The UP Creative Community is a collaborative of local artists who offer sustainable textile waste management in Sutton Coldfield.
We seek to do things differently, empowering the rejection of fast fashion and excessive purchasing in the mainstream.
We collect unwanted and used fabric items and repurpose them adding magic and sending them to their forever homes.
Our UPSkill programmes promote skills sharing amongst the community, from teaching basic sewing skills, to pattern cutting, handstitch for repair and for cathartic art. We offer a safe space for creativity to bloom, upcycling garments into unique pieces. We offer the tools to make better choices, to take some one else’s discarded items and make them into something incredibly beautiful and useful.
From resources for charities to use in their programmes, to costumes for local Opera, encouraging body positivity by showing how to make clothing to fit individual bodies, collaborative projects across the schools in the region to intergenerational making, we are at the forefront of change. Rejecting the norm and showing that sustainable thought is no more than taking your time to consider your choices rather than do what is easiest. By slowing down our consumption we make better choices.
We offer a consultancy to commerce, education and the third sector in cultural change- focussing on the current habitual consumption and highlighting how we can make tiny institutionally engrained decisions differently to save money and use the resources we already have in the community.
Locations
Who we are
Current Directors of The Up Creative Community Hub
Helen Waite
Helen has a background in making something from nothing.
A single mum who retrained from retail sales manager without A Levels to Bachelor of Arts at the University of Birmingham and is currently studying toward an MRes at the University of Leicester, the precursor to what she hopes will become a doctorate.
Helen’s academic interests are what drives people, studying Philosophy, Religion and Ethics before applying that to museology. She has specialised in taking the academic and historical and making them fun and accessible to all abilities and ages. Often through creative workshops in her role for Deaf Blind UK, tackling awkward truths of colonisation through focus groups and panel talks, through development of digital applications and Virtual Manuscript Room for the university, and most recently through her work at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery collating a Zine for the Arts Council and an accessible guide for the Leonardo Da Vinci celebration with The Royal Collection.
Helen is passionate about nature and can be found in her natural habitat sitting on the ground making fire outside her converted Toyota van with her mini me in tow whenever possible. This desire to celebrate and enjoy our planet has always driven her to consider ways in which her family’s life could be more sustainable (offsetting the impact of the diesel van to begin with). A keen eye has allowed her to self fund through university by having an online vintage clothing boutique which also allows her to spot a garment donation that is worth retailing for the maximum input to the CIC.
Full of ideas and a frugal Yorkshire lass, Helen brings tenacity and passion to the UP Creative Community Hub project.
Masaru Suzuki
Rebecca Bole
Past Directors of The Up Creative Community Hub
Beverley Gould
Chief Exective Officer
Bev has worked as a professional within the third sector for the last twenty years. She has worked on a number of projects, including improving referral pathways for asylum seekers and refugees recovering from trauma, developing robust support services for survivors of sexual violence, and fighting for advocacy and fair representation for welfare benefit tribunal claimants. With experience of managing United Nations, European Commission, and Big Lottery projects and a wider range of national trusts’ grants she ensures at Up Creative that funding, quality, monitoring, evaluation and reporting standards are met, adhering to the constitutional and legal requirements of a not-for-profit social enterprise. As CEO, she holds strategic responsibility for the success of the CIC as a community asset and for the beneficiaries it serves.
Bev’s interest in engagement with the arts and environment began in childhood where a low socio-economic background meant engaging in the circular economy for survival; where clothes recycling through hand me downs, book swapping, free activities at the local library, summer activity packs from cereal packs were all necessary free and creative ways to learn for families without any disposable income. A love of outdoor spaces combined with a passion for the arts and preloved clothing makes Bev a good fit for the Up Creative ethos. She wants to see a society where access to art is free for all; where inequalities on basis of income do not exist and where arts and outdoor learning and opportunities to engage with arts projects outdoors can be given free to children of low-income backgrounds across the board.
Away from the office, Bev loves getting to the coast to go bodyboarding, reading, dancing and above all being utterly silly with her two amazing children, Matilda and Joey. She sits in the Overseas Casework team of a major international charity, is on the board of a nutritional therapy social enterprise, and runs her own consultancy offering business services to companies of all sectors using a fourth sector and socially responsible approach.
UP Founder Erika Steinvorth
Erika is originally from Costa Rica, a small country in Central America. She moved to England in 2016 with her husband and children.
Erika is an Agricultural Engineer from EARTH University. The focus of their education swerved her into having a socially and environmentally responsible entrepreneur mindset. Her favourite subject was Waste Management and consequently this introduced her to the upcycling of textile waste which combined perfectly with her lifetime sewing hobby. In recent years her hobby has shifted into her main activity mostly because of the global demand to help counteract the environmental, social and financial damage of fast fashion.
She has over a decade of experience in product development and repurposing of donated fabrics as it has become a passion in life (see Ika’s Upcycling on Facebook). After suffering from depression a couple of years ago she found her remedy in sewing. It got even better as she started offering sewing sessions at her house to other mothers in the neighbourhood. She would guide them through their projects and show how the solution of their problems was available in their own hands. The activity was so positively received that the next obvious step is to expand to be able to offer it to all the community.
Erika is no longer a Director of The UP Creative Community CIC. We value her contribution at the early stages of establishing the UP CIC and continue to strive to focus our offerings based on her foundational ethos of what is most sustainable for our home.
Safety in our Creative Community
Our volunteers, supporters and members are equally important to us, and we want the Creative Community to be a safe space for everyone.
All our directors old enhanced DBS checks, are CACHE Level 2 trained in Mental Health First Aid, Safeguarding and Prevent, and Understanding Children and Young People’s Mental Health.
Please see our Policy section for further details.