Week-long repair and recycle pop-up shop at Potato Market ends today
Stock image of young man repairing electrical item
CARLOW Co Council, in partnership with VOICE Ireland, is hosting a week-long pop-up shop and several free workshops in a vacant shop in Carlow town this week until today, 10 October, to encourage people to repair and recycle clothing.
The pop-up is called ‘Fabric of Change Carlow’ and is part of a two-year pilot programme from VOICE Ireland and the council with support from Zero Waste Europe.
It is being held at 2 Potato Market and has been open from noon to 6pm every day. Throughout the week, there has been a creative repair corner where tools will be made available for people to patch and repair clothes.
Local charity shops are curating rails of secondhand clothes that will be on offer in the shop. There will also be a wall where anyone can post a note on the future of fashion in Carlow.
All workshops are free, but some require prebooking.
The first workshop is called Learn to knit and crochet and will see people being taught simple knitting and crochet skills from 6.30-8.30pm on 8 October. You must email dsewell@carlowcoco.ie with the reference ‘knit’ to book a place.
Amanda from Steadfast Sewing club will be at the pop-up to share easy repair, stitching and embellishment techniques and answer questions from noon to 6pm on 9 October.
To round the pop-up off, there will be a Swap, stitch and save event on 10 October from noon to 6pm, where people can bring up to five items to swap with others. There will also be lessons in repairing and embellishing clothes over the course of the afternoon.
There will also be a number of workshops for young people aged 12-19 years. Activities will include styling complete outfits from secondhand clothing, transforming unworn garments, making jewellery from broken or discarded pieces, reworking unsold stock into something new and trying knitting, crochet and embellishment techniques.
There will also be a special display of work by students from Tullow Community School, finalists in the ReLove Fashion competition Alongside the pop-up, the council’s environment awareness office is running a youth upskilling programme, which will see post-primary teachers, youth workers, library staff, youthreach facilitators, charity shop managers and community group members take part in Train the mentors workshops that cover basic repairs, mending and embellishment and how to run a relaxed, youth-led space. The goal is to have local mentors in place who can continue to teach people such skills after the pop-up finishes.
