Thousands of people have enjoyed the creative challenge of ‘thrifting their place’ this summer in a project supported by The Northern School of Art.

The initiative, a series of activity packs by the hugely popular annual celebration of sustainability, The Festival of Thrift, was designed to enable people to recreate their own mini festival at home after the large scale annual event was cancelled this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In keeping with its thrifty aims, rather than jettison the festival entirely, it was instead repurposed for 2020 and renamed Thriftfest Upcycled The Digital Edition.

People were invited to get involved with a Home Edition of the event using the activity packs – full of fun-filled ideas to inspire all ages and aim to help people to get involved in creating, fixing, swapping and sharing at home and doing some of the activities they would have been able to take part in if they’d visited the event.

Activities included in the free to download packs range from a guide to cloudspotting and tips for releasing your inner dandy to instructions for making flowers out of waste beach plastic to create a garden of the deep and a guide to creating wearable sculptures from household ‘rubbish’.

The Festival of Thrift organisers commented:

“This year has been a challenging one financially, so we are hugely grateful to all of our funders, and especially to The Northern School of Art for supporting us to produce this pack and get printed editions out to those who don’t have access to computers.

“The only specialist Art and Design HE institution in the North East , providing a wide range of courses across the creative, screen, stage and craft skills – from school leaver to career changer – A-levels, diploma, degree post graduate they are an ideal match for us at Festival of Thrift!”

To download the free ‘Thrift Your Place’ activity packs visit https://www.festivalofthrift.co.uk/activity-pack/