The idea
We’d like funding to run sewing sessions in Carterton (Friday afternoons) and Chipping Norton (Wednesday mornings) during term time for six months from October 2025 to April 2026.
We bring sewing machines, tools and resources to each weekly session. We invite all to come along and sew. Our aim is to build community: gathering people from across each community with a shared enthusiasm for sewing. Offering a place for people to learn and share sewing skills, whilst offering a space to have conversation: reducing isolation and loneliness across each locally community.
We provide all the necessary resources for a topic each week which will teach a new sewing skill, alternatively people can bring their own project to complete knowing there is an assistance on hand if needed. People can use our equipment or bring their own: becoming more confident to continue a project at home.
What we'll deliver
- - sewing sessions where people make new friends and find a place in their local community.
- - opportunity for people to gather from across different cultural backgrounds
- - opportunity to learn new skills: building people’s self-esteem and self-worth and potential in the workplace.
- - the reuse of old textiles, reducing landfill.
- - opportunity for people to be creative, improving peoples mental health.
Why it's a great idea
- We bring people together, reducing isolation and loneliness in each local community. Meeting in settings like this helps people to know others that they live near, meaning outside our sessions provides more opportunities for friendships to grow.
- We bring different ethnic groups together, providing space for people to learn and understand more about one another: through shared experience and conversation; for community cohesion and reduced cross-cultural tensions.
- We teach new sewing skills & be creative, building people’s self-esteem and self-worth, aiding mental health.
- Many of our participants either come with sewing skills and limited English speaking, or speak good English but have little sewing skills - this is a great way to swap skills, benefiting one another by sharing what we know.
- We save people money by enabling them to repurpose old textiles.
- We reduce old textiles going into landfill, helping to sustain our world resources and reduce our environmental impact.
Steps to get it done
- - deliver our first 6 sessions (2 locations), where we have engaged with at least 12 participants in the local area
- - deliver a total of 36 sewing sessions (over 2 locations) engaging with at least 32 local people
