Welcome to Public Mend!

Come along to repair and reimagine your clothes. This is a free opportunity to get together with people in your community and learn or advance valuable skills in mending and restorative textile practice. Hosted by Emma Johnston, a formally trained textiles artist at the ANU and informally taught by her nana.

Now new and improved with an incredible bunch of skilled volunteers!

All skill levels are welcome; you can learn:

- Mending

- Tailoring

- Upcycling

- Sewing

- Patching & Embroidery

These workshops aim to foster a more conscious relationship to our clothes and to set people up with the skills and confidence to be involved in their manufacture and maintenance.

All necessary materials are provided, including clothing to repair, you are welcome to bring your own garments that you’d like to repair or upcycle.

Everyone is welcome, feel free to come along even if you don’t have anything to sew this month, this is a space for you. Bring along projects of any sort, bring a book or an assignment, there will be tea and biscuits and people to chat to.

This is a free event, however donations of any amount are welcome. In cash, materials, snacks, whatever you’d like to give!

We recognise that this project takes place on Ngunnawal land and we pay our respects to every indigenous family that has lived on, and continues to live on, this land, and we extend that respect to indigenous peoples everywhere. We show respect to this land and its people by moving to reduce waste and overconsumption, and by being committed to participating in non-exploitative and non-hierarchical systems of aid and collaboration. There is no sustainability without indigenous sovereignty, we give thanks to those indigenous people who have always been at the forefront of defending this planet and its interconnected ecosystems against the extractive forces of capitalism and colonialism.

This place that we meet always was and always will be, Aboriginal land.