The stories
Sacred Scraps is a collection of stories about where the resources for the stuff we use come from, the makers and the making process, and where stuff ends up.
Our documentaries fall into three story strands:
Origins - portraits of raw materials, their creation and extraction, how they are used, and what happens at the end of their life.
Makers - profiles of the people behind the stuff, projects or products: miners, farmers, manufacturers, artists, creators, designers, restorers, and innovators.
Waste Weavers - stories of the hidden world of waste and where our stuff goes. We explore the reuse culture, green-maker movement, industrial ecology principles, circular economies, and meet the people who have created enterprises recovering resources, repurposing, reusing and recycling materials.
The makers
Sacred Scraps was devised and developed by producer, cross-media maker and storyteller Mel Flanagan. Her fascination with materials and the making process started at age nine, after a holiday spent changing cotton reels in a textile mill.
In the 1980s Mel worked in arts and music marketing, before joining theatrical producer Cameron Mackintosh to work on the original Australian productions of Cats, Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera and Five Guys Named Moe.
Mel moved from theatre to film in London, working on TV and feature films. On her return to Sydney she helped establish Fox Icon Productions and Working Title Films Australia (WTA) with producer Tim White. Films she worked on during this time include Oscar and Lucinda, Two Hands, Gettin’ Square and Ned Kelly. Since then she has worked across independent theatre, film, mobile TV, visual effects, animation, interactive digital media, museum interpretation, installations, documentaries, and web and software design. Over her many years in production she has seen a lot of wasted resources, and stopped a lot of useful stuff from ending up in landfill.
Having discovered her inner geek, Mel founded Nook Studios, a social enterprise of researchers, artists, designers and creative technologists. Nook makes complex information accessible and engaging, and builds open tools that help communities understand and take part in the decisions that affect them and nature.
From stories to maps, and back again
Research for our online interactive documentary series began in 2010 when coal seam gas was being introduced to NSW.
To tell stories about where our stuff comes from, we needed maps showing where mining happened, how materials were produced and how decisions were made. That information existed, but communities couldn’t find it or make sense of it.
After attending an innovation event, in 2012 we built Common Ground with the NSW Government. It was the world’s first mobile web app helping communities find information about mining, oil and gas projects. For the first time, people could see what was happening in their local area and region, understand decision-making processes, and find useful information about exploration and production methods.
Now we’re building Community Maps. It brings together location information and open data about mining, energy and nature in one place, powered by our data publishing platform Make Platform.
Sacred Scraps is the story layer. Our films, animations and illustrations explain the processes and resource life cycles.
We are starting with critical minerals, mine closures, and the innovations in repurposing old mines.
Behind the scenes of Sacred Scraps is a crew of passionate artists, makers, designers, content creators and developers. We collaborate with creative industries and resource recovery enterprises. For many years we provided pro bono support to the Community Recycling Network, now Zero Waste Network Australia. A few of the short films we produced are below.
If you'd like to support what we do, have a great story to tell, or would like join our crew, please get in touch.
videos | zero waste network
Profile: South Sydney Regional Organisations of Councils (SSROC)
A launch video featuring David Kuhn of SSROC in the state of NSW discussing their zero waste vision.
Profile: Soft Landings
Featuring Soft Landings, a social enterprise recycling mattresses and creating jobs and training for people reentering the workforce.