A new space to be creative and connect within our community can be found in the heart of The Historic Village.

The Incubator Creative Hub is excited to be expanding into the former Montessori School to develop a Creative Community Campus.

With ample spaces and resources, The Incubator has had the space in their sights for a while after hearing the preschool was relocating. 'We always had it in our long term vision that that place would be an amazing development for grassroots art infrastructure,” says The Incubator's director Simone Anderson.

Four ‘spaces'

Simone says the facility is made up of four parts. 'There's a huge flexi space, which takes up to 50 people at once and that will be for any types of workshops from sketching, life drawing, print making, anything that you can imagine will be suitable.”

Also included is a pottery and ceramics hub with an industrial volume kiln. 'It's great because there's so many schools and organisations that are around in the Bay of Plenty that don't have kilns and so therefore, ceramics kind of gets dropped out of school curriculums,” says Simone.

Utilising outdoor spaces, the facility also includes a large outdoor area to get creative juices flowing and seats 25 people. The fourth space is the ‘social fabric' – a community sewing and textile hub, which will have 12 sewing machines as a community resource, says Simone.

No barriers

Anyone can use the space, from groups, organisations, schools, tutors to creative professionals and more.

'The whole point is that it's a physical space that will attract people that want to do some kind of creative activity,” says Simone, who adds The Incubator can help people self-manage their creative projects.

'We can help facilitate tutors and artists, and creatives can come to us and say: ‘I've got this idea, I'd like to do these workshops' and then we help put it all together.”

'It's a real social space as well – that's one of the biggest things is it creates those community connections and is accessible and has no barriers.”

A core vision of the creative community campus is to also start an afterschool creative arts collective for youth. '[Young people] can meet each other and get involved in projects or their individual projects…or create their own groups and work towards exhibitions and events.”

The Creative community campus is bookable now, with workshops already being held. Simone says The Incubator aims to officially launch the facility in mid-October. 'There's nothing like this in Tauranga…we're filling up a gap.”