I have posted a couple of blogs about Rekindle, the Christchurch-based collective dedicated to tackling the issues of wasted ‘waste’ materials. Rekindle was originally spurred into action by the Canterbury earthquakes, which resulted in the devastation of inner city Christchurch and the creation of massive piles of demolition waste, including ‘mountains’ of native timber. Te Papa is proud to own two beautiful pieces of furniture loving made by Rekindle from the ‘remains’ of a former church and a number of demolished houses. This year Rekindle is launching a new national project – Resource: Rise Again.

Juliet Arnott, the founder of Rekindle is visiting Wellington next week and will be giving a public talk at  Massey University College of Creative Arts on Tuesday 1st March at 6pm, about design for reuse. She will be talking about a number of Rekindle projects including Resource: Rise Again. This new project will fund and support five designers or design teams across New Zealand  to research and design new solutions for resources that businesses currently pay to dispose of in landfill. This is the first time in New Zealand that a research and design programme has been established specifically to address waste through reuse solutions.

Rekindle is now calling for designers to submit their interest in the project; the deadline for submissions is 11 March 2016. You can find the design brief here.