. Allan had pre-prepared the components for the Small Crate Project we have been developing as a standard project lesson we can…

  • The Adventure Film School Visits the Wānaka Community Workshop

    The Adventure Film School Visits the Wānaka Community Workshop

    In June we had the Adventure Film School, which is adjunct to the Mountain Film Festival in Wānaka, visit our Community Workshop. The students and Ross Mackay, their tutor, were amazing and everyone had a great time. Check out the video – it really sums up what we are about.

  • Spinning the Wheel of Fortune

    Spinning the Wheel of Fortune

    A quick project we built over the last week is a Wheel of Fortune raffle wheel for Volunteer South. The excellent Pukka Signs printed up the graphic and applied it to a 1m disk of ACM. ACM is quite good for this sort of thing, stable and easy to cut. We used some scrap of…

  • Tuesday and Thursday Morning Sessions are Growing Strongly

    Tuesday and Thursday Morning Sessions are Growing Strongly

    The Tuesday and Thursday morning sessions, 9am-12pm, are really starting to crank. We started with Alan, two more Alan’s showed up and now we have up to a dozen regulars making rat traps, shelving, organizing the workshop and working on their own projects.

  • 4KT Elephant Workshop

    4KT Elephant Workshop

    On the 18th April 2021 the 4KT Elephant Workshop happened at the Wanaka Community Workshop. A wonderful event that resulted in beautiful elephants going home with the happy makers.

  • Sign Making

    Sign Making

    We’re getting some stuff done. Today Dunlop Building dropped off some great materials and we started making the first sign. Evolution!

  • We Have A Building!

    We Have A Building!

    The building is rented at 15 Gordon Road and will be open for the first time on Thursday 1st April 2021. Drop in and see what is happening. If you can bring us any timber, a saw bench or some volunteer labour all the better!

  • Meetings and Decisions

    Meetings and Decisions

    The hardest thing to sort out has been a physical location for the Workshop. We’ve talking to Council about locating a building on Council land and looked at every option we can think of. In order to actually get this thing started we’ve decided to lease a building on Gordon Road, Wanaka for the following…

  • 2020 is coming to a close…

    2020 is coming to a close…

    The end of the year is here and while we haven’t achieved what we were hoping to, a locked in physical location to start the Wanaka Community Workshop journey, we have started a Charitable Trust, done a lot of research and feel like we’re closer to making the idea a reality. We’re feeling confident we’ll…