Member Article

Thrift guru comes to County Durham

Design and thrift guru Wayne Hemingway will come to County Durham for a festival of frugality next month.

The two-day Festival of Thrift is taking place at Darlington’s Lingfield Point on the weekend of September 21 and 22.

The festival was conceived by the team at Lingfield Point - Europe’s biggest sustainable mixed-use development - led by John Orchard, a director of of Marchday, owners of Lingfield Point.

The aim is to promote sustainable living while celebrating upcycling and recycling.

A range of events will take place during the weekend, ranging from an alternative village fete, to street performers, pop up allotments and a thrifty swapshop.

And creative academics from Teesside University are helping to promote the message of adopting a thrifty lifestyle as part of the festival.

Lingfield Point artist-in-residence Becky Sunter who will show festival visitors how to create fashion and must-have accessories with left-over bits-and-bobs, while Leanda French and Rob Burton, from Teesside University’s School of Arts & Media, are also involved in helping to host events during the festival.

Leanda, Programme Leader in Spatial Design, will be involved in an Ideal Thrifty Homes event, which will see specially designed room sets created, working with FRADE (Furniture Reclamation and Delivery Enterprise), along with craft workshops looking at how to create interior magazine looks through upcycling.

Students from the University’s interior design and interior architecture degree courses will also be involved, along with volunteers from the University’s Darlington campus and students working towards VolunTees volunteering certificates.

Leanda said: “It’s all about promoting the idea of ‘make and do’ and self-sufficiency. We’ve held a sewing bee on campus to provide a taster of what we plan to do during the festival.

“The festival will be of interest to anyone keen on living a thrifty life and also those with a passion for nostalgia, who still have their grandma’s button tin. We’re really looking forward to getting involved and helping to boost interest in upcycling and recycling.”

Rob, Principal Lecturer in Design, will be working on a project during the Festival of Thrift involving paper clothing, working with fashion students from Kirklees College in West Yorkshire.

He previously put together an art exhibition, displayed in Japan, involving paper garments. Although those garments were not designed to be worn, Rob is developing this idea of creating wearable garments from unusual materials by making paper clothing during the festival.

Rob said: “We will be looking at how we can deconstruct clothing. We’ll be asking people to bring their own clothing to the workshops during the festival, where they can recycle them by taking them apart and making them into new garments.”

Anyone with thrift tips to share or items to donate for recycling and upcycling can contact Leanda at l.french@tees.ac.uk.

More information about the Festival of Thrift can be found at www.festivalofthrift.co.uk

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Martin Walker .