Description
At this event, participants bring along articles of clothing that they are willing to part with and exchange these clothes with others. To make these events more informative, organisers can arrange for speakers to talk about sustainability, climate change, the fashion industry etc, followed by a QnA session, or arranging workshops on how to alter and repair clothes. If possible you should also provide access to sewing machines and fabrics so that traded garments can be altered and redesigned if needed. This event can be done as a one-off or repeated as a community outreach event.
Target Audience
- Adult citizens
- Children 7-12
- Families
- Teenagers
You can do it with all those groups, but we did it with professionals from different fields like public engagement or the cultural and creative sector.
Benefits
Benefits
Clothes swapping events can be a great opportunity to combine fashion with other science subjects, such as sustainability and climate change. By doing this you can add some real-world context to these topics and also provide an outlet for those who are wanting to lead a mure sustainable existance. Also by combining the swapping events with hands-on workshops you are able to share practical skills with those who participate in the event.
Preparations
First of all, you would need to find a venue space for the clothes swap to take place, and possibly source some additional clothes for participants to have a look through, just in case uptake is low, and to ensure that there are clothes for participants to look through.
Depending on what additional activities you plan for this event, you may want to reach out to local research institutes or charities to invite expert speakers to give a presentation on the chosen topic, or alternatively, find some people who are able to lead the workshops.
If possible, it would be best to co-organise this event with a textiles or art institute that may be able to source the equipment and materials more easily and may perhaps know people who can run or facilitate the workshops.
You should start to market the event a few weeks/months beforehand.
Resources
A step by step guide to how to run a clothes swap event can be found here.