Workshop, August 2010

earth.re.create’s youth exchange and international workshop gathered 25 young participants and 5 leaders between the age of 18 and 30 from Austria, Sweden, Spain, Latvia and Germany in Graz for a 10 days fun and intense exchange ending with the opening of a traveling exhibition, now also shown in the partner countries, produced by the participants, on the connection between sustainability, climate change, human rights and fashion.

Common denominators of the participants in the exchange where their interest in the connection between fashion, climate change and human rights. Their love for making fashion, photography, street art and movies and curiosity about D.I.Y, artivism and craftivism. The participants got to spend 10 days with likeminded, energetic and creative young people creating a traveling exhibition, learning from one another and contributing with their ideas on how we can change the world!

Exchange dates: 3^rd to 12^th of August, 2010
Location: fashionLAB Graz, Klosterwiesgasse 5, 8010 Graz
Partners organizations and countries: earth.re.create (Austria), The Good Tribe (Sweden), Ye too ponese (Spain), Creative group MYSTYLe Art (Latvia), Kulturlabor Trial & Error e.V. (has changed name from Selbstgemacht) (Germany)

Youth organizations with wide range of competences
Five youth driven organizations organized the exchange, all representing different kinds of European youth culture. The Austrian network earth.re.create, which provides young people with empowerment methods for environmental change hosts the exchange. The participating organizations where The Good Tribe and earth.re.create from Sweden, representing young social entrepreneurs who aim at visualizing sustainable development processes. Ye too ponese from Spain, Creative group MYSTYLe Art from Latvia and Kulturlabor Trial & Error e.V. (has changed name from Selbstgemacht) from Germany all represent a strong and innovative Do It Yourself-culture, artivism and craftivism. The groups and their leaders embodied a wide range of interests and competences; from workshop facilitation and concept development, to sustainability, human rights and climate change to photography, movie-making, web, marketing and event organization.

The two parts of the exchange
During the first part of the exchange the participants gathered information and analyzed information on human rights, climate change and sustainability connected to the process of creating and making fashion. The exchange had a strong participatory culture and informal education focus where the participant’s own ideas and strategies for solving problems where central. The leader’s roles where to empower and motivate the participants to find their own solutions.

During the second part of the exchange, the participants put together their ideas, impressions and opinions to a public traveling exhibtion comprised by designed garments, photography, movies, texts, web content, performance, activism and other elements curated by the participants. The exchange ended with the opening of the exhibition in Graz, and has since then also been shown in the other partner countries at events organized by the participants that visited us in Graz.

Here’s the movie from the opening event in Graz:

Work during the exchange
During the exchange, the participants got hands-on involved with the impact of our European way of consuming on people and planet. We dug into how human rights often are set aside in the production line, how climate change and growing consumption creates conflicts which impacts lives around the globe. The participants gained knowledge about more sustainable ways of living and plunged into ways of recycling our scarce resources instead of throwing things away.

There are two purposes of the exchange
The first purpose of the exchange was to take a criticial look at the European lifestyle, to analyse our habits and values and to raise awareness about the different aspects of sustainability and to empower the participants to find solutions to live more sustainable lives. The second purpose was to initialize a European network of young people interested in sustainable development, Do It Yourself methods and fashion.

Sponsors of the exchange