Barnardo's Re-Fashion Hub is here!

The Barnardo’s Re-Fashion Hub is here!

In June, we officially opened The Re-Fashion Hub, our first-ever upcycling workshop based in Bradford Superstore! To celebrate, we invited some Barnardo’s colleagues to try out their sewing skills.

(Judith Whitehouse, The Central Operations Team, practicing her sewing skills.)

The Re-Fashion Hub is a space for our creative volunteers to reuse, repair and upcycle donated textile items that would usually be sent to our recycling merchants as store colleagues have deemed them unsuitable for resale in their current state. This could be due to being too worn, having a small stain, a missing button, or needing a little TLC of some kind! The hub enables volunteers to give these donations a new lease of life – whether that be as the same product with repairs or upcycled into completely new products. These items can then be resold in our stores which not only supports our sustainability goals by significantly reducing the number of textiles we send for recycling, but also generating much needed additional income for the Children's Services that Barnardo’s supports.

(Tracy Edwards, Re-Fashion Volunteer, teaching Shona Jeffries, Retail Volunteering Team, how to sew. Shona made a pair of shorts from some joggers).

The hub has been set up with a zero spend budget to date and has been kitted out with sewing machines generously donated by Singer, a washing machine donated by Miele and various sewing tools and materials donated by Korbond.

We have also linked with Bradford College Fashion School who will be introducing The Re-Fashion Hub to students as part of their degree coursework from September. Anything the students create can be sold in our stores afterwards.

This project, managed by the Retail Sustainability Team, is a pilot and we hope to introduce additional Re-Fashion Hubs across the UK in the future. There may also be an opportunity to open The Re-Fashion Hub up to members of the public for community crafting workshops and repair services which would be an additional income stream for the charity.

(The Retail Sustainability Team)

If you would like to find out more or if you are interested in volunteering at the Bradford Re-Fashion Hub, please apply via: 

Barnardo's Volunteering

Refashion Volunteer

or email Abigail Birtles, Sustainability Manager, directly - abigail.birtles@barnardos.org.uk