We are delighted to be asked to write in quarterly Magazine BE: Mag

You can purchase your copy here Be: Magazine – Cherished (cherisheduk.org)

Description

Issue 1 – BE: Inspired is our very first issue. Featuring inspiring story’s from both national and international, creative ideas and uplifting content, it is the perfect pick-me-up this winter!

£7:00 – this includes postage and packaging and 2 magazines (1 adult 1 child)

Magazines can be purchased separately
1 adult = £4.50
1 child = £4.00

Annual subscription – 4 issues
Every quarter delivered to your door!
£26.00 – BE: Inspired
This includes 2 magazines (1 adult 1 child)

Digital Version
Issue 1 – BE: Inspired
£3.50
This includes 2 magazines (1 adult 1 child)

ISSUE TWO: EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW

BE: THOUGHTFUL

Here’s a sneaky peaky of our article which is to be featured this Spring 2021.

Making someone a warm cup of tea on a cold afternoon, sending gifts to cheer them up and remind them you are thinking of them. Writing a postcard or letter to your older relatives when you can’t see them.

These are such thoughtful acts that we absolutely encourage in one another. Your kindess can and does make someone else happy. You have the power to change their day.

Being thoughtful does not need to be saved for your friends and family. More than ever, it is as important to be thoughtful for our home.

Our planet has been used as a resource for humans to expand across the earth and establish the world we live in today. Egyptians took stone from the ground to form the pyramids, coastal towns are rich from fishing the ocean and selling the animals to those inland, the Victorians travelled the world collecting plants and animals that had never been seen in Europe to show off how rich and clever they were, using feathers from exotic birds in their fashion and home furnishings.

We now know that this has led to extinction of some animal types, these animals we will never see in real life as their population has stopped. There is a list of animals that are very close to extinction right now that your children may never see, with the World Wildlife Organisation listing leopards, rhinos and even some orangutans as critically at risk. This can be because humans insist on using obvious things like fur, tortoise shell, and ivory tusks for accessories. It is also the way we process the other things we buy.

Everything we buy new goes through stages from the original material, and is altered (sometimes a lot) to make it into the thing you hold in your hand.

A great example of this is paper.

Trees provide humans with oxygen to breathe, without trees we can not survive. In the last 100 years huge forests have been cut down to manufacture paper and card. The process includes using machinery to cut down the trees, the wildlife and animals who live in the forest are often not considered.  The wood is shredded in huge factories and heated using fossil fuels, the pulp is processed into the shapes required before they are distributed, printed on, wrapped in plastic, foil or foam.

Take a look at your latest delivery

How much packaging was in it?

Was it necessary? Does a new item require every part of it to be wrapped in individual plastic or card?

We can BE: Thoughtful to change our daily habits and together we can change way we use the planet. Lots of people have already joined the LOOP pledging to consider their choices and attempt to live in a circular way.

The UP Creative Community is a group of artists in Birmingham who have decided to be the change we wanted to see.  We do things differently. Our focus is on Reducing, Reusing, Recycling and Upcycling.

We consciously create art using items that other people have thrown away.

Our two main focuses are UPcycling and UPskilling.

We have created a community of people who share.

We share our knowledge, our skills, our clothes, our art materials and most importantly- our time. We make time for our neighbours in the shared goal of making everyone’s lives more pleasant, fulfilled and sustainable.

We started as a group of mums who would meet up after we dropped our children at school. From passing on our children’s clothes to one another, we began mending and upcycling clothes that we had sat in our wardrobes that weren’t worn. We became the place for people to pass on their children’s own clothes knowing we would find a good new home for preloved garments.

We established a not for profit community and with our local charity network we now distribute clothing to people who need it rather than it being thrown away.

Fabric takes a lot to process from its natural starting point. Like the paper example, it often starts off life as a natural part of our planet. Cotton for example is grown, on a plant in around 80 different countries across the world. Cotton manufacture gives jobs to around 300 million workers as it is the largest non food crop to be planted and harvested.

So to make your top

• A field has been cleared, dug over, fed nutrients and prepared
• Hundreds of seeds have been planted
• Months of sun and litres of water have gone into the farmers growing the seed into a cotton plant.
• Hundreds of pickers join for the harvest and remove the cotton from the plant
• The cotton is dried, cleaned and compressed using more water and machinery
• Cotton bales are spun into yarn
• The yarn is dyed into the preferred colour
• The yarn is woven together to form sheets of fabric
• A team of designers have chosen how it should look to be comfortable, fashionable and useful clothing
• A team of artists make the clothing, cut the pattern, sew the lengths, iron the sleeves, sewn on buttons and pocket details, sew in a label and how to wash your cloth
• The items are shipped from other parts of the world to England where the garments are driven across the country to the shops which will sell them.
• You go out on a shopping day with your friends on a Saturday morning and buy a new top for £6.00 from Primark.
• You wear that top once cause no one wants to be seen wearing the same thing twice!
• The top sits in your drawer until your parents make you do a sort out of stuff you don’t need and gift to the charity shop.
• The charity shop doesn’t have enough volunteers to process all the clothing they have donated so they pick the best bits they know will sell and your old top gets chucked into ‘rag’.
• Every week the rag bin is taken to cash 4 clothes and sold for 45p per kg. Your top might raise 0.16p for the charity and will now be shipped to Eastern Europe.
• The business owner in Eastern Europe will wash the items again and sell them on, your cotton top has a new life in a new country.
• This is the best case scenario based on you donating it and it being accepted rather than you chucking it in the bin yourself.

The UP Creative Community offers an alternative.

At the moment we are forced to accept the processing stages of cotton, we believe that all of the work that has gone into creating this product, the yarn, the fabric is of more value than chucking it away.

We find alternative uses for your fabric.

We have a team of volunteers who can sew in different stages, some expert Queens who have sewn all their lives and can stitch in their sleep, others prick their thumb while watching Netflix on a nightly basis, some do not sew and don’t wish to, they happily stamp envelopes, cut wool and write thank you cards for us.

Each and every UP Maker has value.

We know that without every one of the community we are limited as to what we can achieve.

We are inspired by the fabric donations we receive; full garments are gifted to those who need them in North Birmingham. Through thoughtful consideration and a respect for how much energy has gone into creating each piece art resources, haberdashery items, fabric in all types and sizes are stored and redistributed in pack form to those who need them through our network of charities in Sutton Coldfield.

Over the coming months we will share with you what projects we have undertaken to date, and share inspiring ideas about how you could repurpose and relove your garments.

We are using Upskill and UPCycle to break the temptation for fast fashion, with our help we can give you the power to make your own garments, that fit your body, suit your shape and style and are completely unique to you!

BE: Thoughtful, every time you dress.