The Festival Of Thrift

Reflections from the Climate Cafe Advisory Group

Group trip 24/09/2022

Group Reflections

On Saturday 24th September a group of our climate café contributors took part in a research visit to the fantastic Festival of Thrift (all the way in Redcar) to get some ideas to bring back to Stoke!

Across the day we had the opportunity to:

Take part in practical workshops—including making our own laundry powder and perfume, woodwork, printing, creating a terrarium, all kinds of textile upcycling.

Meet the people who run the Fixit café and learn about their approach to community-led repair.

Share a zero-mile meal through their project the ‘Town is the Menu’.

Watch some climate-emergency inspired performances.

Have some right good conversations with workshop leaders, fellow attendees and volunteers.

We will be sharing some of the groups' highlights and reflections from the visit and we’ll also have some on display as part of the activities at our regular Climate Café, we’d love you to join the conversation if you’re coming along.

Massive thank you to all the fantastic volunteers, community members and artists who took part.

Selim

The Festival of Thrift was very good. The festival was based in Redcar. The journey from Stoke to Redcar took a few hours. We had our breakfast in the minivan during our trip to the north.

The festival was way bigger than I had expected. There were so many food counters, gift counters, music, performances and so on. 

I have joined a masterclass to make a wooden spoon. I use my wooden spoon for cooking now.

Tracie

Thank you for the opportunity to attend. It's been the best day of my year so far.

At first sight the festival of Thrift, now in its 10th year, seemed to be dominated by food stalls. It was interesting walking amongst them and seeing local produce with cuisines from all over the globe. It wasn't what I had in mind by thrift and seemed more mindful of a large farmer's market split between three main walkways; each stall possessing a decidedly artisan, luxury food appeal that seemed very well received by festival attendees. 

It took slightly longer to pick out the thrift stalls and the many arts and crafts opportunities. I was particularly interested in the repair workshop, hovering while someone gave advice to a man regarding his bicycle; 'you can get that part from [such and such] at [such] Street, and there's an excellent You Tube video on fitting it here'. The store seemed to be a haphazard jumble of spare parts for electrical appliances and various ironmongery. I witnessed two men peering at a mobile phone screen trying to work out a repair together. The whole concept of social fixing and resource pooling excites me. 

Later on I saw a stall that made wooden artifacts. The workshop was expensive, but it was great to see a family working together to create dining furniture. There was also a clothes repair stall and close to, a lady who used felting to patch up and add artistic interest to garments. 

In a teepee I sat through a workshop showing how to make soft pots from chiffon cloth and a pair of stockings, which are said to be slug and mould resistant, lasting many years; even outdoors. The one on display had been in use for over 25 years. Each pot was easy to fashion and looked beautiful decorated with sequins and ribbon. 

There were many arts and crafts stalls, which I was happy to see centred around families. It was clear some needed to command a higher admission price due to costly materials such as stained glass and metals for jewellery making. With some of the others, I wasn't convinced the cost could always be justified. Overall, I was slightly disappointed more use wasn't made of recycling used materials already available; a notable exception being the plastic containers used to make pots and puppets and the straw insect/bee friendly garden homes.

One workshop gave a taster of the Ukelele, going through basic chord and strumming patterns culminating in a shared song. I was pleased to see this attracted family groups and people of all ages. I stood for a while and watched as attendees progressed into confident, able, first time musicians. 

Everywhere you looked there were information stalls and lists of green ventures and collaborative organisations local to the Tees Valley. It felt hopeful.

As a group we set down to a community meal joining many other festival goers on a long winding table. The vegetarian three course menu attempted to tie local food with local history and was a piece of art in itself, and the food, interesting and imaginative. I enjoyed the concept of a shared community meal with unique ingredients. Although the meal suggested elements of fine dining, there was also a lovely thrown together feel and I appreciated that they had drawn upon surplus supermarket supplies. 

There was a lot to take in here with various musical shows and performances interspaced. What I really liked about the festival was it's local focus; it reached into other cultures but always returned to Redcar and the Tees Valley. 

The final band headlining the festival commemorated Vin Garbutt: a celebrated folk hero who wrote about economic depression and poverty in the North. His songs were mindful of Billy Bragg. When the lead vocalist was joined by an all male choir, the lyrical harmonies brought a lump to the throat as we listened to stories of times gone by with a realisation nothing much ever changes. 

I think, for me, this was the true calling of the festival; not so much thrift, though the clear formation of many ideas leading in that direction; but far more a celebration of the heritage and identity of the Tees Valley; it's past, present and potential future. 

I feel indebted to B-arts that I was able to attend this, and hopeful we might sow the seeds of something just as beautiful for Stoke on Trent.

Sue

The festival of thrift.

It was food stalls

And Castle walls, and no walls at all

Between friends and knowledge

That we thought we'd forgot.

It was trends with clothes to swap

And mend and save we left altered slightly

In thought

And rather wet.

We made stuff from toilet rolls and glass

And tried not to notice.... it was quite middle class

On long tables somewhat Bento

Food hidden in long histories writ large

Across the menu 

The thrift festival was better described in the subtitle of sustainability.  It seemed a little disingenuous as mostly I would associate thrift with practical frugal tips and very little I saw concerned practical living.  There were a few repair stalls but mostly people were trying their hand at  nailing bits of wood together or hand carving a spoon from a piece of wood (2 hours) and £14 cost.  Whereas a large proportion of the stalls were small food producers and what I would consider more exclusive premium food such as sold at farmers markets.  

There were a few small workshops suitable for kids and these were popular and showed adults that easy to obtain household waste could be used and turned into entertainment.  

We went to a workshop on money saving but it turned out the earlier talk would have been more appropriate. The later one was about investing.

It was interesting to compare the community meal with the b arts one.  The menu was quite creative and sounded intriguing and therefore the food was more of an adventure as there was a certain anticipation in what was coming I think b arts could do that better.  I liked the mystery but the actual food wasn't as good in reality.  

The stage was good and people really appreciated the music which went with the festival theme.  There were stalls selling clothes interspersed with some swapping or altering which was good as they were all on one theme.

I liked the 'areas' it was a good idea.  Also some performances and characters were moving around the site. That encouraged people to move around to find things and experience different environments.

I was very pleased to participate and it was a good day I'm glad we came together at lunch it gave us time to compare notes and chat.

We really enjoyed the opportunity.

Thank you.