Spring is coming. The robins are eating the fat sumac berries left on the
tree. The crocuses peek out under the brown leaves. The seasons change
whether we are ready or not.
And we are ready. We have boldly planned a couple of Spring Neighbour-to-Neighbour clothing swapsApril: one in midtown Toronto (April 16, 11-2) along with a community Ringing in Spring event, and one the following week in Hamilton (April 23,11-2). We have made the announcement and set out the welcome mat and are
always grateful that the community steps up to help. Every person is needed and we can still use hosts, volunteers to help move clothes before, during, and after the event, as well as people to put up posters. Feel free to print out a few and put them up in your building or on the street... or on your facebook page. All of the information is on our website.
We have also been taking account of our actions - literally. The final report for our OAC grant is
due, and the midterm report for the City of Toronto Waste Reduction Community grant is overdue. We are also launching our youtube channel - tahdah! and, as fellow WIP artist Marnie Saskin observed, "hey, we've been doing stuff!" You can also check out videos from recent workshops including our Cutlery wrap hybrid extravaganza.
Part of the Ring in the Spring event at Davisville's June Rowlands Park
Have you been going through your closets as Spring approaches? Works-in-Progress art collective is organizing a FREE Clothing Swap April 16th in Davisville Village as part of the Ringing in Spring Celebration at June Rowlands Park. Donate what you don't want, take what you want. Donations accepted the night before or on the day of the swap, clean and dry donations in good shape, sorted into bags labelled by size. Swap located in yards and driveways in the Davisville neighbourhood, one size/ yard. There is enough for all!
All the details on the Works-in-Progress website, including a Map (in progress) and a volunteer sign up sheet. The more the merrier, high school student volunteers welcome.
The swap will be part of a day of fun, community and Earth friendly activities like a farmer's market and games and food for all ages at Ringing in Spring in June Rowlands Park organized by the Appletree Group, where we will have a repair table and upcycled crafts (read more below) In that spirit, the clothes will be for all ages as well (by popular request) This will be similar to our Fall 2021 back-to-school neighbour-to-neighbour clothing swap, but now with adult sizes as well. These are fun, free and very manageable events- IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN HOSTING YOUR OWN (pandemic safe) SWAP and want some help, please let us know, we can provide admin advice and some material support.
THANK YOU to our local TDSB trustee, Shelley Laskin, our city councilor, Josh Matlow, our MPP, Jill Andrews and Davisville School Council for their support in sharing news of the swap.
Clothing Swap in Hamilton April 23, 2022
The swap continues in the Westdale neighbourhood in Hamilton the week after. This is also the rain date for our Davisville swap. We will save the good stuff remaining from both swaps for a final Spring Swap at Moss Park Market closer to summer.
All the details on the Works-in-Progress website, including a Map (in progress) and a volunteer sign up sheet. The more the merrier, high school student volunteers welcome.
ALL DAY (10am - 3pm) REPAIR AND REUSE TABLE:
We are excited to have a presence all day in the park with a REPAIR AND REUSE table.
At the table will be WiP artists Marnie Saskin and Nancy Rawlinson (aka Ms. R from Davisville PS) and textile activist and educator Shams el-Din Rogers; all will be happy to answer your repair questions, demo mends and alterations, and share material knowledge (need some cloth identified?) Learn some basic repair skills, catch the joy and keep those clothes on your back and the stuffing in your toy rabbit. Look for the #StitchItDon'tDitchIt sign.
The table will also have samples of our 'zine Extember!, you can order the People's Mending Repaired Right Mending Booklet, pick up some patches, SWAP MAPS and there will be a spot to drop off swap donations if you can't get to the sites.
AND we will collect "overly loved" textiles suitable for repair or upcycling. These will either be used in our projects OR passed on to Double Take Thrift Store for their upcycle studio program (especially jeans needed patching, T-shirts with weird logos, shrunken sweaters, good quality clothes with holes, remaining cloth or yarn from previous projects, unwanted sewing/knitting supplies etc.)
PLUS, in the eco village is a battery collection booth, so bring those along too.
Works-in-Progress are YouTubers
Tahdah! This is it, the launch of our *N*E*W* YouTube channel. You can see it if you click through the snazzy icon on the left or search this on YouTube (or just click through):
If we get 30+ subscribers we can name it properly...
Thanks to our grant partners for administrative funds to get this ready. We enlisted the help of youths Delphine and Safiya to help make the channel less ugly and more easily found, and to create and check captions on the videos to keep them accessible.
There are playlists and plenty to browse through. As a video artist I prefer Vimeo as a platform but we felt that YouTube might reach a larger audience. In fact, this video above, "Lifecycle of a Textile," has had almost 250 views already, and now YouTube has added ads to it (fun fact- those ads benefit Youtube and we can't take them off.)
Follow up: Cutlery Wraps! our first hybrid Workshop
Cutlery Wraps Workshop, March 4.
This was the first in person workshop of the year in the Do it Together series with Kate Hamilton from Building Roots.We were happy to try hosting an in person workshop but really wanted to keep the accessibility of online workshops, so we did a hybrid. It was REALLY nice to be with humans and to play with our Works-in-Progress family like old times. Check out our blog for links to a video and images from the workshop.
Victoria Eco Fashion Show this Friday Night! April 8, 6-8 pm 100 % recycled designs by 6 U of T students, including WiP artist Gabrie Adair, pictured here! You can see more of Gabrie's designs on Instagram @futuristicruins or at this fashion show. Order your tickets via email : vefs@vusac.ca
DOUBLE TAKE WORKSHOP WITH (NEW) Works-in-Progress artist Alex Verkade, currently an Artist in Residence at Double Take thrift store. "We are so excited to announce that our first spring workshop will be in-person! Alex Verkade from (@toobad_toobad) Too Bad Textiles will take participants through the art of patching clothes using appliqué 🤩"
If you live in midtown Toronto, Our favourite second hand book sale is back! Davisville PS is organizing a book sale for kids and staff. The sale is April 13/14 but they are accepting donations of gently used books OUTSIDE GATE 5 before and after school only, April 6-8 and 11-12. Books are priced to move, teachers can restock classrooms, and they still have "geegaws" for sale but they will all made from recycled materials. Profits support the school garden. If you are a Davisville family and want to help sort books, contact us and we will connect you to the organizer, Beata.
