Badass Babes: Beth Dryer – Meet the force behind the Creative Reuse Center

In the summer of 2018, Beth Dryer saw a need for artistic access in her community. So, Dryer says, “I evaluated if I could be that somebody that did that thing, and it was pretty clear that I could be,” and from there, Norfolk’s Creative Reuse Center was born.

The Creative Reuse Center is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization “dedicated to promoting sustainability and reuses through art, craft, education, and community.” Within the small grey building with lime green trim, Dryer and her team are “making second-hand arts and crafts supplies accessible and affordable; we’re increasing creativity and decreasing waste.”

Essentially, the 757CRC is “just like a regular thrift store, but the main focus is on the arts,” They also provide educational programming and workshops. However, that is currently on hold as Dryer, and her board navigates the pandemic that nearly closed their brick and mortar shop.

Dryer is the President of the 757CRC’s Board of Directors, along with the Shop Manager. She says, “it’s the best job I have ever had. It is more fulfilling than anything else”. She loves working with a team of “completely passionate and dedicated people” to expand the arts into everyday life and materials while increasing sustainability and affordability for artists.

However, the road to creating this artistic oasis was not always easy; creating a functioning nonprofit requires a lot of paperwork and planning, which Dryer hadn’t had any experience with before diving headfirst into the Creative Reuse Center. 

Dryer and former board member George Arbogust, who hosted the web series Salvage Upcycle Show, were inspired by the Scrap Exchange in Durham, North Carolina, the largest reuse center in the United States. After getting that inspiration, the first step in establishing Norfolk’s reuse center was gauging public interest.

Dryer says that Beau Turner from the 757 Makerspace was instrumental in getting the meeting together. Thinking back to that meeting in September 2018, Dryer smiles, “Something like twenty people who we didn’t know at all showed up, and so that was the gas that we needed to get started,” when they realized so many people were interested in this idea. 

“At that very first meeting, we recruited a board of volunteers and pushed together to talk about how to move forward with it, which is when George floated the idea of a nonprofit or for-profit institution, and we all quickly decided that we were going to be a nonprofit organization. We pushed through the paperwork by the end of 2018, and by early 2019, we started looking at retail locations.”

In February 2019, the Creative Reuse Center opened its doors at 1904 Granby Street in Norfolk. “It came together pretty quickly,” laughs Dryer. 

The unassuming building they claimed now teems with color and texture, and walking through the shop, “people are blown away by the sheer volume of stuff that we’ve acquired… and the organization of everything,” in which Dryer takes pride. When asked what she’s most proud of regarding the Creative Reuse Center, Dryer says it’s “the shop, in general.” Strolling through the store, shoppers can find paints, yarn, ribbons, flowers, fabric, markers, jewelry supplies, stamps, and many other materials awaiting discovery.

One aspect of the shop that Dryer loves is that people will return to show her what they have created with materials from the 757CRC, like beautiful 20×30-foot portrait quilts a local artist makes from “scraps other people would throw away.” She also delights in seeing jewelry crafted out of items from the 757CRC; “I love seeing people’s works… I like the sense of community that we have. I had never really worked in a retail environment before, but getting to know the people who come in to shop, getting to know my regulars […] realizing that all these people are in each others’ lives because of the Reuse Center” is an incredibly gratifying experience for Dryer.

She beams when she talks about the ways the 757CRC are involved in Tidewater’s artistic community. Currently, Dryer says there is a yarn bombing in Norfolk’s NEON district by local fiber artist Tania Rich in honor of Pride Month, and Rich sourced a lot of yarn for the project from the 757CRC.

The 757CRC partnered with For All Handkind last May to present a fundraising exhibition called “The Postcard Project,” where 35 unique artists from around the country submitted a work no larger than 5″x7″. In addition, people who purchased tickets for the gallery received a random piece from the show.

The outreach within Norfolk’s artistic community received aid through city grant funding, which acknowledges the critical role that the 757CRC plays in getting materials into the hands of artists, which came under threat by the uncertainty of the pandemic. 

Thinking back to March 2020, Beth says that the 757CRC was very lucky in many ways, even though “we didn’t know what would come next” when they were shut down as a nonessential business last spring. Fortunately, their landlord deferred rent, and two rounds of the Paycheck Protection Program helped get Dryer and her team back to work once it became safe to reopen their doors. In addition, just as the board was considering closing their retail program and existing just as an organization, they received a $15,000 grant from the Norfolk Cares Program, which allowed the retail shop to continue its operations.

 Now, Dryer thinks “we’re in a better place than we were pre-pandemic,” though her plans for the future, such as expanding art education programming into schools and creating a Reuse Mobile for portable teaching space, seem a little further off than they did before. 

For now, Dryer is looking forward to picking back up with workshops held at the 757CRC, most of which are family-oriented, “because kids are way more open to new ideas.” Dryer says the hope is that “if we teach the whole family at once, they are more likely to reproduce it.” She laughs, acknowledging that sometimes “children listen to other people more than their family,” so the encouragement of the team at the 757CRC will hopefully be a long-lasting influence on these budding sustainable artists.

The 757CRC offers adult classes in the evenings, and Dryer has some advice for anyone interested in the creative reuse process, regardless of age: “My first piece of advice is to go out and get inspired by something. Find places that inspire you; it doesn’t always have to be other people’s art. It could just be taking a walk. [During that] walk, pick up ten pieces of trash and incorporate them into a piece of art.” After that, Dryer says, “Continue challenging yourself; there’s lots of content on YouTube, so watch someone else’s process to get more inspiration on how to expand your artwork.”

And, if Dryer and the board’s work has inspired you to create your own nonprofit, she has advice about that, too. “I think if you want to impact the world around you positively, you just do it. You start by being kind to yourself, create a little bubble of positivity around you, nobody can do everything,” and start to explore your motivations and how you want to make a positive impact. “Examine why [you] want to do that thing and what is motivating [you] to do those things.”

Additionally, “there’s a lot of legwork at the beginning to make sure that you don’t get distracted,” and you’ll need to determine if your idea is best suited for a nonprofit or for-profit organization. For example, suppose you decide to go the nonprofit route. In that case, Dryer says, “you’ll give up a huge amount of control” because of the board structure, which she says has benefited her because there are multiple viewpoints presented for the decisions the organization must make. But, she stresses that it is essential to remember that all significant decisions are “up to the board with a nonprofit.” Hence, she encourages researching to “really understand how a board of operators works, and what they can and cannot do, and [how to write] your bylaws in a way that protects both of you.”

For Dryer, though, the extra steps required to create a nonprofit were worth it. She feels proud of her impact on the community and how her organization is “taking waste out of the waste cycle and making that waste valuable in a teaching and learning environment and increasing sustainability and affordability in the arts” in Tidewater. 

How Can You Support the Creative Reuse Center?

• Shopping in the store at 1904 Granby Street

• Donating unused art and craft supplies on Saturdays (Dryer suggests checking www.creativereusecenter.org/donate for accepted items)

• Donating financially through ongoing GoFundMe campaigns or by contacting the CRC directly

• Joining the 757CRC’s membership program, which allows first access to workshops and sales, and, for $100/year, covers all members of your household.  

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