What We Learned About Producing Our Own Workshop: In Partnership with schuh 

Last week, we hosted a recycled shoe sculpture workshop hosted by Helen Kirkum with thanks to schuh. Here’s everything we considered throughout the project to make the session as accessible, welcoming and environmentally friendly as possible in the hope it can inspire members and their prospective events.

Always ask for the venue for accessibility 

We wanted to make sure our venue was accessible for those with disabilities and unseen disabilities. While modern buildings are required by law to be wheelchair-accessible, historic buildings are less likely to have all the necessary adjustments in place. When choosing the workshop location, we did a site visit of a few spots and made sure our final choice had disabled toilets on the same floor as our workshop and was lift-accessible. We made sure all of our attendees were informed of the venue’s accessibility during our invitation process. 

Pet and child-friendly spaces 

One thing that’s rarely considered when inviting guests to a workshop is whether the space or activity is child-friendly for those who struggle to find last-minute childcare, especially as our event fell into the school summer holiday period. We also made sure our venue was pet-friendly for attendees needing to bring service or emotional support animals. 

Gender neutral toilets 

As well as ensuring there was adequate disabled access for toilets, our final venue choice had gender neutral toilets to make sure any of our gender-non-conforming attendees felt as comfortable as possible in the space. According to statistics published by Stonewall UK in 2018, almost half of Trans people (48%) (Opens in a new window) have reported not feeling comfortable using public toilets, as a result of verbal abuse, intimidation, and physical assault (Opens in a new window) (LGBT in Britain Trans Report, Stonewall UK, 2018), and therefore rely on gender-neutral toilets to provide a safer alternative.

Environmental considerations of the workshop

In order to reduce our environmental impact, we worked alongside sustainable footwear designer Helen Kirkum who brought entirely recyclable materials to create the session. We also utilised deadstock copies of BRICKS Magazine and schuh kindly brought unwanted cardboard shoe boxes for their local store. We also ordered an entirely vegan breakfast from a local catering company. By ordering locally, we prevented unnecessary emissions on the delivery. Vegan diets are also often considered a more sustainable diet. For example, Beef in particular – makes an unsurpassable contribution to the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions (Opens in a new window). It also devours more land and water and causes more environmental damage (Opens in a new window)than any other single food product.  

Ensuring our collaborators align with our company ethos 

At BRICKS we believe in collaborating with companies with shared values across our education, sustainability and accessibility pillars. As well as working with sustainable designer Helen Kirkum who creates her designs entirely from deadstock and waste, this workshop was made possible thanks to schuh. The footwear retailer is always on the pulse of positive and forward-thinking progress in the footwear scene. In 2019 the retailer launched their Sell Your Soles (Opens in a new window) initiative in 2019, a scheme that allows customers to trade in their unwanted pairs of shoes in-store in an effort to make the footwear industry more sustainable. The scheme works in collaboration with Recyclatex (Opens in a new window), the UK’s largest textile recycling company, to discard unworn shoes responsibly and ensure that approximately 98% of all donated shoes are reused. With the money raised through donating to Recyclatex, schuh works with dedicated charity partner, World Land Trust (Opens in a new window), to support its Plant A Tree programme. Since the scheme’s inception, schuh has donated 181 tonnes of end-of-life footwear to Recyclatex, which in turn has allowed the World Land Trust to plant over 19,297 trees.