In 2020, operated in the year the pandemic hit the world. Within the confines of a pandemic, over 100 participants came together, 5 or 8 at a time, to sew, to learn and to contemplate the ripples our everyday actions have had on a planet that is increasingly more fragile.
Renew Earth Sweat Shop
It was important to galvanise a community to confront the issue of fashion waste by creating micro-community spaces for people to gather to learn, to sew and upcycle together to build an island wide momentum towards a final presentation of upcycled creations. It wasn’t a problem that could be solved alone but a problem that needed a collective push. It was essential to bring conversations from a grassroots level to one that could address the global.
In the second edition of the Renew Earth Sweat Shop, we seek to open up opportunities to bring new partners into a creative programme that intersects with design innovation, craftsmanship, local manufacturing and youth empowerment. In this edition of Renew Earth Sweat Shop, we want to bring those sewing skills to the next level as we think about inspiring, innovative and practical upcycling and repair ideas that can find a place in people’s fashion wardrobes.
We embark on a 4-month programme from May to August that invites youths, talents from our first edition of Renew Earth Sweat Shop and other self-initiated communities to work on a viable clothes repair programme and reusable mask innovations using industrial tools like embroidery machines, laser cutting and 3D printing solutions.
We kick off this edition with three Fashion Repair Ideation Workshops on 8, 15 & 29 May 2.00 – 4.00pm, inviting the community to think about innovations in upcycling and repairing fashion waste and bringing these ideas to life.
Over June and July, participants will develop their projects by learning prototyping and production skills in sewing, embroidery and digital fabrication with our partners MakeIT and The Fab Lab.
The result would be a Renew Earth Sweat Shop Showcase in the Temasek Shophouse space from 31 July to 28 August that reflects a boutique experience where its artefacts are engineered to inspire, reimagine the future of fashion, carry the message of fashion sustainability and change the way people see fashion waste.
Sign up here: https://fb.me/e/1mCJEn3IR