# CRAFT VILLAGE
## PLAY SKOOL EDITION ✂️🎨🌿
**A creative escape for big kids who still like to play.**
The first release of **CRAFT VILLAGE** — a few days away on the land to create, experiment, learn, share and reconnect.
There will be a **planned programme of creative workshops, activities and experiences**, alongside plenty of free time to wander, rest, explore and follow your own creative rabbit holes.
### CREATE • PLAY • SHARE • COLLABORATE
PLAY SKOOL is about bringing creative people together and seeing what happens when we share what we know, what we love and what we've made.
Alongside the planned creative sessions, there will be space for **collaboration and creative exchange**.
You might share:
• A skill or technique you've learned
• Knowledge from your own creative practice
• An experience you'd love others to try
• A favourite creative activity
• Materials or beautiful scraps
• Something you've made as a gift
• Seeds, flowers, produce or something homemade
• An idea you've been wanting to explore with other people
**Nothing is compulsory.**
You can join the workshops that inspire you, contribute something yourself, collaborate with others, or simply enjoy watching the creative energy around you.
There is no expectation to teach, perform or produce anything — **sharing is simply an invitation.**
### 🎨 A CREATIVE PLAYGROUND
Expect a mix of guided creative workshops, hands-on making, shared projects and time to experiment independently.
There'll be a big creative space, materials and resources to play with, outdoor areas, nature, cosy places to retreat and plenty of opportunities to make connections.
Perhaps a workshop sparks an idea that becomes a collaboration.
Perhaps someone shares a skill that you've always wanted to learn.
Perhaps you teach someone something you've been doing for years.
Or perhaps you make something wonderful simply because you felt like it.
### 🌿 TIME TO WANDER
The programme will have a rhythm — **creative time, shared experiences, meals, connection and free time** — so you can enjoy the weekend without feeling rushed.
Slow mornings.
Ocean views.
Food forests.
Good food.
Music.
Creative mess.
Wandering.
Conversations.
Rest.
Come with an open mind and a willingness to play.
**Bring something to share if you want to.
Take something away if it inspires you.**
This is a space for creativity to circulate — **skills, knowledge, experiences, ideas, inspiration and handmade gifts.**
You don't need to be an artist.
You just need to be curious.
### CRAFT VILLAGE ~ PLAY SKOOL
**CREATE • PLAY • SHARE • CONNECT**
*A structured creative weekend with plenty of room for your own imagination.*
**Nothing compulsory. Everything welcome.**
🦊🐶MEET YOUR HOST🦄
**Lou Stichbury**
I've spent more than **20 years in the creative industry**, working as a wearable artist specialising in **merino and natural fibres**.
My one-of-a-kind pieces have travelled **throughout New Zealand and around the world**, finding their way into collections, wardrobes and creative spaces far beyond where they were made.
I've owned shops, run multiple businesses at once, featured in fashion shows, exhibited and sold my work in different places, and spent years creating wearable art that sits somewhere between fashion, sculpture and storytelling.
After leaving my Wellington waterfront boutique, I'm now creating a very different version of the dream — **bringing creativity back to the land.**
For the past few years I've been building, gardening, plumbing, experimenting and figuring out things I somehow never learnt at school.
Mostly through **trial, error, experimentation and creativity.**
And that's a big part of what PLAY SKOOL is about.
💫You are only limited by your imagination💞
My creative direction is increasingly centred around **upcycling, sustainability, natural fibres, low-waste making and finding creative uses for what already exists.**
Now I'm building the next chapter here on the land — a creative space with a **big beautiful sewing workshop, craft stores galore, gardens, food forests and room for people to come together and make things.**
PLAY SKOOL is part of that beginning.
A place to share what we know, discover what we don't, get our hands dirty and remember that **creativity isn't something you grow out of.**
Sometimes it's something you finally get the freedom to grow into.
