The City of Athens organizes an interactive event with the theme:

Waste is out of fashion…Let your clothes write their own story.

It’s not a one-dimensional festival, it will be a whole set of experiential workshops and seminars, original exhibits and inventive theatrical events based on an entire philosophy around sustainable textiles and environment.

It all starts with perception! To activate perception, awareness is needed, and technology comes as an aid to awareness. And all of these by combining imagination, ancient Greek tradition, modern European art and above all good environmental practices. A garment doesn’t become waste if we keep it active in our lives, if we give it a second life and ideally if we don’t even produce it.

In a few words we reduce, reuse, recycle. These will be the 3 pillars of the event.

The magical abilities of clothes & textile products.

Polymorphism. Clothes & textiles in general have the ability to change form. An old shirt can be turned into a dress, a pair of jeans into a bag and a sheet into yarn for knitting. The polymorphic ability of clothing, switching a final product to a raw material and vice versa, sparks the imagination for creative experiments.

The journey through space and time. From production to consumption and recycling, a garment can travel from Europe to Asia or America to Australia. At the same time, the dress of an 18th-century queen may be exhibited in a contemporary museum , the coat of a famous 19th-century painter may end up to a 21st-century merchant, a grandmother’s shawl may end up to her beloved granddaughter, our favorite blouse can be exchanged for our best friend, a child in an institution can wear our own child’s cardigan. Our clothes, if we let them, they can write their own story! Lets see what will be done.

The City of Athens in collaboration with our partners Recycom, and the POIO laboratory of the City of Athens, organizes the event: “Waste is out of fashion…Let your clothes write their own story “.

Targets: The promotion of the concepts of processing, reuse and recycling of clothes and textiles. Information on the environmental impact of the production, consumption and disposal of clothes and textiles in landfills.

At the event the participants(children aged from 7 to 11) will be taught through experiential workshops how they can smartly recycle their old clothes and fabrics with simple techniques. The kids will be able to bring their own old clothes to be recycled or reused and they will have the opportunity to take the tour of the POIO laboratory of the City of Athens, where modern technological machines transform old fabrics into other new useful materials. They will be informed in detail about the recycling process of the products collected in the purple bins of their neighborhood (clothes, fabrics, linens, etc.). Finally, they will be informed about daily environmental practices they can adopt (green washing, ecological detergents, etc.), in order to actively contribute to tackling climate change. Also the outcome of the workshops will be given  as gift to the participants!

Description of activities:

The actions that will take place during the event will be spaced in such a way that the participants during their tour can clearly identify which stations are related to reduction, which to reuse and which to recycling of textile products.

PILLAR I: Reduction.

Information station: Projection on a giant screen.  The following will be displayed on the screen: Video animation entitled “Change your habits”. Informational Material from the official EWWR platform: Videos, fact sheets and statistics that capture both the current situation and future forecasts. The recycling efforts of the City of Athens.

PILLAR II: Reuse – Recycling.

1st STREAM OF ACTIVITIES. Clothing as raw material | Five stations

Station 1: Making t-shirt thread. Stations 2-5: The loom in a different way

2nd STREAM OF ACTIVITIES The second life of a garment | Six stations Station 6: Earth Super Heroes  Station 7: Fabric art.  Station 8: Draw it.  Station 9: Block print stamps using the laser cutting machines and the 3d printers  Station 10: Punch needles. Station 11: The contribution of maker space technology to fashion.

3rd STREAM OF ACTIVITIES Creative reuse of clothes. Two stations. Station 12:  Making Christmas decoration. Station 13: Station of free creation.

INSTALLATIONS. Station 14: Thematic installation. It is an artistic installation made by textiles, which will be realized and developed throughout the event with the input of the visitors. Station 15: Entrance installation. A mountain of clothes will be created in the center of the space.Station 16: Event installation. An exhibit with the event’s motto: Waste is out of fashion, will be created in the center of the space. Station 17: Thematic screenings. Viewing selected examples of clothing resulting from particular technological and eco-friendly approaches.

PILLAR III: Recycling.

Station 1. Collection of clothes for recycling. Station 2: Theatrical action Recycle Survivor. Station 3: The purple textile recycling bin. We inform the public about the  network of purple textile recycling bins in the City of Athens. We give instructions on the correct way to dispose clothes and to locate the nearest bin in our area.