SEAD (Scottish Education and Action for Development)

In December SEAD held its second highly successful Clothes Swap-O-Rama at the Out of the Blue venue in Edinburgh, this time with a festive twist! Find out why swapping your stuff, skills and unused spaces builds communities’ strength, helps the environment, and saves you money.

Those concerned about climate change and the credit crunch turned their backs on shopping this Christmas for a fun alternative, the SEAD Christmas Clothes Swap-O-Rama. Everyone brought a bag of clothes and under appreciated presents. The contributions were laid out, people browsed and hey presto got a new look and Christmas presents for the family! Around 120 people became swappers and learnt how to make beautiful gifts from waste with Waste Innovations while enjoying live music by local musicians.

In 2008 many exciting community action initiatives to tackle climate change started up in Edinburgh. The Swap-O-Rama focused on bringing people together to swap, create, meet, hang out and find out about these local initiative’s and how they can get involved. The day was a real success and swappers ended the day by calling out for the next event!

To some people it might seem like a strange thing for SEAD, a charity that supports communities tackling climate change, to be doing with its Sunday afternoons. But by giving old things a new lease on life, rather than letting them fester at the backs of cupboards or in landfills, we’re tackling the problems of over production and getting to meet new people and build links within our community.
In recent years there’s been a veritable explosion in the number of groups and websites providing resources to help people swap all kinds of skills and stuff, in a rejection of mainstream ‘buy it and bin it’ consumer culture.

One of the most well known examples is Freecycle, which now has over 4000 swapping communities around the world, with 1,487,765 members in the UK, and 44 groups in Scotland. Freecycle members join an online community, made up of people in their local area. Members list their unwanted stuff, and others agree to take it off their hands, without any money changing hands and with no need for a landfill site. Even though there’s little face to face communication, Freecycle helps build community, by showing people that there are lots of untapped resources right there in their locality, without having to turn to multinational businesses to find what you need.

The Freeconomy Community is another, fledgling online swapping resource that is even more clearly dedicated to building communities’ resilience in the face of fast progressing climate change. Rather than simply swapping objects, Freeconomy is all about providing the skills and the means for communities to learn new skills and do things for themselves. Members list the skills they are able to share, and can also draw on the skills of other group members. There are also forums for listing tools and spare home, office and garden space for other people to use. Unlike Freecycle, Freeconomy communities are intended to have a life outside the cyber-dimension. You’re given just three opportunities to email a Freeconomy member, and that’s it: after three emails you’re expected to get off the net and meet them face to face. The Freeconomy philosophy all revolves around the idea that being part of ‘a closely knit community with a diverse group of skills could well be the security of tomorrow.’

Even websites that aren’t primarily about swapping have developed sections for people to swap and trade without the need for cash. For example, Gumtree, the hugely popular network of classified ads, is primarily used by people looking to find housing to rent and flatmates to live with. But their focus on community and the ever increasing demand for communities to share their resources means that they also have sections for listing skills available for sharing skills and a ride-sharing section helping people to save money and carbon emissions.

Since the recession started, there’s been a flurry of interest in swapping clubs and online communities, mainly because of their money saving potential. Given that swapping not shopping can save you money, stop us wasting so many usable material goods and help our communities to regain the skills of self sufficiency, it’s difficult to see why everyone isn’t doing it.

You can find out more about all of these swapping resources at:
http://uk.freecycle.org
http://www.justfortheloveofit.org
http://www.gumtree.com

This entry was posted on 12 January 2009 at 10:53 pm and is filed under SEAD News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.