BBP (Heather's take)

April was a big month for SCRAP-DC. We started off the month prepping for the Build a Better Block Project on 34th Street in Mt. Rainier, Maryland. Back in the fall we were approached by the Neighborhood Design Center in Prince George’s County and asked if we wanted to participate in the project and we said yes. You can check out BBP history here, but here’s the gist of it...A group of people in Oak Cliff, Texas looked at a mostly vacant street in their community and thought something along the lines of “what if we had a dream day for this street and filled it with small businesses and restaurants and flowers and bike lanes and art and benches for meandering pedestrians to stop and enjoy the action all around them? We could show people what this street could really be.” So they did it and then soon after the event the vacant properties were rented and filled with businesses and their dream started turning in to a reality. The wonderful people of NDC in Maryland had a similar thought and, thus, SCRAP ended up with a vacant storefront to fill for a day

So with help of awesome (and I mean TRULY AWESOME) volunteers we scraped the layers of gunk off the floor, cleaned the stickers off the windows, painted the walls, painted the door, painted the trim, cleaned shelves, cleaned tables, hung fabric and set up SCRAP-DC’s first creative re-use center! The shop officially existed for a day, but, man, did it make me and Karen hungry for a space of our own (we’re working on it…). We got to talk to so many people excited for the SCRAP vision and watch the rapture on bargain hunter’s faces (this yarn is a dollar?!). SCRAP also hosted a guest artist, Amina, who showed BBP attendees how to make sturdy reusable bags out of plain old plastic bags.

Of course the BBP focused on much much more then SCRAP. Check out pictures on the NDC webpage to see all the other fabulous vendors, artists, musicians, businesses, and nonprofits. And see the shout-outs in Karen's post. We like them all a lot.