Fixing for a (Green) Future!

Delighted to attend East Lothian Climate Hub's Green Futures Festival at Queen Margaret University yesterday!

What a fabulous event, attended by groups and organisations from across East Lothian and beyond, all working to promote environmental sustainability and social justice. It was a joy to be part of it all!

We had a stall in the Circular Economy area, alongside the inspirational Lower Impact Living (CIC).

Plus we ran a workshop 'Zero Waste - New Futures for Old Clothes', which was hectic from start to finish with children, parents, carers and teachers all throwing themselves wholeheartedly into our mountain of old clothes and fabric remnants, eager to get creative and make...headbands from old shirts, bags for bears(!), bags for snacks from old table cloths and shirts, earrings from old denim, fabric 'pets' - drawing a shape, cutting, sewing and stuffing with the tiniest of fabric scraps. Many thanks to our magnificent tutors, Sheena and Caroline, for your remarkable energy, patience, enthusiasm, commitment and humour!

Our Project Officer gave a brief overview of our work, 'Fixing for a Future: Embedding the Circular Economy in Local Communities' at the afternoon Circular Economy talk, along with Dr Melissa Marques McEwan, Assistant Professor in Sustainable and Circular Businesses, Heriot-Watt University on "An Introduction to the Circular Economy: Policy and Practice" and Louise Hastie, Co-Founder of Lower Impact Living (Lil CIC) on "The Revolving Wardrobe: A ReUse Project in East Lothian". The talk was well-attended and ended with a conversation on the challenges facing re-use projects, including the final destination point for the clothes we no longer want or see fit for purpose and ways we can keep fabric and old clothes in circulation for as long as possible.

As part of Fixing for a Future's 'Against Fast Fashion!' campaign it was great to make a plan with Lower Impact Living to have a regular collection of their surplus stock of denim and adult shirts from their Revolving Wardrobe reuse project to use in our workshops with young people across East Lothian. Definitely a win-win for both our projects and the environment!

Another brilliant link we made was with Educational Centre of the Polish Diaspora. The Centre aims to cultivate and maintain Polish memory and traditions, support the integration of the Polish community living in Edinburgh and its surroundings and the integration of the Polish community with the local community. Many of the children who were attending classes on Saturday at Queen Margaret University joined our 'Zero Waste - New Futures for Old Clothes Workshop'. We're already making plans for collaboration later this year!

Beyond the Circular Economy area, the Green Future Festival had a vast array of stalls, talks, workshops on food, biodiversity, energy, as well as a brilliant selection of activities for children, including spinning and weaving, cyanotype, a scavenger hunt and nature diary-making.

It was a fact and fun-filled day for all the family and an opportunity for everyone working on climate and community justice to get together, form new links, plan further collaborations and amplify the collective climate action voice.

Thanks so much to the Climate Hub team - Jo, Tessie and Bobby - for a wonderful day, bringing everyone together and enabling Fixing for a Future to make some really valuable connections that will enhance our work and help us further our goals this year and beyond!

Fixing for a Future aims to: