About Community Cloth

CommunityCloth: Empowering Community Educators for a Sustainable Urban Future

Textile production relies on agricultural-based raw materials production and is one of the most polluting industries, significantly contributing to climate change. The fight against climate change can only happen with the transition to more sustainable and carbon-neutral or positive productions.

CommunityCloth, a groundbreaking initiative aimed at building capacity in urban communities will create essential tools to promote new training models and provide knowledge for the development of community-driven farm-to-cloth productions.

Textile productions based on low impact agroecological practices, greatly complement food production by allowing diverse outputs, crop rotation, introducing new species, and producing fertilisers. Therefore, the project will explore productions complementary to food in urban farms using natural dyeing and small scale wool processing as examples.

By establishing a network of educators, CommunityCloth seeks to implement cost-effective learning programmes to support urban transition practices, foster communal farms, and create new job opportunities.

Project Objectives and Outputs

Specific objectives:

The project aims to enable VET providers, education services, local communities, NGO’s and grass-roots organisations to promote community and urban transition projects by creating and training local networks of urban farmers producing textiles.

The project will deliver the following main outputs:

#1 Digital Learning Materials

Technical workbooks on small-scale wool processing and natural dyeing.
Activities Guide to support community educators in their training efforts.
A comprehensive paper detailing effective strategies for training educators and community leaders.

#2 Learning Network

Mobile App: compiling digital workbooks and offering communication and peer support tools for educators.
Community of Practice: peer-to-peer network designed to support the learning activities and community engagement.

#3 Pilot Programme

Training Sessions: Comprehensive training on wool and natural dyes production, coupled with classroom training on community development.
Activities in the Communities: the participants will carry-on learning activities in their communities with the support of the project trainers and other participants (peer-to-peer).
Testing and Evaluation: Rigorous testing and evaluation phases to ensure the effectiveness and scalability of the training models.

‍Building a Network of Educators

CommunityCloth aims to create a network of educators equipped to implement programmes fostering sustainable urban practices. This network will serve as a crucial resource for disseminating knowledge and supporting the establishment of communal farms, thereby promoting economic growth and job creation within urban communities.

Promoting Sustainability and Community Development

By providing educators and communities with practical educational tools and knowledge, CommunityCloth will lay the foundation for more sustainable, diverse and inclusive urban farming projects, creating new opportunities for bridging the urban-rural divide in textile production and promoting local small-scale textile manufacturing.

Target Groups

The project target-groups are: urban farms education services, city council workers, social workers, students , teachers and educators, informal community facilitators (parents groups, urban activists, collectivities), NGOs and fablabs.

For the project activities, a call for participants will be open exclusively to women working with migrant communities (especially migrant women); unemployed women; citizens with disabilities; school children and young people in learning ages.

Join Us on This Journey

CommunityCloth invites community leaders, educators, and all stakeholders to join this journey. Together, we can create resilient urban communities that are sustainable, connected, and economically vibrant.

For more information about CommunityCloth and how to get involved, please contact Mariana Teixeira at info@communitycloth.eu

About CommunityCloth

CommunityCloth is dedicated to empowering community educators and promoting sustainable urban transitions through innovative training models and community engagement in the field of small-scale textile production.

Our mission is to foster the development of communal farms, support farm-to-cloth productions using textiles as a complement to food production, and create new job opportunities in urban areas.

The project, funded under the Erasmus+ Programme,is a collaboration between Barbot Bernardo and Saber Fazer (Portugal), ABR-Alternative Brains Rule (Cyprus), & Smuss Studio (Norway).

FAQ

Here are the answers to some frequently asked questions. If you need more information, please contact us at info@communitycloth.eu

What is the CommunityCloth learning programme?

As part of the CommunityCloth project, we will offer a free learning programme in Wool processing and Natural Dyeing in Portugal (Porto) in the second half of February 2025. The goal is to teach a network of educators who will implement educational activities in these two areas, testing new community-based learning models and sustainable farm-to-cloth activities.

During this learning programme, the participants will attend a practical two-day course where they will learn about Wool processing, from sheep to yarn, or Natural Dyeing. This learning programme will also include a one-day workshop focused on designing activities for practical community learning.

Later in 2025, the participants will be asked to organise a few learning activities within their own communities to test and implement what they have learned from this programme.

Who is the target audience of the learning programme?

We are looking for women who are teachers and educators, community leaders (parents' groups, urban activists, collectives, others), social sector workers, educational services workers from urban farms, town halls, NGOs or fablabs.

The Open Call is open to women working with migrant communities (especially migrant women); unemployed women; citizens with disabilities; school children and young people in learning ages.

The fact that we only accept women is because the project seeks to involve a gender that is under-represented in urban agriculture.

When and where will the learning programme take place?

The learning programme Open Call will be open from 29 October to 30 November. The applications will then be evaluated, and the results will be communicated.

The training programme will take place in the second half of February 2025, on dates to be set once the group that will participate has been selected. It will last three days and be structured around three modules (two courses + one workshop). Each participant will attend only one of the technical courses (course 1 or 2) and the workshop on activity design.

To test and implement the learnings from this programme, the participants will be asked to organise a few learning activities within their own communities between March and October 2025.

What are the deadlines for applying to the training program and when will we know the results?

The Open Call for applications for the training program will be open from October 29 to November 30.

This will be followed by an evaluation period and the results will be announced by the end of December 2024.

What costs does the programme cover?

Since the program will take place in Portugal, the two participants from Cyprus (co-organizing country) will have their training, travel and accommodation costs covered.

For the participants from Portugal and the other countries, the program only covers the training costs.