We regularly interview, feature and promote Pollinators members. This time we meet Catalyst participant, Eileen Taylor.
Catalyst is Western Australia’s only support program for social entrepreneurs. Find out more about what is happening here.
Eileen’s journey to entrepreneurialism has been a process of transforming problems in to opportunities and broken things into inspiring creations.
Through her business Mosaically Inspired, Eileen takes broken and discarded tiles, furniture and objects and turns them into beautiful functional pieces. She also inspires others to make fresh from old through workshops held twice a week at the Arts and Cultural Development Council (ACDC) gallery.
The story of how she came to develop this business oddly reflects the work itself.
More than ten years ago during a trip to the South West with friends Eileen was inspired by the arts and crafts workers way of life.
“It was a joke, wouldn’t it be nice to have a workshop down here and people could watch me dabbling, they could buy my things and on school holidays kids could come and do workshops, I didn’t think it would happen,” she said.
Many years later Eileen found herself with what felt like a broken life. She was recovering from a very difficult and stressful work situation where her former employer had become insolvent and tried to implicate her in the business failings.
One therapy Eileen found for herself was smashing tiles and creating some of the beautiful things she had always wanted to. A friend encouraged her to get out of the house and sell some of her work at local weekend markets and the business grew from there.
Eileen said once she got started, the process of turning her situation around gained momentum rapidly.
“When life hands you lemons, you make lemonade. Enjoying the lemonade assists healing”
“Each little challenge was just another lemon that got turned into lemonade. I was like what else can I find and each thing was a healing step.”
“Now to be on the Catalyst program I am at a point where I am ready to go. I have run out of lemons now and Catalyst is feeding my dream,” she said.
Mosaically Inspired workshops take place at the ACDC Gallery on Tuesdays from 1 to 3pm and Saturdays from 10am until noon. You can also see Eileen’s work at the Champion Bay Farmers & Craft Market on the old railway platform every Sunday between 8am and 12 noon and on Facebook.
The reality of good. At the end of one’s life,
is not measured by how much money you made, but
by how much you have made the world a better place.
Successful entrepreneurs often the real impact of the
non-profit and social enterprise switch.You know very
well about social entrepreneurship,
Who reads your website well.