Artcyclers of Retextil Foundation started to collect old things in December. The task was to collect things that are old but could be reused and are available locally. We made up a game for this, to make it more interesting: we asked participants to collect things and place them into a shoebox. The aim was that these boxes were swapped between people to allow others to use them creatively.
After two weeks of collecting, everyone came in with a box full of waste material, things that can be reused. We exchanged the boxes among members so that everyone got a new box with unknown materials. In the following weeks, everybody started thinking about using them creatively.When everybody was done, we held a presentation. Artcyclers presented what they have made, and explained what it meant for them to create, what did they thought about this first challenge. They talked about what was hard, and what was uplifting about the creative process.
There were some who thought that the unknown materials created an obstacle, while for some people, bringing about their creativity was the hard part. Some people have made more smaller things, others only one bigger one.
These works have been exciting experiments, great objects were made. We look upon this game as an initiation, as everyone is beyond the making of their first upcycled obect. We look forward to the following two years of the project and its further stages.
The kick-off workshop
