The good stuff has already started; after three years of working with different collectives and organizations in the neighborhood of Can Mas (Ripollet), the
Open-roulotte
, the contraption on wheels, has begun to be used as an “infrastructure of events” (that expression coined by the friends of FAAQ).
As we explained recently, the Open-roulotte has been used as a darkroom to insolate screen printing frames in the
Sew and Chat
workshop, which we developed in the Can Mas Civic Center and soon, in that same workshop, as a radio studio.
But the big move started on Friday of last week: the group of girls and boys from the Comunitat dels Grans of the Escola El Martinet, with whom we started this process exploring the neighborhood and drawing maps, as we said above, three years ago, proposed installing a sewing and printing workshop on a section of the Rambla Sant Jordi in Ripollet; the idea was to invite anyone passing by to make a cloth bag and exchange it for the plastic bags they were carrying. The students of El Martinet designed various models of bags (for bread, for shopping, for storing marbles or treasures…) and created a step-by-step instruction manual so that everyone would know how to sew the bag they wanted; we could say that they “opened the code” of the cloth bags, right? ;-). Previously, and based on the patterns that they themselves had created, they cut the pieces that formed each type of bag, and distributed them on separate tables along the section of the Rambla Sant Jordi that they occupied.
For the screen printing, they had the collaboration of Ms. Jess from the
Wild Seamstresses
collective and the participants in the Sew and Chat workshop who, together with the girls and boys from El Martinet, advised passers-by on how to sew their cloth bag. From our perspective, this collaboration between heterogeneous action groups was one of the greatest successes of the day.
It should be noted that one of the recurring themes in the explorations of the Rambla with the students of El Martinet was that of commerce, which is logical considering the good number of commercial establishments on this street in Can Mas, so the matter of shopping bags could not have been better brought up.
On the day of the action, we enjoyed a wonderful sun and a very pleasant temperature, the weather contributed to a relaxed atmosphere, while full of activity and enthusiasm that invited those who passed by the street to browse and sit down to make their bags.