About Us
What is The Nest Community
Founded in 2014 by Roz Fenson and Rebecca Cason, The Nest Community (The Nest) is a not-for-profit community organisation located in a heritage-listed home in Brisbane’s northern suburb of Everton Park. The Nest is self-funded by social enterprise initiatives such as The Nest Haberdashery that sells second-hand craft and dressmaking supplies.
Our Vision
As a creative hub, The Nest Community builds resilient and connected communities by cultivating a public home with a community garden and studio spaces to connect women through environmentalism and handmade living.
Our Philosophy
As a volunteer-led organisation, we are founded on human-to-human relations that reinvent modernity. As women gather to exchange traditional skills; such as knitting, sewing and gardening, social isolation is reduced, health and well-being is improved.
Our History
In 2012, Roz Fenson started teaching the art of sustainable living by teaching young girls to sew, knit, recycle plastic bags, weave, dye fabric with vegetables, and turn pulp into paper. These girls showed how creativity could create a nurturing community. They taught Roz that the joy of making and sustainable living was inter-generational and without cultural or financial barriers.
A year later, Roz met Rebecca Cason and their powerful partnership created a community space to support sustainable living practices. They found a house to rent and asked for donations to make it a home. With only a handful of volunteers and public donations of equipment, materials and expertise, their vision of combining a creative, social and nurturing environment was emerging. In September 2014, a group of women formed the Nest Community, as a volunteer run non-profit organisation.
The Nest philosophy draws from the principles of ‘Craftivism’ in that it embraces the social capital benefit of collective empowerment, action, expression and negotiation. A craftivist is anyone who uses their craft to help the greater good. Craftivism is about raising consciousness, creating a better world stitch by stitch, and things made by hand, by a person. It’s also about sharing ideas with others in a way that is welcoming and celebrating traditional skills in new ways. Craftivism is built on human to human relationships.
What volunteers bring is the human touch, the individual, caring approach that no government, no matter how well-meaning and well-executed, can deliver.”
— Edward James Olmos
Volunteers
Our community is powered by a team of volunteers who donate their time and skills across a variety of roles including:
Workshop facilitation
Haberdashery sorting
Gardening
Administration
If you would like to contribute to our community and become a volunteer, contact us by clicking here.