Kristen Baumlier

At Camp Pixelache in Helsinki, Finland that I attended last month I met members of Kulturlabor Trial & Error, which is a Berlin-based, non-profit organization that works with crafts, D.I.Y. culture, sustainability, arts and media.  The group calls itself  a “collective of designers and craftivists, thinkers and doers, artists and project managers” – who implement social and cultural projects. By using media, handicraft and art as tools, the group works mainly in the local community in Berlin, to experience, experiment with and exchange knowledge and skills.

At Camp Pixelache, several members of the group were there with lots of materials on hand that anyone could work with.  They also had some of their amazing publications on view.  One book is a book called Upcycle it! – A toolkit for creative recycling which gives practical information, information on different materials and interesting articles about upcycling.

Another amazing was the Recycled Creativity Festival 2011 Photobook, which was a handmade book from the Recycled Creativity Festival that was held in Berlin last year.  This yearly event celebrates upcycling and recycling – and had music, workshops, yoga, food, film, and lots of cool demos.

At the core of the festival is the idea that, “trash is not waste but the basis to develop our creativity.”    One interesting project I learned about that was at the festival was a portable T-shirt project, where any shirt is coated with a light-sensitive pigment.  A portable projection setup is used to project the image onto the t-shirt – and voila! A shirt is made.  I liked how this was setup on a cart – and could go anywhere.

Trial and Error recently got a space for workshops.  Some of the workshops they have coming up include “Make your own 100% upcycled* banner bags” – where you make bags out of old commercial banners.  Another project is “Trash of the Month,” where the presenters will check out one specific trash-material and give an upcycling workshop of how to use this material.  Past materials were bike pieces (pieces from bicycles), paper, old umbrellas, food (which included dumpster diving, candles, and some other materials.

The group has a mobile workshop wagon which is used to give workshops in public space.  The wagon was constructed out of 90% trash, sourced from the local environment

Got some trash that you don’t know what do with?  I recommend checking out the Trial and Error website, and check out their books that you can view online.

Image Source:
http://www.trial-error.org/

Links:

http://www.trial-error.org/

http://www.trial-error.org/publications

http://www.recycledcreativity.info/en/home.html