Sustainable Fashion.....

So after a great conversation today, i have vowed to myself to step back into the world of fashion and design.

Along with my ramblings, I will be starting to share my research, designs and my tips for new trends on this blog.

I wanted to start with giving you my favourite sustainable fashion and creative businesses out there.

Sustainable fashion is a movement and process changing fashion products and manufacturing towards a greater ecological integrity and social justice. It is something i have followed for a few years, as i analysed my own contribution to fashion waste as a designer, it became clear i needed to combine my own values with my career. It has resulted in starting Fylde Repair Cafe C.I.C and now i choose to look at sustainable brands and design for clients and personal shopping.

While "fast fashion" describes clothing that is cheaply made and intended for short-term use, "sustainable" (or "ethical") fashion is the opposite and is sometimes even referred to as "slow fashion." It takes into account the full lifecycle of the product — from the design, sourcing, and production processes — and looks at everyone and everything being affected by it, from the environment, to the workers and communities where it’s produced, to the consumers who purchase it.

The best way to shop of course is to support our local makers and small businesses and my next post will talk about that but for now here are some of my favourite projects, brands or retailers who are doing their bit…..

Alongside repairing and reusing your current clothing, we can still treat ourselves right? of course but choose wisely……..

Check out these brands and start your “shopping for eco fashion” journey right now!

1.Ashara-lifestyle

Ashara provide a alternative to synthetic active wear by ,turning waste into something good instead of polluting our oceans and environment.They have produced a collection that is ethically made, beautiful looking and at no extra cost to the planet or our skin. Their leggings are awesome!

.https://ashara-lifestyle.com

2. Levis

A well known brand worldwide, they have created a brilliant project called Secondhand Drop off your old Levi’s®jeans and denim jackets at any store and receive a gift card for a future purchase. They professionally clean, sort and list clothes on SecondHand.levi.com, keeping garments in use and out of landfills.

https://www.secondhand.levi.com

3.Raeburn

Christopher Raeburn established his eponymous brand with responsible and intelligent fashion design for a global audience. The RÆMADE ethos in particular has pioneered the reworking of surplus fabrics and garments to create distinctive and functional pieces.An absolute inspiration!

https://www.raeburndesign.co.uk/

4. BEEN

Everyone involved has the same intention: to help BEEN London have a real, measurable impact on the fashion industry by proving that waste can become beautiful, inside and out. They create bags from recycled materials resulted from their ethos ‘‘Waste’ is only waste if no one uses it. Imagination can dream up a second life for used materials. Innovation can make it happen.”

https://been.london/pages/about-the-brand

5. The Level Collective

Believe that “as humans; the clothing we wear, how they are made, and the brands we choose to support; are all an expression of our values and identity. Our money is our voting tokens.

They aim to inspire people to support ethical, sustainable and independent brands – buy less, buy well”

Their collection of products are handmade in Britain & beyond in small batches in collaboration with artists and makers – bringing ideas and sketch book scribbles to life.

https://thelevelcollective.com/about

Happy Shopping!!

Personality test.....

This blog was born from my current uni assignment ‘Enhancing Business practice through work-based learning’ which has what to do with blogs you may ask? well i am asking the same thing! hahaha!

Part of this course was to complete a work placement, starting this summer. Obviously we have been unable to complete the placements as yet so it is a little tricky…….

We were to identify personal characteristics and skills which matched to the organisation and our current skills suited the organisations culture. What could we change in order to better engage in our professional role?

The blog would have been our diary during the placement plus a record of our time studying on this leadership course. I do feel it has pushed me to start this blog, like a journal i suppose…..but does anyone want tp hear my ramblings or self-reflection? i may well take these posts down when i have handed in the assignment or write them and not publish?

As we havent completed the placement, it is time to reflect on past employment or organisations i have worked with as an artist. I am super excited to actually begin mt placement with my chosen host organisation Super Slow Way who have kindly let me aboard their amazing organisation. We do hopefully begin in January 2021 (dependant on pandemic situation) and i cannot wait to get in there to experience the real day to day, ‘nitty gritty’ of an arts organisation. Will it be what i think? have i placed it on a pedestal? Will i want to work within an arts organisation when i complete this course? Am i suited to working in this environment? so many questions!!!

My skills are something i have struggled to identify over the years, you cannot always see what others see in you. I can so easily recognise a skill or trait in someone else. Enabling me to help push their talent towards a role, project or motivate them to explore that skill.

How are you at recognising your own skills?

I actually took a free personality test online https://www.16personalities.com. I would definitely recommend it- i was shocked at how close it was to me!! My results came back as ‘Campaigner’ which one of my very closest friends said was perfect for me!

Crisis of confidence......

Its been a tough couple of weeks here at Minty HQ……

It has been tough for our immediate family, CoVid 19 has wormed its way into our support network with both mum & mother-in-law in isolation and step=dad is hospital with CoVid. It has meant worry for all of us, food deliveries, checkiing-in phone calls and a knock on affect to school pick ups, puppy walking and so we are running around from place to place to try and cover it all……

Still unable to plan any creative group sessions for Art Clubs, Repair Cafe or Family Creative workshops, i am concentrating on ideas for my part time role in social media, creating content to be used across all platforms. I have been filming a very talented artist as she takes the viewer through the basics of watercolour painting. It has meant exploring videography and editing videos! Something very new to me, so i am not confident with it but loving the process, even though it is a longer one that i thought!

Alongside this, my Uni assignments have to be researched and written! Co-incidentally, the first subject is regarding my skills, something i m not always great at recognising in myself, so my first port of call is to do a personality test to help identify my own strengths and weaknesses…….

I already recognise that one of my weaknesses is to focus on a negative emotion which blocks me from achieving my goals. During a recent board meeting, I became intimidated by others comments and a feeling of ‘what does it matter what I say’ resulted in no comments on a matter that is incredibly important to me and now I feel as if I failed…….hence the title of this blog.

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Juggling.....

Its Friday!

Fridays are my day to spend on early morning gym class, admin, looking at potential projects, researching, housework, listening to podcasts and uni work all within the 6 hour window of the school day. 3pm comes and i drop it all and pick up my little man and we immediately start with the questions, usually from me, What has been the best thing about your day?, who made you laugh today? followed by dog walk, homework, build lego/ go swimming/reading/snacks and today i have been promised the full run-down of current christmas list……Joined by older boy and grunts of his school day, dinner and maybe a quick catch up with Mr.H before bed!! Last week we did manage to add baking to that after school list which is was a joy as we baked GF chocolate cake , cupcakes and cookies, we made so much that both boys football teams reaped the rewards too!

I love a Friday, after a full week, especially after starting my part time job. I took a temp job during the lockdown due to the business coming to an immediate halt ,as i talk about in my previous blog. I work now 3 days a week in an online arts suppliers involved in their social media.An unexpected twist but i am loving it and learning heaps which is something i always strive to do.

I talked of Plan B in my last post but in reality it has been Plan B, C, D, E………I have also decided to not plan any group based sessions until January 2021, with all the changing guidelines, local lockdowns, school restrictions it was beginning to be stressful, planning then cancelling so for now the focus is on background planning…..

One role i take extremely seriously is board member for Art B&B C.I.C and it has meant many zoom meetings, some emergency meetings too discuss the future of the hotel and how to keep the community angle going. That means staying positive and coming up with creative solutions to overcome issues. The hotel is now closed to the public for stays but the bar and community space/space for hire are now open as a trial Fridays & Saturdays. We have been awarded emergency funding to ensure the running costs are covered, which includes our hotel managers salary with other staff on furlough. Since more localised lockdowns, the hotel closed for the 2nd time so it meant most of the staff members had to be made redundant, luckily we have just received a further grant enabling us to ensure the staff are still employed. We now await a further update on Government decisions on Tier rating and another board meeting to come….

Becoming a student....

Back in January i became a student again, something unplanned but an opportunity that came my way and seemed to be great timing!

The course is Changing Cultures Programme, an Arts Leadership course, creating leaders within Arts & Culture with a good focus on Social Enterprise. To be honest, initially i was shitting myself about becoming a student again, with my last experience of being a student, my MA in Design many years ago…….an uncomfortable feeling as completely out of my comfort zone and my biggest panic was having to write an assignment again. Added to that feeling, i now needed to balance my business with studying alongside family life.

We began with residentials based in the Lake District at Brathay Hall, a gorgeous setting which helped to ease my worries. I quickly learnt that i was one of the oldest students on the course which added to my thoughts of whether i should be on the course. Thankfully so many of the other students were extremely welcoming, friendly and fantastic to be around all those creative people, from lots of different sectors from Music to Theatre. We began with self-reflection which i personally find easy but to then use that in an assignment was about to prove tricky……

I did however come away from that first residential feeling ignited and also thankful for my previous experience within Arts& Culture and my design career but also eager to learn more and gain more knowledge.

It was extremely timely as i was learning legal structures for Social Enterprise which i would apply to ‘Repair Cafe’ and we were in a great place as a socially engaged project then BANG along came the Pandemic……..

A complete lockdown so it meant all sessions completely cancelled and also my business came to a complete standstill…….

Plan B had to kick in……

First residential at Brathay Hall January 2020

Planning my first installation in the woods……

Moments of reflection

First Ever Blog!

Hey Minties!
So now begins the first blog entry……..It is my first ever blog so do stay with me!

I hope to be bringing you creative stuff & nonsense, Mint & Mamma happenings, Repair cafe news and all sorts of ramblings & ideas that fall in and out of my brain.

First things first, how are you following this bonkers year? How was Lockdown for you?

Mint & Mamma started 2020 strong and raring to go with many projects, art clubs and the official start of our Repair cafe C.I.C plans, then all of a sudden it all just ground to a halt………

It was beyond our control so it was time to just give-in to the quiet and enjoy family time because what choice did we have! Then unable to stay quiet for too long and homeschooling our little man, i happened on the idea of Homeschool Art Club, so everyday i would do Facebook Live broadcasts and Insta posts to introduce a theme for the day, enlisting many artists to collaborate on the project which brought a wealth of talent and amazing inspiration for the families that took part. I had families from all over the UK joining and so much fantastic work was submitted everyday, judged by the artist who set the theme.

i absolutely loved the project and we had a fantastic 6 weeks and as i type this i realise i should make an exhibition of the childrens work from over the weeks and share it here, so keep your eyes peeled!

Lockdown also consisted of up-cycling projects, creating a growing corner, discovering painting again, kitchen raves, weekly Zoom quizzes and enjoying many adventures in nature so i would have to say i actually enjoyed lockdown, the obvious downside being away from friends and family but Zoom & FaceTime were our saviour.

So now begins the task of planning our events, workshops and Art Clubs, another milestone for me as i embrace technology to bring those creative sessions into homes and businesses. With rules and info changing every week, it may take some time before we can meet face to face again but please stay with us during this tricky time.

For now, lets support each other through this crazy time and most importantly- Stay Creative! (my new catchphrase or sign off, still breaking it in!)