Bumblebee Creative Social Enterprises

The Birth of Bumblebee

Pauline Crosbie first conceived Bumblebee Creative Social Enterprises in 1996. As an artist and educator working with disadvantaged Australian communities, Pauline saw the need to create nurturing environments in which people are sustained by creative and valuable endeavours.

In the early 90’s, whilst writing a doctorate on how communities nurture and sustain themselves, Pauline visited India where she witnessed terrible factory conditions and widespread poverty. Pauline became a passionate advocator of Fair Trade and decided to use her educative and artistic skills to spread awareness of Fair Trade together with environmental sustainability and the importance of nourishing creative enterprise. She began touring exhibitions about these issues to communities and schools under the name of her new organisation, Bumblebee.

For the next ten years, Pauline worked to educate children on a property in Diamond Creek. She created holiday and after school programs to encourage children to think about and care for the environment and to learn how to make things and to value the creative process. To send shipments she taught in local schools and had her salary placed directly in savings accounts to help cover costs. She cooked in local church kitchens and pubs, beginning in small ways to employ people to work with her. This marked the beginning of Rainbow Hands and its concept of a community of grassroots workers sharing their talents and abilities in sustainable ways in order to work in the developing world. Her vision was to engage people in her own community, reach out to those in need and in so doing create a sustainable way to support others - social Enterprise that nurtures people 'here' with a view to support people 'there'.

The vision is to connect people in a life giving and fun process, filled with colour and joy that builds community and sustains it while creating a path forward to help others.

Bumblebee Takes Off

From this inception, Bumblebee Creative Social Enterprises and its design arm, Bumblebee Factory, have supported communities in Australia and around the world. Pauline’s chief desire is to give these communities a creative, life-giving space in which to produce beautiful things.

Bumblebee Creative Social Enterprises helps communities identify their creative skills, while Bumblebee Factory aids them in the design process. Bumblebee has fostered numerous cottage industries producing craft and food products. It helps communities network with neighbouring communities and other aid organisations in their area in order to set up joint enterprises. It also aids in resource provision by donating recycled materials and in local resource management. Finally, Bumblebee markets each community’s creations, ensuring all profits are returned to the community. When people buy a Bumblebee product, they can be sure they are buying Fair Trade, environmentally friendly, quality produce, hand-made with love.

Bumblebee's Philosophy

The driving philosophy behind Bumblebee is that each individual can learn in a variety of contexts and that it is vitally important to stimulate all the different senses in a learning or working environment. The work and the workplace - or the learning process and the learning centre - need to be creative and, most importantly, fun. People , animals ,the environment should be cared for as  if it was out own dear self.

We learn when we are playing... creating and enjoying what  we do! When we explore with rigor and find answers to questions about the why and the what of things, the how and the where. We should never stop asking questions. We should never stop looking for answers and we should enter into dialogue with all those who share the grand adventure to help bring about justice, peace and care for  each other in real communion as we care the skin of the land and future generations.

Our Products should be made in integrity and sold and then looked after the same way. We need to look after things!

We heal the past hurts when we become engaged in creative endeavors that support others and that take the focus of ourselves.

All aspects of current knowledge about the roles of nature and nurture in intelligence have been taken into account in the designs and techniques employed in Bumblebee’s product development and manufacture processes. We care for creation, all life and we nurture the potential of life in all we do.

Pauline Crosbie

Pauline is the founder of Bumblebee Creative Social Enterprises and of the Bumblebee Factory, for which she has developed the concept, the characters and the designs.

Pauline has assisted many organisations over the years to create their own social enterprises empowering communities to work collaboratively, sharing their resources and  moving forward to make positive difference in the way they manufacture, 

Pauline has spent her life forging connections within and between communities - educating, inspiring and engaging with people in order to develop human potential and teach others about the importance of fair trade and social justice. She has worked variously as an educator, pastoral worker, creative designer and curator and has now taken on the role of convenor managing finance and logistics, for shipments  and sustainable village development around the globe.

It has always been Pauline’s passion to share the importance of the gift of life with others – “to celebrate it in every thing we do, in relation to the care of all beings, all creation and each other”.

Stephen Crosbie

Stephen Crosbie, known to his friends as “Doc”, is married to Pauline and runs an Ultrasound business. Over the years, Stephen has been the rock behind Pauline's work. He has been largely responsible for the funding of the many creative projects she has developed - projects caring for children and creative projects within Australia and overseas. Together, they have worked as a team, sharing their different gifts to ensure the continuation of Bumblebee’s work.

Stephen’s role is one of encouragement and support, cook extraordinaire and father to their four children, Sebastian, Hannah, Myra and Augustine.

Stephen is currently responsible for designing Koala Spirit’s Global/Local Village medical containers and is also assisting with the sourcing of materials for the containers.