Assembly for a Fashion Commons at Defashion Dorset: How to Foster a Local Clothing Culture

Fashion Act Now and Our Common Market at Defashion Dorset 

Hawkers Farm, Stour Provost, is hosting the second year of this annual event and members of Fashion Act Now and the team of Our Common Market will be contributing. We'll be running a People's Assembly on Friday 24th May (time TBC) where we'll listen to local practitioners and deliberating on what collective action should be taken to support community-based non-extractive clothing systems. We'll try to answer the question, 'How should we Foster a Local Clothing Culture?'

Defashion Dorset is an opportunity to celebrate local fibre growers and makers and a local clothing culture. Jenny Morisetti, founder of Defashion Dorset asks, "We buy locally grown food to support farmers so why don’t we consider buying locally grown clothing?"  According to Climate Words “To ‘Defashion’ is to combat the fashion industry’s role in the climate crisis and transition to regenerative and fair clothing systems.”

Defashion Dorset will be welcoming local exhibitors including: Woolcraft with Wensleydale, BlueBarn.Life, Henry's Buttons, Made by Jules, Townhill Studio, Laura Basevi and Marina Skua to name just a few. Workshops will teach methods of enhancing, embellishing and mending clothing, making skills, natural dyeing, Dorset button making and more. 

Ticket prices

Adults £5 Fri or Sat day ticket

£7 2-day ticket

Children FREE

Carers FREE 

​

CAFE SERVING DELICIOUS LOCAL FOOD OPEN ALL DAY

​

Opening times Fri 24th May 10am - 5pm Sat 25th May 10am - 5pm

​

PLEASE CONTACT  defashion.dorset@gmail.com if you have any questions

Learn more by reading our Defashion Dorset article and visiting the Hawkers Farm website.

About Assembly for a Fashion Commons

Fashion Act Now are building Our Common Market (OCM): a place to find clothing culture through community participation not purchase. The purpose of OCM is to nurture a clothing commons where clothing culture exists not to serve the market, but to serve the customs, culture and needs of ordinary people.

As a commons, participatory decision making is integral to OCM and People's Assemblies are how we do it. We meet to grapple with some of the big questions related to fashion commoning. Our intention is to collectively come up with decisions on how to bring about a pluriverse of ethical and fair clothing systems. We invite any curious minds and people involved in community-based and ethical fashion systems to join us in Dorset.

What is a commons?

“Commons certainly include physical and intangible resources of all sorts, but they are more accurately defined as paradigms that combine a distinct community with a set of social practices, values and norms that are used to manage a resource. Put another way, commons is a resource + a community + a set of social protocols. The three are an integrated, interdependent whole.” (Bollier Think Like a Commoner (2014: 15))

In other words, commons refers to a social practice for co-creating and co-managing collective wealth (or resource). It is often said, there is ‘no commons without commoning’. A commons is shared wealth, a community stewarding it and a code of conduct to care for the community and its shared wealth.

What is a People's Assembly?

People's Assemblies are a format for inclusive meetings in which everyone's voice is heard with the aim to come to collective conclusions and decisions.

We'll be following a 3 part structure:

1. Information: Attendees will listen to speakers put forward the key information and perspectives on the topic at hand (Speakers are yet to be announced)
2. Deliberation: In small groups, attendees will discuss the topic with a facilitator, ensuring everyone’s voices is heard
3. Integration: The group will come back together and one representative from each sub-group will summarise their discussion. The whole group will discuss together and try to come up with decisions, actions and ideas to take forward. We encourage all attending to get involved in taking action following the assembly.

The assembly space aims to be:

• An inclusive space where everyone’s voices is heard
• A space of trust so we feel comfortable to speak up whatever our opinion
• A place of active listening