Exciting beginnings

New beginnings are always exciting times. I’ve been behind a desk at Enspiral Wellington barely a month and with the boundless enthusiasm colliding and overflowing in every direction the amount of ideas being generated here is almost crippling.But ideas are cheap – the core value of this network is the way it enables action.On my first day Chalklewas an idea for an open platform for people who have a skill or passion, to teach it to people interested in learning it. A way for local communities to rethink education and lower the barriers for anyone to learn almost anything.Chalkle was born as an Enspiral company on June 21, ran it’s first class on July 8th and is now catching on. Fast.

50 people were expected to the launch party, 120 turned up and packed out Wellington’s Makerspace.

130 new members joined in the first week. Facebook is humming with likes jumping up faster than is worth documenting. 13 classes have been run in the first two weeks, with 11 more coming up in the next week.

The photography class already has a waiting list, so does the ‘how to make a long bow’ class. 300 more classes are in the pipelines with more being confirmed every day. Think gardening, bike workshops, claymation, ice carving, HTML, fire poi….

Capital times has run an article and founders Linc and Silvia just keep watching their graphs skyrocket. Chalkle is now well and truly a business up, running and keeping its staff very busy.

And that’s a snapshot. 1 of 12 companies, run by a just a couple of the 75 strong Enspiral network. Yes, a lot is happening.

Sam Rye, Silvia Zuur, Linc Gasking, Lee Bennett and Josh Vial at Chalkle’s launch party