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This article was published 10 year(s) and 7 month(s) ago

More in store where supplies meet demand

Thor Jourgensen

December 18, 2014 by Thor Jourgensen

LYNN – Tucked away in a corner of the J.B. Blood Building, Extras for Creative Reuse took 250,000 pounds of cast-off books, fabrics and other items donated last year and turned the odds and ends into classroom aids and raw material for artists.Boxes of mismatched fabrics, fake marble tiles and odder objects, including an 8-foot-tall plastic acrobat, fill Extras’ rooms. As the material comes through the door, director Jocelyn Almy-Testa weighs it on a large scale in keeping with Extras’ philosophy of turning potential trash into resources for spurring imaginations young and old.”Our mission is to serve teachers and artists; most of the people who come in are creative people,” Almy-Testa said.Dr. Walter Drew founded Extras for Creative Use in 1981 in Boston, Almy-Testa said, after an encounter with African children playing with trash reshaped his theories on how people learn. The organization moved to Lynn in 2011 with help from the Economic Development and Industrial Corporation and the United Way.Located on the Wheeler Street building’s third floor, Extras has 600 individual members who pay $60 a year to browse and gather material for free. Lynn teachers pay half that amount with the other half reimbursed to Extras by United Way.Julie Duggan said she is “like a kid in a candy store” when she roams through Extras’ rooms picking out items for projects with her children or activities organized by the Village Elementary School Parent Teacher Organization, of which Duggan is the co-president.”A Marblehead teacher told me about this place a couple of years ago – to me, it’s amazing,” Duggan said.Word-of-mouth information about Extras passed around by members and some social media exposure spurs donations. Almy-Testa said 2014 has been a banner year for Extras with new board members generating fresh ideas and better communication with members and 50 affiliated nonprofit organizations tripling the volume of donated material.Extras is open Wednesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on Thursday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. It has a small store where donated items such as file cabinets and light fixtures are sold at cut-rate prices. Members roam the aisles for free, letting their imaginations guide them through the rows of bins as they pick out items and put them in a shopping bag.”It’s like having a BJ’s membership and filling up your cart and then not paying,” Almy-Testa said.She estimated $50,000 to $70,000 in donated material is used by Lynn Public Schools teachers annually.”We contribute $250,000 to the local economy, according to Americans for the Arts,” she said.Extras is hosting a gathering tonight from 6 to 9 at the Tides Restaurant in Nahant with 10 percent of purchases going to Extras.

  • Thor Jourgensen
    Thor Jourgensen

    A newspaperman for 34 years, Thor Jourgensen has worked for the Item for 29 years and lived in Lynn 20 years. He has overseen the Item's editorial department since January 2016 and is the 2015 New England Newspaper and Press Association Bob Wallack Community Journalism Award recipient.

    View all posts

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