SPILL THE (GREEN) TEA: How to talk about sustainability without getting called out

Is there a trade-off between affordability and disposability? Can we go back to a mindset of mending and repair, without pricing ourselves out? How do we overcome the objections of time, money and skillset to get more people involved in this movement?  On today’s episode, I’m talking to Tom van Deijnen – a self-taught textiles practitioner, founder of The Visible Mending Programme, and a volunteer...

How does conservation differ from repair? How is it similar? How have the tenets and ideas of best practice with conservation changed over time? On today’s episode, I’m talking to Lauren Chang,  a textile specialist, who spins, dyes, weaves, and writes about textiles on her website interstitial-spaces.com . She holds a B.A. in Art and Archaeology from Princeton University and an MA in Textile Cons...

Can mending and repair be used as self care? How can the traditions we’ve studied impact our current actions towards sustainability? Are we too disconnected from our past? What drives the culture of mending?  On today’s episode, I’m talking to Ekta Kaul, an award-winning London based artist. Her artistic practice is focused on creating narrative maps that explore places, history and belonging thro...

Do we only repair the things that we cherish? Is there a place for visible mending in our built environment as well as our clothes? Can a repair add value to the object that is mended? And do we always need to intervene with repair – or is 'curated decay' sometimes a better option?  On today’s episode, I’m talking to Caitlin DeSilvey , a geographer whose research explores the cultural significance...

Is repair and restoration limited to the things we own? Can it be applied to other facets of our life? How is repair correlated to poverty, and can that change for the betterment of our planet? How is community related to all of this? On today’s episode, I’m talking to Justin South, a 32-year-old bisexual fashion student. Four years ago, Justin went into rehab for drug and alcohol addiction and ha...

Do we really have the right to repair the things we own? How can broken items be given new value? Is repair only to be used when an object is spoiled or broken? Can repair be aspirational, playful and creative?  On today’s episode, I’m talking to Janet Gunter, the co-founder and outreach lead at The Restart Project and a leading Right to Repair campaigner. The Restart Project is a social enterpris...

How can broken items be given new value? Is repair only to be used when an object is spoiled or broken? Can repair be aspirational?  On today’s episode, I’m talking to Hans Tan, Tiffany Loy and Hunn Wai from the R for Repair exhibition, which ran from 13 January until 6 February 2021 at the National Design Centre, Singapore. The exhibition, curated by Tan, shone a timely spotlight on global waste...

What are the differences between repair, restoration and conservation? Is maintenance also repair? And how are these processes viewed along gender lines?  On today’s episode, I’m talking to Bridget Harvey, an artist who uses making to ask critical questions, generate new understanding and add meaning through craft. Investigating processes and concepts through making: she asks what we make, how we...

I’m talking to Aya Haidar. As a self-described 'mother, artist, and humanitarian,' her creative practice focuses on found and recycled objects, through which she explores themes of loss, migration and memory. She has studied art at Chelsea College of Art and Design, The Slade School of Art – part of University College London – and School of the Art Institute of Chicago, before undertaking a Master...

In this episode, we’re talking to Daniel Charny, a creative director, curator and educator with an inquiring mind and an entrepreneurial streak. Alongside Dee Halligan, he is co-founder and director of Forth, a creative studio, where he works with clients from Google to the Design Museum. Describing themselves as ‘part R&D Lab and part consultancy, small, connected and serious about finding better...

In this episode, we’re talking to Celia Pym, an artist living and working in London. Working with garments that belong to individuals as well as items in museum archives, she has extensive experience with the spectrum and stories of damage, from small moth holes to larger accidents with fire. Her interests concern the evidence of damage, and how repair draws attention to the places where garments...

This season is all about repair and in this episode, we’re talking to Chris Miller the co-founder of Skinflint – Europe’s leading vintage industrial lighting website. Skinflint scours locations across the world to source historic vintage lights, which are restored with a gentle touch by UK-based lighting experts, ensuring their stories shine through.  We discuss: - How a life-changing experience i...

In the ninth episode of Series 01, Katie Treggiden talks to Christopher Ræburn, founder and creative director of ethical fashion label RÆBURN, about how his discovery of unworn 1950s jackets – still in their original packaging – as a student led to a career exploring reuse, surplus and repair, and Christopher reveals that making nothing at all for his latest collection, RÆFOUND, is an intentional...

In the eighth episode of Series 01, Katie Treggiden talks to artist, designer and director of textiles studio, Working Cloth, Lauren MacDonald, about dying clothes using food waste. Lauren explains why she finds the term ‘natural dye’ problematic, how a box of penises put her off studying art (yes, you read that right!), the magic tricks she performs with red cabbage, and why avocados will turn yo...

In the seventh episode of Series 01, Katie Treggiden chats to London-based designer Yinka Ilori about his early exposure to reuse and upcycling in Nigeria, his penchant for collecting discarded chairs off the street and bringing them home on the bus, the first time he created a collection he could truly see himself in, his most meaningful collaboration to date, and why he now has legacy and reuse...

In the sixth episode of Series 01, Katie Treggiden talks to co-founder of Studiomama, Nina Tolstrup about the impact her Scandinavian childhood had on her approach to sustainability, meeting her husband and co-founder Jack at Doors of Perception, their eco-criteria for every design they create together, and the moves towards circularity they’ve seen in the last decade within the manufacturers they...

07–11 September 2020 is Zero Waste Week, and with this year’s focus on food, who better to have as our guest on the fifth episode of Series 01 than author of Waste: Uncovering a Global Food Scandal, Tristam Stuart? He and Katie Treggiden explore how his early freeganism got him punched in the face, and how he fed 5,000 people on 13 tonnes of unwanted ‘ugly’ fruit and veg on a snowy day in Trafalga...

Ahead of Zero Waste Week next week, the fourth episode of Series 01 is a conversation between Katie Treggiden and ‘Zero Waste Warrior’ Ander Zabala (@goxuboys on Instagram), who can fit his weekly household waste into a single jam jar. They talk about how Ander found his calling while still at school, the importance of making waste visible, and how starting small can produce big results. As recomm...

In the third episode of Series 01, Katie Treggiden is in conversation with designer, author and educator Seetal Solanki. They talk about the embodied learnings of thrift and reuse we inherit from our parents, why we need to stop using the term ‘waste’ altogether, the decolonisation of the language around materials, and how we can build bridges between the Global North and the Global South. As reco...

In the second episode of Series 01, Katie Treggiden chats to ethical journalist and broadcaster, Lucy Siegle, about the trip to India that changed her life, her lockdown interview with David Attenborough, why she buys clothes like an Italian ‘Nona’ at a fruit market, the importance of personal agency, and why ‘building back better’ after COVID-19 requires citizenship and not consumerism. As recomm...

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe More from Katie Green, Not Greenwashed : Get the clarity and confidence you need to talk about your eco-efforts without the fear of greenwashing. Follow Katie on Instagram @katietreggiden.1 More from Malin Greenwashing 101: Green or G...

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brackishbykatietreggiden.substack.com/subscribe More from Katie Green, Not Greenwashed : Get the clarity and confidence you need to talk about your eco-efforts without the fear of greenwashing. Follow Katie on Instagram @katietreggiden.1 More from Malin Greenwashing 101: Green or G...