Interactive Repair and Upcycling Workshops

Roscommon County Council has used LAPN funding to extend a pilot series of interactive textile repair and upcycling workshops in the county to support reuse. This was piloted with Roscommon Women’s Network (RWN). The aim was to take unsold textiles generated by the RWN charity shop and upcycle these textile items into different products for sale. The workshops included sewing, design, pattern making, and cutting skills as well as information on the impacts of textile wastes. RWN developed the ‘CycleUp’ brand for this series of products that are sold locally. The extended series of training took place in RWN’s training facility and on roadshow workshops around the county.

The work on this project has led on to a new 2021 environmental project for RWN, the Women’s Environmental Community Activation Network (WECAN), with funding from the EPA’s Green Enterprise programme, which aims to establish a textile upcycling social enterprise in County Roscommon.