The Shed Project opens Platform 1 art gallery

The Shed Project artist Elle Tripae with social services manager Jo Picot. Photo / Rosalie Willis

The Shed Project's latest venture, an art gallery that opened last week featuring Shed artists combined with artists from the Kāpiti community, is all about inclusion, one of the organisation's primary objectives.

The Shed Project is an organisation based in Paraparaumu which provides a host of activities and opportunities for disabled and disadvantaged people.

Making wooden boxes for local business We Love Local, selling giant handmade poppies for the RSA, and daffodils for the Cancer Society, making ant bait stations and wooden coffins among many other projects, the gallery is the latest in a string of social enterprise projects the Shed Project has embarked on.

Elle Tripae holding her art which will be exhibited at the Shed Project art gallery, Platform 1. Photo / Rosalie Willis

"We believe in valuing our people for what they are not for what they're not," founder Denis Wood said.

"We created lots of micro-businesses which suit what our people can do rather than trying to get them to suit what we want."

The art gallery will have two walls set aside for the Shed Project artists and two for local Kāpiti artists.

"Our biggest focus here is about inclusion, to show the value of what our people are, not what they can't do.

"We want to get more people without disabilities connecting in with our people."

Social services manager Jo Picot said, "We have a very simple concept - that everybody has the capability, the possibility of becoming something better for themselves.

"We believe in our people.

"We know that they are very capable so we want to promote their creativity and all that they are capable of doing.

"The gallery is about giving them a space to display their art.

"I would love for disabled people nationwide to come and display their art here."

The artists will receive the money from art sold with commission going to the Shed Project's building fund which will fund their long-term goal to purchase a building.

The gallery is called Platform 1 with the signage being the original Paekākāriki Station platform sign which was given to them after helping clear out some storage at the station a number of years ago.

Artists at the inaugural exhibition will be from the Shed Project, Te Ara Korowai and feature other local artists such as Luke Kelly.

They will then prepare for the Kāpiti Arts Trail in November.

The gallery is open Monday to Friday 9am-4pm and Saturdays 10am-3pm.