Plastic Fantastic continues its work developed on 2 previously funded Climate Challege Fund (CCF) projects, Recycle Upcycle and Greenscreen Inverclyde. RIG Arts are working to raise awareness of the importance and benefits of reducing, reusing, recycling and upcycling. With this project, RIG Arts are creating creative and useful products from ‘waste’ or old items, promoting recycling, reducing landfill and exploring the environmental and economical value of upcycling and creative reuse with local schools and Broomhill residents. We are working with students at St. Patrick’s Primary School, Whinhill Primary and Notre Dame High School – as well as holding adult’s community workshops in Broomhill to teach valuable reuse and recycling skills.

This new stage of the project will introduce innovative plastic recycling technology, including a plastics granulator and a plastics filament maker. These machines will enable us to break down old plastics such as water bottles and other household packaging, then melt it down into long filament strips. These strips can then be used in 3D printing, or in our new 3D plastic pens, which can be used to make 3D plastic objects. The machines will be made according to open source blueprints found at https://preciousplastic.com/en/ 

Our adult’s classes run on a Thursday evening from 6-8pm, currently focusing on furniture upcycling at our Art Flat, 12 Broomhill Court, PA15 4ET. 14s and under must be accompanied by an adult.

As well as furniture upcycling workshops we will also continue to provide textiles upcycling workshops, this time focusing on clothes repair and repurposing.

The workshops:

• provide an overview of the basics of  upcycling and repairing furniture and clothes
• share valuable skills and knowledge to equip participants with the tools to make informed choices about waste reduction
• divert items from landfill to create high quality outputs
• create striking pieces of functional designs which will be showcased in an ‘eco-flat’ which will be opened to the public.

The flat is being decorated with repurposed furniture, soft furnishings and poster boards to showcase the facts and skills learned from the workshops. It will act as a visual representation of how fashionable recycling can be while teaching the public the benefits of upcycling and repair and reuse.

Throughout the Recycle Upcycle project, we were working with freelance film maker Chris Fallen to create and share vlogs on how to make the items we’ve produced both in schools and in the Art Flat.

All of our videos can also be found on our YouTube and Vimeo channels.

For more info on why this is so important for the planet, please read our posts, available in in the drop-down menu above.

Plastic Fantastic is funded by the Climate Challenge Fund and includes a maximum amount of £26,931 from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).