FREE Creative Resources for Families at Home.

Pictured: Linda Twite facilitating a community sustainable weaving craft workshop in January 2020. The Belgrave Survival Day, celebrates the survival of Australian Indigenous people, culture and heritage. 

Mother of two children six and three, Diploma of Community Services student Linda Twite is based in Belgrave and is the initiator of @open_heartstudio. She describes it as,

“a creative outlet I started last year to document my journey in a lot of community projects I was involved in. All of them were events designed to promote sustainability, community and creativity”.

Linda’s involvement in community projects form the background of the first free creative resource pack. This pack, “Kind home family activity guide'” grew out of Linda’s research and planning for events she had booked in the community doing sustainable crafts.

Linda says,

“When COVID shutdown began, I had done a whole lot of planning for the sustainable craft events, and I thought, rather than just doing all that planning for nothing, I can turn these into something else that people can use at home and self-facilitate.”

Down load the “Kind home family activity guide” here:

The second pack was inspired by the feedback from community members about the first one. For this one, Linda banded together with other students from the Box Hill Institute’s free tafe courses; Diploma of Community Services and Cert IV Mental Health.

Linda Twite, Karina Stone, Mary Elliot Barkla, Loren Whitefield, Saskia Shepherd, and Naomi Rentmeester have diverse backgrounds in naturopathy, yoga, fashion design, media and support work. Linda describes how, through their studies, they found their common ground:

“We all have a shared passion about community engagement and supporting well being… We wanted to get it done and send it out – it’s not over edited and we hope it has retained its authenticity. We want to support community and promote well being”.

“In these unprecedented times we are all under pressure, I would suggest you just have a casual flick through and if one thing pops out and inspires you, then that’s awesome. Be really kind to yourself, give yourself a break, try to remain as connected as possible as we navigate together through this new way of living.”

Linda decided move away from fashion design to build a career that is more sustainable and meaningful and very much inspired by her own journey and challenges. She shared,

“I know that many people make these kinds of changes after periods of our own vulnerability when we have reached out for help ourselves. It is a way of giving back and helping to build healthier, more connected communities“.

The second free creative activities pack, “Isolation Survival Guide” is a student led resource supported by Jarred  Kellerman from Cire Community Hubs, where the students are currently hosted on their field placements.

Download “Isolation Survival Guide” here:

Follow Linda on insta @open_heartstudio

or contact her on email linda.twite@gmail.com

She loves to hear how you use the resources! Enjoy 🙂