Get to know Magpie Creative

What is the biggest issue that creative reuse can solve in the Kansas City region?

We see the scale of the waste problem we all face and know the solution requires many hands. Magpie Creative Reuse Collective is ready to be an innovative change agent for waste reduction in the Kansas City area.

What is the team’s biggest shared motivator to continue engaging in climate action in the region?

Our mission is mobilizing collective effort to keep items useful longer. Reuse tasks a lot of work and is easier to do if we do it together. It often takes more work and creative energy than buying new, so we want to make it easier for people to reuse, making it easier for everyone to incorporate reuse into their daily choices or business model. We do this by making reuse items accessible and affordable at our pop-up stores, through education and inspiration about how to transform materials, and eventually through shared tools and machinery for reuse.

If you could accomplish one big goal related to climate action, what would it be and by when?

Our organizational short-term goal is to raise enough money to open our own store front. This would allow us to take in more donations of used art and craft supplies, offer more regular shopping hours, offer more classes for reuse and provide more sustainability resources for the community.

A dedicated location for Magpie would also create an opportunity for our big, long-term goal: to provide a workshop of shared machinery and tools that are specifically designed to transform and reuse waste material. We want to create a space for people to learn about, experiment, and explore ways waste material can be turned into new products.

Was there any national inspiration for the collective? Like another group elsewhere that you used to prototype the organization?

Creative Reuse Centers are a nation wide, even worldwide, phenomenon. I THINK the first CRC to use this model was SCRAP in Portland OR, opened in 1998. Now there is at least one CRC in almost every large city, and some are even popping up in small cities.

Magpie is also participating in a nationwide consortium called the Reuse Alliance, which gathers all the creative reuse centers in the country to share ideas and best practices. Some of the most well established creative reuse centers are the Waste Shed in Chicago, Scrappy Elephant in Virginia, and SCRAP in Portland, OR.

In Kansas City, we have another Creative Reuse Center / Teacher Resource Center called Scraps KC. The Teacher Resource Center at Scraps KC gives away school supplies to area teachers. Our board is very familiar with Scraps KC! We formed to provide complementary services to Scraps KC and are excited to expand the creative reuse movement they started in Kansas City in 2016.

Who in Kansas City inspires you the most with the work they are doing?

We recently toured the Flourish Furniture Bank and we were impressed by the way they carry out their mission, but also how well they have incorporated sustainability measures into their processes. Flourish accepts donated/used items and provides them for free for people experiencing housing insecurity via case managers. What is so impressive, from a sustainability standpoint, is that they go to great lengths to clean and repair furniture to make it useful again (and also great for their clients), they spend time matching up dish sets to make them useful, they downcycle old sheets into rags, and they make sure to set aside things they can’t use for organizations that will use those items. We love that Flourish approaches their work with intention and dignity. They put in the extra effort to make sure their clients have high quality options and nothing goes to waste.

Are there any books or publications (or blogs, accounts, etc) that you recommend we read to learn more about the type of work you engage in?

We pay attention to what other creative reuse centers are doing across the country, through their social media and their websites. We look for good ideas about how to organize materials and merchandise stores, as well as interesting topics for community classes. As a new organization, we get inspiration from how other centers communicate and serve their climate principles.

This is a list of the creative reuse centers by state: https://swoodsonsays.com/a-creative-reuse-center-near-me-map-resource/

How does your team recharge from the work you are doing? Do your hobbies align with the work you do at Magpie?

Our team is all volunteer based at this point. We are doing this because we care so deeply about our mission, and have so many ideas about how to carry that mission through for the Kansas City area. Magpie gives us all the opportunity to meet and be around similarly passionate people, who care about contributing to the community, who care about making changes for the environment, and who are willing to put in the work required to make an impact. That fills us with the drive we need to keep donating our time and building this movement.

If you could ask one favor from our network of climate-engaged stakeholders throughout the MARC region, what would it be?

Join the mischief! A group of magpies is called a mischief and what we are building is all about collective effort. Lean in, find out more, see what we are up to, reach out with partnership ideas, and get involved in our growing group of mischief makers. Our mischief is up to all kinds of good.