Give-and-Take's Kick-off Event

This past Sunday we kicked off Give-and-Take at the Polish Hill Arts Festival in Pittsburgh. The scene was made up of a small-scale clothing exchange from community donations; a hands-on upcycling demo; and some one-on-one storytelling inside the airstream. In total we had about 300 visitors; circulated several hundred pieces through our system; and gathered about 30 stories from festival-goers.

As we process the experience, questions are filtering through different perspectives. From a functional angle, can we sustain this amount of effort time and time again? Was the size right and manageable? Did most people find something they wanted or could use? Were we able to communicate quickly and clearly who we are and what we do? From a social perspective, did we stay true to our values of getting one-on-one time with everyone we transacted with? Did people have fun? Did people meet new people through the process of exchange? Did we encourage conversations? From a consumer perspective, did we plant any seeds about alternative modes of consumption and exchange? Did we open ourselves up to future collaborations? Did our service give clothing donators the sense that they're really making a contribution to the community or participating in something meaningful? As for the overall experience, was this a relaxed atmosphere? Was it casual, informal and approachable? Did we encourage people to play and share?

Give-and-Take is proving to have a number of audiences as well as functions. In the coming weeks and months, our challenge will be to continue refining and providing for each aspect listed above, so we can not only increase the circulation of everyday objects but expand the conversation about what it means to consume, exchange and keep our stuff alive.


R-L: A hand-out briefly explaining Give-and-Take; free item cards for those who donate or make a creative contribution; story-telling handouts; and ways to participate in the project

That's Right.

At long last: give-and-take

give-and-take is a community-based project that is developing services, activities and events to circulate pre-loved clothing throughout the local area. Along the way we share ideas and thoughts on how to re-use, repurpose and rethink the clothes that pass through our hands.

Join us at the give-and-take Kick-off
The Polish Hill Arts Festival
Sunday, July 17th from Noon-9pm.
Please join us for the first in a series of local socials to exchange and repurpose clothing.

Bring an item or bag of clothing to donate to the collection we're assembling for public use. In thanks, you're free to pull from the pile we've collected to date. We'll be using your donations at public workshops and clothing exchanges; to showcase ideas around the city for reusing and repurposing clothes; and to serve as a free resource for people in need.

This just in:

Jackie McDowell of Iron City Upcyclery will be joining us with some of her handwork. She'll be providing hands-on demos throughout the day. Check back for times and details.

Just look for the airstream.
(Lent to us from the folks over at Lili Coffeeshop. Thanks Rob!)

Brainstorm Session #2: A Word of Caution about Storytelling

Our second session was a powerful dose of reality as attendees challenged the trendiness of storytelling and the need for it to be an essential feature in the service. Everyone agreed that clothing is laced with meaning about our personal histories, identity and value systems. But workshop members still had a knee jerk reaction to the storytelling, cautioning us to think carefully about why and when it serves a purpose or enhances the experience. This criticism was exactly what we had hoped to hear about.

At the same time, we talked at length about the project's name--not to find that perfectly brand-able phrase but to get to the essence of what this prototype is about. What was making the rounds were names that evoked a sense of the legacy that clothing brings with it and the willingness to take things at face value. Names like "As Is" and "The Shirt off my Back" gave pause. Ultimately they didn't make the cut, so we're still out there trying to capture that kernal that will help explain what we do.

The majority of the evening was spent on programming efforts. Again there was a deep conversation about what value a workshop could bring to attendees. Many people pushed right past functional activities such as re-use and tailoring workshops to take a look at the emotional side of clothing selection. Given that one part of this project is to broker clothing for people re-entering the work force, one beautiful idea suggested was to create an event where community members/attendees would break into teams and put together outfits from the collection for women in need. From there, the women could "judge" which outfits they liked the best and then walk away with a new wardrobe. This way the transactional, anonymous nature of a social closet is replaced with a more community-oriented event where women come together in a low pressure, highly playful way to help put together needed outfits.

The world is turning in a good way this week. Happy to be here.

Brainstorm Session #1: Programming our mobile, pop-up collection process

Last night, we had the first of our two brainstorming sessions to gather ideas around reaching out to the community with programming efforts and informal, pop-up collection events for our upcoming re-use service.

At the heart of the project (currently searching for a name, so hang in there) is the desire to prototype a local system of services, activities and events to circulate pre-loved clothing and get them into new new hopeful hands. Along the way, we will gather stories from the community and explore new and unexpected ways to re-use and re-purpose the materials that make it into the mix.

On a functional level, we’re prototyping an informal yet practical way to keep everyday materials in play and out of the landfill. And on an emotional or social level, we’re creating ways to connect to one another through personal stories and interactions that come with wearing and exchanging clothing.

For any public effort we want to ensure that we're able to:
• Encourage and enable people to share the stories of their clothing
• Expose people to new ways of re-purposing or configuring clothing
• Allow people to leave with something if they like ie. provide hands on, tactile interaction with donations
• Create a way for people to stay in the loop after they’ve donated or participated ie. bring them into the fold
• Give people a sense of the big picture and how their efforts make an impact ie. understand their impact and effort

Over the course of this 4-6 month project, we will showcase the growing collection of clothing by offering different ways that people could re-purpose or re-configure items into new outfits or new realities. We want to inspire people with possibilities. Imagine: What once was a skirt is now an ottoman cover. What once was a pair of men's pants is now fitted for a woman. What once was three sweaters is now one new sweater (think: pre-loved). What once was a pile of rags is now a tapestry of the city (think Tejo Remy). As we hold workshops, we'll also invite community members to dive into the collection pile and create their own one-of-a-kind ideas that will be showcased in our storefront window. Using the materials, they will be invited to ammend, arrange, concoct and configure the clothes in any way they see fit.

One of the more exciting things that came out of last night's workshop was to forgo a set storefront and instead move about the city using abandoned and existing store fronts as our showcase spaces. This way, we can start to build relationships with the owners and area while creating a roving treasure hunt where clues about the city pop up wherever they might.

That said, we're looking for both creators and public facing spaces that will help support this idea. Interested? Or know someone who is? Let us know.

Another platform approach to developing local economies

Our food friends up in NYC have developed Smorgasbord, a Brooklyn Food Flea Market. Not sure how I feel about the association with flea markets--their "catch as catch can", of-varying-quality connotation, but I'm excited to see how Smorgasbord is focusing their effort on being the connective tissue between the regional growers, purveyors and producers who are concerned with food access, nutrition and sustainable growing practices. Instead of waiting for policy makers to make connections and do something about it, local experts are seeing both a philosophical and economic opportunity to provide an alternative to the current marketing structure that usually keeps these groups separated. Smorgasbord is offering a nice glimpse of a bottoms-up, systemic approach to local food production and distribution. Given their claim of building a democratic approach to eating and buying food, I'll be interested to see how they reach out to different consumers communities as their project evolves. They're not explicit how their established market place will be able reach as many people as possible.

In their words:
"Here are our goals with Smorgasburg: directly connect local/NYC purveyors with regional farmers/producers; make good, fresh, affordable food accessible to as many people as possible; provide purveyors and farmers with a platform to sustain their businesses; and create a market that makes eating and buying food fun, democratic, and easy."

Good luck Smorgasbord!

ReadyMadePGH: A Local Service for circulating clothing

After four months of research and planning we've prepared our roadmap for ReadyMadePGH. In the coming weeks, we will start prototyping the key features of the touch points; start communicating publicly; and be on the look-out for a storefront that can act as HQ.

ReadyMadePGH is a local system of services, activities, and events to circulate (re-cycle and repurpose) clothing within the local community. This project was inspired from fourteen years of holding small-scale, home-based clothing swaps and considering what impact these social exchanges could have when taken to a larger, community scale. In a nutshell, "We adopt your pre-loved clothes and create opportunities to get them into new, hopeful hands."

The ReadyMadePGH prototype has two over-lapping goals. The first is to understand the needs and behaviors that support high volume circulation of pre-loved consumer goods. The other is to understand how relationships take hold and deepen when we focus on the social interactions which are the backbone of the service. We see this project as both a community building tool as well as pragmatic public service.

When we swap, trade, barter, share clothing, not only do we keep needed and usable resources in play and out of our landfills, but we create real opportunities to have direct, meaningful contact between each other and our communities. Reuse systems rely on collective effort to work and create impact. Because of their collaborative nature, they have an inherent social component (whether explicit or not), which we believe is worth considering as an opportunity to build and deepen community ties. Services traditionally focus on efficiency and effectiveness as measures of success. These are reasonable goals. We want to understand, if we elevate the social aspects of re-use, can we not only increase the efficacy of a service, but also help to establish and deepen relationships throughout the community.

If prototyped in ways that encourage active participation and collaboration, these systems can provide opportunities for meaningful experiences for and between the people that use them. By tapping into and celebrating people’s shared efforts, needs and motivations, we can create social situations out of very functional matters. We can make spaces for people to share and workshop ideas; engage with like-minded people; enhance face-to-face time between makers and consumers; capture stories that celebrate clothing and the people who wear them; and even consider the legacy of what we make, consume, and discard. By prototyping a re-use system that focuses its attention on the social aspects of sharing and exchanging, we believe ReadyMade can help us understand how to design services that not are only efficient and effective but are meaningful and sustainable ways to share ideas and create personal connections within the local community.

Over the past couple of years, a quiet, powerful evolution in collaboration has been happening and gaining momentum throughout our society and economy. We are relearning how to create value out of shared and open resources in ways that balance personal self-interest with the good of the larger community.* Specifically we are seeing a rise in alternative or informal marketplaces (share, barter, swap, trade, etc.) where people are collaborating around the exchange and reuse of personal resources. From Rentoid (tool rental) to airbnb.com (accommodation sharing) to Landshare.com (green space swapping), like-minded people are coming together to meet, exchange and profit from these marketplaces. Motivations vary. Some collaborate for practical reasons such as ridding themselves of unwanted goods or to turn a quick profit. Others participate for socially minded reasons or to support forward thinking practices such as sustainability or community development. With the rise in hyper connectivity, it is becoming easier and faster to connect and organize with people who have similar concerns, goals, and tastes. Given this confluence between our shifting values around sharing resources and the myriad tools we have to connect in real time, the timing feels perfect to explore how to support a system of reuse that at its core focuses on relationship and community building practices.

In two weeks we will hold co-design workshops with the community to develop some tangible ideas for collecting clothing over a 3-4 month period using pop-up, mobile and guerilla tactics.

*"What's Mine Is Yours: A Rise in Collaborative Consumption." Rachel Botsman, Roo Rogers.

"Yes, We're Open" A Vision on Open Design

This set of principles (above) comes from an exhibition put together by Intrastructures out of Belgium who are exploring how a networked society is reshaping the way we create, consume, and produce.

Thomas Lommee has provided a short manifesto on what it means to design for open standards or to design for adaption. He provides a nice overview: "Today, the pro-active consumer is no longer judging an object for what it is but rather imagines what it could become [I would add that they also see an object in terms of what goals they want to achieve ie. people don't buy a drill because they want the machine; they buy a drill because they want the hole.]. The objects themselves are starting to behave more and more like dynamic puzzles, self-improving product versions rather than rigid monoliths. This shift from product to process allows the product to be adapted over time according to personal needs and flavors."

He's quick to recognize that open standards are already ubiquitous from the internet itself to manufacturing specs that permeate society (eg. a lightbulb used here will work there as well). He's making a new proposal though--that we need to give up the myth of "creating something completely new" or "something that hasn't been done" and transition into a willingness to dissolve into larger projects where we facilitate others and collaborate for shareable outcomes and possibilities. The focus shifts from building that one ideal, proprietary object or service to the development of open standards platforms or systems that enable citizens to do as they need or want with what they have at their disposal.

Using a simple example: Instead of developing strategies that brand and sell people the newest, most unique article of clothing, provide them a standard item or material and accompany it with patterns, directions, a community, etc. they can draw from, so they can define and develop "clothing" (ie. content) and "newness" for themselves. Not everyone wants to do this of course, but in our growing networked society, we've tipped towards a world of interlocking co-producers who find this a much more enticing approach to production and consumption, and in my opinion, community building.

Case in point:
Pamoyo--open source fashion label out of Berlin

Categorizing Collaborative Marketplaces

Pulling again from What's Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, below are three categories for grouping the burgeoning systems for trading, swapping, lending, borrowing, sharing and exchanging.

Product Service Systems
These services enable products, if owned by an entity, to be rented, and if owned by individuals, to be rented or shared peer-to-peer. These systems do well to extend the life of a product and maximizes its utility. Examples include ZipCar, Zilok, Rentoid, RelayRides.
Redistribution Markets
Through social networks, these markets enable the redistribution or circulation of used or unwanted good. Products can be free ex. Freecycle, Around Again; sold for points ex. Barterquest; or for cash ex. eBay, Flippid; or some sort of mixture ex MakeupAlley, Craigslist. The powerful thing about redistribution markets is that they challenge the traditional relationship between producer, retailer and consumer, blurring the lines between actor and audience.
Collaborative Lifestyles
Involves the sharing of less tangible items such as time, skills and places. These occur on local as well as international levels. Rather than a centralized top down management system, these dynamics rely heavily on trust and interpersonal dynamics to survive and flourish. Examples include; Citizen Space, Airbnb, Landshare, and ParkatMyHouse, to name a few.

The Garage Sale Trail

Another piece of re-use ingenuity from Australia. This time a city wide set of yard sales to keep usable stuff off the curbs and placed into needed hands. Here's a quick video on how they did it and who supported them along the way. More than just quaint civic action, this example shows a nice blend between digital networking and printed matter coming together quickly and effectively to organize, inform, and execute.

On that note, the group Let's Do It is setting a nice precedent for similar activities, specifically around large scale mapping and clean-up of environmental hazards