Upcoming Clothing Social in Braddock, PA

Give-and-Take will hold its second clothing social at Braddock’s UnSmoke Systems Artspace, October 8-9. If you're interested in thrifting, repurposing or donating clothing to the local community, please come and check us out. Over the weekend we will host:

• A clothing exchange where everything costs $1. Clothing comes from you, the public. All sizes. All genders. All seasons.
• A drop-off for your clothing donations. Looking to clear out your closet or make a contribution to your community? Your clothes make the exchange possible. So bring your clean, gently worn stuff to us. For a list of what we’re able to accept, please see our donation page.
• A mending circle where we can help you fix or change clothes you bring from home or score at the exchange. We’ll have comfy couches, sewing machines, and most importantly, mentors to help you do your thing.

Thrift. Donate. Mend. Or just hang out. The idea is for you stop by and be part of the mix. As a special treat, we’ll have the outdoor pizza oven up and going on Saturday from 3-5pm.

Would you be interested in contributing your skills? We’d love the help. We need sewing mentors; brave souls to make sense of all the donations; and all around ground troops to help us run the show. We have lots of opportunities. In thanks, we hope you’ll find some clothes you like at the social and fill up a bag for free.

Hours: UnSmoke Systems Artspace, 1137 Braddock Avenue, Braddock
Oct 8 Saturday 1-6pm
Oct 9 Sunday 1-6pm

Please contact us if you have questions or want to volunteer. You can also email us directly at giveandtakepgh@gmail.com

A portion of the clothing social’s profits will be donated to support the The UnSmoke Gallery’s ongoing renovation and programming efforts.

A Few Thoughts on the Maker Movement

A short article popped up at Shareable this weekend rephrasing some of the over-arching issues that explain how and why collaborative consumption, the maker movement, informal economies, etc. should be understood as something more than a trend, and instead, a quiet and steady r/evolution in how the world is and could be produced and shared. Thanks to a rise in a networked society, which is providing free or low-cost, instant access to open platform technical, fiscal and intellectual resources, we're now able to engage in personal- and community-based production in ways never experienced before. Specifically, the self-producers of the world, which were historically isolated from one another, are now producing at higher levels and collaborating in ways that are making real inroads on what society consumes. And whether intentionally or not, are prodding us to think about how we make our consumer decisions.

On one hand these collaborations are enabling self-sustaining mini economies to take hold or at a minimum, to be rigorously explored. (Think Smorgasbord). What's particularly interesting to me is that with these burgeoning, bottoms up options that are becoming available, issues like ethics, impact, and quality of life are giving price point a run for its money as decision-making criteria. On a more practical note, collaborative economies are reducing the need for middlemen, which helps keep prices and material use lower. And for consumers we're finding we don't have to be passive recipients of whatever the market dictates but have more value-aligning options and negotiating power around the stuff we want surrounding our lives.

The article offers the possibility that from this self-organizing and -producing approach, there could come more sustainable models of production and consumption. While applicable everywhere, there could be important implication for societies that lack the wherewithal to work with more traditional or institutionalized modes of production. I see this in my own neighborhoods throughout Pittsburgh where folks like DIY'ers and small-scale farmers are able to pay their bills through collaborative enterprises while exposing the community to some alternative consumer options--ones that say, whether deliberately or not, here is a way to do less damage or this is a more delightful way to go about living a life. I'm hopeful reading this article, knowing that competent visionaries and public facing figures are taking a step back to consider and communicate the implications of this shifting state towards collaboration.

Antonelli on Critical Design

Here's an excellent article voicing the role of Critical Design. In a nutshell, critical design undermines the default notion of design as an affirmative, commercially-oriented practice that shies away from thorny ethical issues. The field and practice, formalised by RCA faculty and design practitioners, Dunne and Raby, follows in the footsteps of radical design and architecture from the late 1960s and 1970s, but also marries it with a viable, rent-paying career. Antonelli continues, "The Critical Design process does not immediately lead to useful objects, but rather to food for thought whose usefulness is revealed by its ability to help others prevent and direct future outcomes. The job of critical designers is to be thorns in the side of politicians and industrialists, as well as partners for scientists or consumer advocates, while stimulating discussion and debate about the social, cultural and ethical future implications of decisions about technology made today."

Read the article for a high level introduction to the topic and some of the compelling and provocative projects that are circulating around cultural issues such food sustenance, self-image, and body politics. "All these examples, even the most apparently nihilistic ones, are characterised by deep empathy, trust in a possible better future, and a belief in the demonstrative power of well-designed utopias."

Thoughts for the Day

"Learning is any change in a system that produces a more or less permanent change in its capacity for adapting to its environment."

"Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones."

Thank you, Herbert Simon.

Why wouldn't you share?

I just stumbled upon Shareable, an online hub for showcasing ideas, conversations, projects and concerns around the blossoming culture of sharing. I'm going to spend some time pouring over this and will return with some thoughts. Please check them out if you get a second.

Openwear: A Collaborative Clothing Platform

After looking at Fashion Reloaded out of Berlin, I came across Openwear who is tearing it up around open source clothing production. This is real inspiration here with the following values:
1. Openwear is a collaborative platform for fashion creation.
2. Openwear is an online community where you can share values, access to knowledge and practice of collaborative and distributed work.
3. Openwear is where makers, fashion producers, small local enterprises, educational institutions can network to participating in the production of a new vision of fashion based on micro-communities and sustainability.

What's grabbing me is the two-fold contribution that Openwear is making to our culture. They are enableing open access to functional and creative ideas while practicing a new economy. In a recent blog entry of theirs, they discuss Adam Arvidsson's new book, "Ethical Economy" (Columbia University Press), in collaboration with Nicolai Peitersen. Their book introduces us to ethical economics and interprets the beginning of a new, radically different economic system in which production is mainly collaborative and social, and in which the value is based on the quality of social interactions and relationships rather than on the quantity of productive time.

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.