Are you seeking a partnership with a local eco living social enterprise that offers creative, sustainable and impactful community-focused workshops?

ReNewy Living offers a variety of workshops aligned with your company’s social and environmental objectives. Each workshop engages your community or workplace team, exploring innovative, actionable ways to care for each other, our communities, our places and our planet.

We’d like to help your employees or community find the best local solution for big global issues. Contact Us to see how we can partner together with positive project solutions.

Contact ReNewy Living here...

Here’s a selection of established workshops that focus on reducing textile waste, reducing food waste, reducing toxic & plastic waste, support mindful sustainable living, and connect with the natural environment.

Reduce Textile Waste Workshops

These workshops help our community avoid, reduce, reuse and become more mindful about the impact our clothing and textiles have on people and planet.

Community Clothes Swap Event

Community Clothes Swap

Community clothes swaps help our community embrace the sharing & preloved clothing economy, take localised action, foster positive community connections, and promote shared responsibility for reducing household textile waste.

Start Here with a Clothes Swap...

Op Shop & Preloved Guided Trail

Op Shop & Preloved Trail

A guided op shop and preloved trail gives your community confidence to step into the preloved shops and learn how to op shop with purpose. There are a few options for how an op shop and preloved trail can work for your community. Go here for details…

Discover more about Op Shop Trails...

Sustainable Slow Stitching for Beginners

Sustainable Slow Stitching Workshop

Sustainable slow stitching embraces your community’s intuitive style and rhythm. Create a unique piece of textile art whilst learning the art of hand sewing by using scrap fabric remnants and non-traditional resources, all joined with simple stitching techniques.

Read about Sustainable Slow Stitching...
Contact Mardi here for your customised textile-focussed workshop...

Reduce Toxic & Plastic Waste Workshops

These workshops help our communities take action by keeping our communities free from rubbish & toxic chemicals, learn about the impacts of plastic usage on people and planet, get creative with plastic reuse and switch to plastic-free and low tox alternatives.

Green Cleaning Workshop

Making the switch to DIY green cleaning products is possible when the alternatives are just as powerful as the artificial chemical-filled products. In this impactful workshop, your community learns which chemicals to avoid and why switching to DIY green cleaning products are better for our health & the planet.

Find out how to start Green Cleaning...

Creating Art from Waste

Creating Art from Waste

Foraged marine debris and clean discarded waste are sources of inspiration for creating something new from what we already have around us. Your community will learn to use a range of techniques, splashed with imagination, to create their unique creation.

More info here about Creating from Waste...

Christmas Decorations from Upcycled Waste

Christmas Decorations From Upcycled Waste

Transform your community’s Christmas into an eco-friendly celebration by crafting unique hanging Christmas decorations using repurposed waste materials. This engaging workshop is led by a skilled environmental artist, who’ll give hands-on guidance and beginner skills needed to craft one-of-a-kind hanging Christmas ornaments.

Learn more about Christmas Upcycling...

Plastic Free Kids Play

Plastic free kids play helps your family community to shift the focus from single-use ideas and toys to play that values children’s curiosity, imagination, motivation to learn, ability to problem-solve critically, social connections, expanding language, creativity, and persistence! 

Ask about Plastic Free Kids Play...
Contact Mardi here for your customised plastic-reduction workshop...

Mindful Sustainable Living Workshops

These workshops help your community understand the complexities of sustainable living by acknowledging the interconnectedness of people, places and production. The workshops offer insights into why living sustainably is key to driving the much-needed change towards a healthier planet.

Efficient Home Energy Usage

This workshop empowers your community with practical knowledge and foundational skills to make their homes more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly. This workshop is particularly beneficial for both tenants and home owners aiming to maximise their efforts within their means.

Ask here about Ways to Reduce Energy Usage...

Keep, Toss, Gift: How to Declutter Mindfully

This workshop helps your community recognise how decluttering can positively impact our living spaces but also the environment by promoting responsible consumption and waste reduction. Participants will learn the How to’s and where to’s of decluttering their homes and spaces.

Ask how to Declutter Mindfully....

Evolution of Waste Management: From Past to Present

This workshop acknowledges the interconnectedness  and complexities of people, plastics and production. Topics include composting, recycling, and practical ways your community can take action to reduce resource reliance and become resource advocates.

Enquire here about Evolution of Waste Management...
Contact Mardi here for your customised sustainability workshop...

Reduce Food Waste Workshops

These workshops help your community reduce food waste by becoming more mindful about food and where food waste occurs. They give actionable ways, with a focus on healthier living, and budgeting for positive planet action.

Sustainable Meal Planning

Sustainable Meal Planning

The sustainable meal planning workshop shows how to cook with a zero waste approach, reduce packaging & preservatives for healthier eating, and develop a more mindful approach to food consumption.

Ask about Sustainable Meal Planning here...
Email Mardi here for your customised food-based workshop...

Connecting with Nature Workshops

Understanding and connecting with nature helps us understand the benefits of an authentically sustainable lifestyle, fostering a deeper connection to our local natural environment, its ecological heritage and ongoing environmental stewardship.

This theme of eco living workshops are designed for us to take time to use all our senses in nature and see things from a different perspective.

Nature’s Treasures: Place-Based Impermanent Art

This outdoors, active workshop helps your community slow down, take in their surroundings and connect with place. Prompts encourage creative, impermanent, community-focussed works of art that serve to inspire reflection, environmental awareness, mindfulness for a deeper connection with nature.

Ask Mardi about Nature's Treasures here...

Beach and Lake Clean Up & Count

This meaningful outdoors, active workshop brings your community together to participate in cleaning up our water-based natural environments while also learning about littering, plastic pollution, and the steps we can take to refuse & reduce unnecessary products. 

Ask about a local Beach & Lake Clean Up...
Email Mardi here for your customised workshop...

Corporate Creative Workshops

Are you looking for a creative and sustainable team-based workshop? French for Tuesday offers corporate craft, art and creative workshops for teams in the Newcastle and Central Coast region. In collaboration with artists and creators, our workshops can be a part of your team building days, corporate wellbeing workshop and fundraising events.

Christmas Decorations from Upcycled Waste

Christmas Decorations From Upcycled Waste
Start here...

Creating Art from Marine Debris

DarNET! A Coloured Spectrum of Waste
Start Here...

Sustainable Slow Stitching for Beginners

Sustainable Slow Stitching Workshop
Start Here...

Low Tox Green Cleaning Workshop

Start Here...

Kids Play: Ditching the Plastic for Creative Play

Ask Mardi today...

Clean Up, Count & Create: Beach & Lake Stroll

Ask Mardi Today...

Naturally Found Objects Art: Creating from Nature Walk

Ask Mardi today...

Sharing the Good Word…

The Marine Debris to Art school holiday workshop was received with great positivity & enthusiasm by our community. The conversations throughout the day were valuable and I appreciate your guidance, leadership, and relaxed nature.

Elise Budden / City of Newcastle

Thank you so much Mardi for a wonderful workshop, and for being so accomodating to my Eucalyptus and Tea Tree allergy.

Shaye / Low Tox Green Cleaning Workshop Participant
Mardi sparkles with down to earth enthusiasm and commitment. Her friendly, relaxed and to-the-point content sustained engagement. Enjoyment and learning were paramount.
Leonie / Opshop-ology Panel Discussion Attendee

Mardi’s Low Tox Green Cleaning presentation was inspiring and full of useful recipes, hints and tips.

Alicia Sheen / City of Newcastle

It was wonderful for all ages!

Participant / Marine Debris to Art Workshop

Frequently Asked Questions

Workshops, Presentations and Tours

French for Tuesday is located in the Newcastle region of NSW. The main geographical areas for workshops, presentations and tours are within the Newcastle, Port Stephens, Hunter and Central Coast regions.

I will consider some areas of Sydney, including the Sutherland Shire, Eastern Suburbs and northern areas of Sydney. Workshop and presentation costings for these areas will reflect additional travel and time.

All workshops are ideal for people who want to live a more sustainable lifestyle and are keen to take localised action to plan it for the planet. People who are ready to make a real change in their home, and establish new habits which become second nature. These workshops are here to share that living sustainably doesn’t have to be all or nothing.

Living sustainably is filled with diversity, and so are the people who attend the workshops! Targeted and interested audiences include primary school age kids, teenagers, business teams, teachers, and local councils who would like to offer a sustainable living series to their community.

My workshops highlight the positives of what we can do to live a more resourceful lifestyle, acknowledging that we are at different stages of sustainable living.

Education is at the heart of Mardi’s professional background! As an early childhood educator for 20 years, Mardi is still keen to share her knowledge with all the stakeholders involved in the education system – young children, young people, teachers and families.

A range of environmental education workshops and presentations can support the early childhood, primary and secondary school curriculums by engaging interested students in meaningful learning. Get in touch with Mardi to chat about your aims and scope of possibilities to bring authentic sustainable living into the classroom or the dynamic outdoors.

Mardi has a NSW working with children check.

Most workshops are designed as a 2 hour workshop, and vary in cost depending upon the type and location of the workshop. Please get in touch with Mardi to discuss your workshop timeframes and budget.

All workshops are ideal for flexible learning spaces – spaces that allow for a range of chair-seating, floor-seating, table-seating and standing. This could be in a cafe, a shared space, community hall, office, child care centre – wherever your community is, these workshops can be there to meet them.

Some of the workshops use technology as a complementary enhancement of the presentation. Adjustments to the workshop can be made if connection to technology is unavailable.

Stories, News & Voices

Sharing stories that strengthen our commitment to nature, community, and a healthier planet.

Be Kind to Ourselves with Sustainable Gift Giving at Christmas

Cheap costs and neverending availability of stuff to buy at Christmas feels more like a sales and marketing pitch of [...]

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Thumbs Up for FOGO Recycling our Food Waste

I’ve always wanted to do the right thing for recycling our food waste. However, we were repeatedly unsuccessful at home [...]

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Bring Your Own Sustainable Habits to Your Overseas Family Holidays – Part 2

If we could predict how our ingrained daily sustainable habits would work in another country, travelling would be a breeze. [...]

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Toronto NSW Op Shop Guide

I discovered the Toronto op shops at the start of the new millennium when we moved to Lake Macquarie. It [...]

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Visible Mending Books to Help Start Repairing your Clothes

Have you stopped wearing the clothes you love because of a pesky hole, slight tear or dreadful stain? If we [...]

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Embracing Slow, Simpler & More Sustainable Living

ReNewy Living supports your journey to embrace living a life more slowly, simpler living and more sustainable living. But what [...]

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Kindness is a Virtue of The Yoga Place Cafe

Photo Credit:  Andsz Kolosovskis from @akphotoco Alyx-Jane, owner of the plant-based cafe The Yoga Place Cafe, believes the individual little [...]

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How Our Local Crop Swap Helps Backyard Gardeners

Do you have an abundance of asparagus? A plethora of parsley? Loads of lemons or excess eggplant? This guest post [...]

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The Scary Truth About Plastic

The Real Horror at Halloween This is a guest post written by Charlie Thompson from The Clean Collective. Some links [...]

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Starting a Simplified Co-op with Free Range Eggs

The more I knuckle down into living a more sustainable, low impact life the more I realise how large corporations [...]

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Books to Motivate You to Start Living a Plastic Free Lifestyle

Just thinking about going plastic-free can be overwhelming. But the more we know, the more confidently we can take action [...]

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The Best Homemade Playdough Recipe that Works

  Step into every early childhood service, and you’ll always see a table dedicated to playdough. A staple creative play [...]

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Sewing Couture Style Dresses From Waste

In this video, Melinda shares her inspirationally creative Waste to Art story on sewing couture style dresses from waste. This story [...]

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Spark Imaginative Play by Choosing Alternatives to Single-Idea Plastic Toys

Photo Credit: Uniting Preschool Caves Beach This guest post story is written by Michelle Ryan from Uniting Preschool Caves Beach [...]

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DIY Christmas Bon Bons with Good Gifts

Christmas Bon Bons are a traditional Christmas favourite. But the little trinkets inside the commercial factory-made Christmas crackers are our [...]

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I Made this Practical & Affordable Reusable Shopping Bag

The geometric design on this dark blue t-shirt captured my attention on my opshop travels. It was the perfect t-shirt [...]

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Creative Repurposing with Vintage Tea Towels

Have you ever wondered what to do with old souvenir or beautifully patterned tea towels? Discover the possibilities for creative repurposing [...]

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Shop Local. Support Local. Buy Local

Shop Local. Support Local. Buy Local. These simple sentences have had greater prominence in our lingo over the last couple [...]

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Creativity is at the Heart of Sustainable Living

Tapping into our creative streak helps us cope with stress (aka develop resilience), appreciate beauty and approach life with a [...]

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How Smokva Community Garden Cultivates Connection & Growth

This article is a summary only of the podcast conversation “Ep 4: How Smokva Community Garden Cultivates Connection & Growth. [...]

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