openMaterials

Swap-O-Rama-Rama is a clothing swap and series of do-it-yourself workshops in which a community explores creative reuse through the recycling of used clothing. The website has ideas for clothes swapping, fashion parades and DIY workshops, along with suggestions for rebranding your creations with ‘100% Recycled’ or ‘Modified by Me’ labels.
The event was started in 2005 by Wendy Tremayne. From a paper that outlines the concepts that inspire her work:

Less than a hundred years ago things were quite different. What people owned is what they created or what someone they knew created for them. Imbued with the stories of our lives our material goods embodied our creativity and spoke of our community. Before the industrial revolution objects were not likely be tossed to the trash like the heaps of plastic that line our streets and overload landfills today. These objects were made of sacred stuff, the energy and intention of people. You could say that one difference between 100 years ago and today is that 100 years ago we were all makers, that is we made the objects that filled the landscape of our material existence. In less than 100 years we’ve lost sight of the discovery that the making of things is not an activity to be avoided in order to attain leisure, but rather a playful and leisurely endeavor unto itself. Naturally when we are makers we are part of communities of people connected through the history of ideas and even the natural world from which all of our materials arise. No maker can exist on their own. Knowledge, teaching and the sharing and collectivizing of ideas are inherent in the creative process. The maker learns that every craft and skill tells a story that involves the evolution of an idea that lead to this moment in time. Time collapses and we sit face to face with our brothers and sisters of the past. If we look back far enough we see our materials as they come from the planet in the form of raw material. From here a maker can see that we can never really take credit for the creation of anything as we are never independent of this history or the earth - the ultimate and only real maker.

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