In the 1980s in World 285, Newcastle City Council took a grassroots approach to meeting the needs of the people living in and around the city. In a neighbourhood called Shieldfield, which is run by the people who live, work and play there, a local community gardening and textile maker space is thriving.
The space is run cooperatively by its members and plants are grown by groups with various interests using people and planet friendly principles. The cooperative explores connections between fashion, textiles, plants, medicine, food and craft. People of all ages engage with slow seasonal making.
The space supports the wellbeing of the community through collective practical learning, connecting people to their local landscape and each other and providing space for conversation. Exciting ideas and collaborations begin to form.
What if …
… we had a local hub for plant growing and textiles, run cooperatively by its members? A place to gather for mending, dyeing, foraging and making. A place connected to our environment and guided by the seasons …
Issue targeted:
The mainstream fashion system is broken – the processes are negatively impacting the planet and its people and we are completely disconnected from where our textiles originate.
Inspiration:
Community skill sharing, collective growing and making, our local ecology
This World was contributed by members of the community that have attended Grow & Sew (located in Shieldfield, Newcastle upon Tyne), using a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence which allows others to share and adapt the work in any medium and for any purpose, providing that they credit the author and share their material using the same Creative Commons licence.
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