SHAREMART – Vanessa Crowe and Jennifer Whitty with Annie Bretherton and Trish Given

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A clothing store with a difference. Artist Vanessa Crowe (Moodbank), designer Jennifer Whitty and Space Between, a social enterprise for fashion, upcycle fabrics for new migrants with textile excess from  uniforms no longer in use. Vanessa and Jennifer are combining forces to explore how clothing can be re-purposed, and how the sharing of skills, stories and experience through the conduit of clothing/ textiles can drive an alternate model that turns our ideas about shopping for clothes on their head.

For the latest on click on this Sharemart facebook link.

Sharemart will grow out of a collaboration with members of the Porirua refugee community. This initiative aims to upcycle remnants of our corporate consumer system while also providing a place to celebrate the diversity of people who live in Porirua.

Sharemart will open shop in a vacant commercial space within the central city. From this space standardised corporate uniforms will be transformed to meet the needs of the community and convey a sense of people and place. Skills, stories and the results of making,mending and repurposing of clothes will be the basis of the service where creations are produced to enact a cultural social exchange rather than amonetary one.

Vanessa Crowe lives in Paekakariki. As an artist she has an ongoing interest in revealing humane aspects of everyday life that are often edited out or go unseen in our public life. Her practice explores how art and design crossovers can be employed to enact new types of exchange and community engagement in public spaces. Her project Moodbank a celebrated example of this approach, was produced with support from Urban Dream Brokerage and Letting Space. Crowe completed a Masters of Fine Arts at Massey University in Wellington in 2008, and her work has been shown in galleries throughout the country including The Govett Brewster, Bartley and Company, The Hirschfeld Gallery, Toi Ponkeke, The Suter, Mahara Gallery and The Blue Oyster. Crowe has ten years experience teaching Design  Art and Cultural Theory at Massey University College of Creative Arts and Victoria School of Design and Architecture, she has recently be been appointed as the Sustainable Communities Coordinator at the Kapiti Coast District Council.

Jennifer Whitty is a sustainable design educator, researcher, designer, facilitator, writer and activist.  Originally from Ireland, she teaches and practices at Massey University’s School of Design. She is the founder of Space Between a social enterprise for fashion at the College of Creative Arts which is based on the distinct but complimentary approaches: to design with the current waste stream from industry but to ultimately ‘design out’ the waste from industry and design in closed loop solutions. Space Between exploring alternatives to mass-produced high-waste clothing, and creating ethical business opportunities for new designers. She is focused on developing new green business models and systems for alternative ecologies of fashion practice, which are connected to and have an impact on society.  She strongly believes in the positive aspects that fashion can impart to both the individual and to our culture. Jennifer is involved in taking action to harness this power and to catalyse change in the current system by developing alternative roles for the fashion designer through activism and social innovation.

Click here for information on Space Between.

Annie Bretherton is a student of sustainable design, hobby anthropologist and social entrepreneur.  She is fascinated by being able to change firm and set beliefs by adding a new perspective on waste and giving people a very real taste of what a circular economy feels like.
Annie is involved in designing sustainable clothing, through the guidance of Space Between as well as focusing on building her own social enterprise based on better use of current waste.