Festival of Thrift: make-do-and-mend fair grows as cost of living bites
In an office window on Redcar’s rainswept esplanade hangs a washing line of recycled paper, slowly drying after being pulped and having seeds embedded into it. Soon the paper will become business cards and leaflets.
Inside the the office, organisers of a festival taking place on 24-25 September discuss what workshop should go where, from sessions on how to make your own laundry liquid and do-it-yourself aromatherapy, to lessons for children in sawing and hammering.
The Festival of Thrift has been going for 10 years and, with little sign of the cost of living crisis easing, this year it seems more relevant than ever.
It is the UK’s only national celebration of sustainable living and the core message remains the same, says the festival’s creative director, Stella Hall. “We have never lost that starting point which is thrift, make do and mend, keeping things rather than chucking them into landfill, fixing things rather than throwing them away, swapping things rather than putting them in the dump.”
Over two days there will be food, music, art, interactive entertainment and a blizzard of workshops on how to make your own wildflower bombs, beeswax food wraps or clay mindfulness totems.
The festival will take over the village of Kirkleatham, in the borough of Redcar, for two days. If visitors don’t wish to make things, there are free tips on basic budgeting by the Darlington Building Society and lessons in Japanese “boro”clothes-mending techniques.
Hall, one of the festival founders, recalls how tricky it was in the early days to find sponsors. “One company said they would like to get involved but said ‘we’ve talked to our staff and they think it’s a bit too hippyish’. But, of course, everyone came with their families and they had a
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