Repair caffe Re-Geppetto – circular community in Pula

About the venue:

Our EWWR project this year is all about circular community and art!
Repair café Re-Geppetto is a new place in our Community center Rojc where citizens can repair their things for free on a do-it-yourself principle. The purpose of the workshop is to provide all interested citizens with a space, tools and advice they need in order to repair small household appliances, furniture, clothes and toys on their own or with the help of volunteers and our workshop manager. Community Center Rojc is a singular “place of civil society,” an alternative urban culture center situated in a small town called Pula, Croatia, in the north of the Mediterranean in southern Europe. Rojc hosts 111 associations engaged in very different activities: culture and art, sports and recreation, children and youth, ethnic minorities, psychosocial work, etc. Rojc is an incubator of many projects and activities wich aim at sustainable development: from urban gardening, reuse flea markets, DIY upcycling workshops, promotion of sharing communities etc. NGO Green Istria is part of the Rojc Alliance and it is situated in the center.

Together with tenants and citizens, Green Istria will organize different workshops and events in order to promote EWWR week and to promote the importance of circular communities  and engaged art for more sustainable future.

1. Skills workshop – how to redisign old textille
In the repair café Re-Geppetto our famous zero waste fashion designer Ivana Tomić will hold practical skills workshop where citizens can learn how to use old textile and re-design it into something new. We will ask participants to bring their favorite old items of clothing (jeans, t-shirt etc.) and to redesign it into something new!

2. Creative workshop with artist
We will organize a workshop of creating jewellery from scrap materials. Mirna Sišul is a freelance artist with a degree in the Academy of Applied Arts. She has been engaged in art for twenty one years. Her works, which are found in many public and private collections around the world, combine various art forms: painting, interior design, fashion design etc.. Lately, she has been working with recycled materials and she hosts many workshops for citizens.

3. Finalizing and opening of an art mural in front of Repair Café Re-Geppetto – young artists Mateo Žufić and Katarina Memedović will finalise their mural located in front of the Repair café as promotion of reuse, reduce and repair principles. The story behind the mural is interesting because it illustrates the origins of the name of our repair café, which was named after Geppetto, father of the famous fictional character Pinocchio, who was also a carpenter. The mural depicts a huge wale from the story of Pinocchio, it was created in a painting technique with the addition of three dimensional upcycled pieces. The work on the mural started with a community action with citizens and will be finalized during EWWR.

4. Radio debate on our Community Radio Rojc – “How artist can use their work as a platform to raise awareness and imagine a more sustainable future?”

Many contemporary artists have become climate activists, using their work as a platform to raise awareness and imagine a more sustainable future. While this year’s EWWR is a strange one to say the least, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us that global, collectivized action against existential threat is possible. And art can be a beacon of hope, lighting the way and compelling us to act.
The psychology behind public engagement suggests that the visual and other  narratives provided through art help people process, internalize, and respond to information more effectively than facts alone. By molding their experiences into an opportunity for emotional connection, artists form a keystone between the viewer and the changing climate…
We will host different local artists on our community radio that will talk about the importance of socially engaged art for a more sustainable future.