Fabric Forest to grow in Ballarat

IF you’ve got pieces of clothing beyond repair, or old fabric scraps at home, you could contribute to an art piece set to be showcased during Victorian Youth Week.

A team of Ballarat young people are developing a Fabric Forest installation to display in the Mining Exchange, raising awareness of the global environmental impacts of fast fashion and clothing waste.

It will be presented as part of Ballarat Youth Services’ Recy’kool project. Former youth councillor Eloise Amirtharajah said the Fabric Forest will be an “eye-catching” way to educate the public about the footprint of textiles.

“We want to visually portray how nature collides with humans’ impacts on the environment,” she said.

“We have a vision of clothing intertwined with twigs and branches, where people can walk through and be given information about the problem, and then feel empowered to do something about it.

“Viewers will learn about textile waste and physically see its impact. If people understand the amount of waste we can collect locally in a small amount of time, then they can imagine this on a huge scale over a large period of time.

“We’re honing in on a specific type of waste with textiles because it’s applicable to everyone. No matter how much they contribute, everyone wears clothes and has textiles that are, at some point, discarded.”

Fabric collection stations are around the city, including one at the Ballarat Library. Community members will be invited to help organisers build the Fabric Forest from natural elements and the donated textiles.

Victorian Youth Week begins on Saturday, 26 June and concludes on Friday, 2 July. The installation is just the tip of the Recy’kool iceberg.

Workshops will be facilitated to teach the community basic sewing skills to repair their own clothing, rather than throwing pieces away, and BYS will host their second clothes swap.

“Everyone can do something about this issue because everyone’s involved.

“We want to provide events that don’t cost anything to facilitate, are accessible to everyone, no matter their financial background, and are engaging for young people because they are our future,” Eloise said.

“You don’t need to give into consumerist, capital ideas of purchasing more, because that leads to wasting more. Invest in things that last a long time, and don’t have an expiration date, or if they do, this can be delayed to get more use out of them.”

Donations can also be dropped off at Barkly Square’s A Pot of Courage Café, or the Sebastopol Library, by Monday, 28 June.