The cornerstone of SCRAP’s sustainable fashion design program is using fabric that would otherwise end up in landfills
A Bayview after-school program is fostering San Francisco’s longstanding tradition of self-expression through fashion by training the next generation of designers. SCRAP , a nonprofit reuse and recycling center, operates arts-education programs that serve about 1,000 K-12 public-school students a year at 20 schools throughout The City.
By recycling and upcycling donations, SCRAP has said it diverts over 200 tons of materials that would otherwise head to landfills each year. Its brick-and-mortar store on Newcomb Avenue is something of a spectacular dumpster dive to sustainable artists and fashion designers alike. “SCRAP has always been a part of my mother’s art-making practices, my own art-making practices,” Emma Armstrong, a costume designer and native San Franciscan, told The Examiner. After receiving her degree in costume design and a stint working in Los Angeles’ film industry, Armstrong said she became disillusioned with the “wastefulness” of the garment market. Fashion manufacturers have come under scrutiny for the amount of waste they produce, which often ends up in landfills. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, landfills received 11.3 million tons of textiles in 2018, when data was most recently available. Earlier this year, California legislators passed a landmark, first-of-its-kind textile recycling bill, the Responsible Textile Recovery Act of 2024, to address textile waste. As a fashion designer in California, Armstrong said she saw the consequences of so-called “fast fashion” up-close. “In the costuming world, there was so much waste happening that I just could not be a part of it anymore,” she said. “So when this opportunity arose to teach kids how to create sustainable fashion, I jumped on board.” Armstrong is one of a cohort of 10 local artists who facilitate after-school workshops at SCRAP, ranging from arts and crafts to its newest subset, a sustainable fashion design project geared to students ages 12-18. The teens get hands-on experience in how to properly use sewing machines as well as needles and thread in the program. They design their own collections and, under the guidance of local artists, see their creations come to life. The act of “upcycling,” or repurposing used materials to create something new, is a cornerstone of the SCRAP sustainable fashion design program. Goodwill donates the materials the students use — all of which are counterfeit designer materials or clothing items the stores cannot sell. “These goods are getting pumped out, but because they can’t be sold back to the consumer, they get thrown away,” Armstrong said. In one such project, Armstrong said a student took apart a counterfeit Balenciaga sweater and transformed it into a two-piece top and skirt. “Not only did it fit her, but it was like this total upcycle of something that was just so gaudy and outrageous, and it turned into something really, really cool and wearable,” Armstrong said. Joanne Wang, a full time, self-employed artist based in Oakland, taught a cohort of SCRAP teens earlier this year. She said that after school programs like the SCRAP’s sustainable-fashion classes also offer students a chance to work with their hands and experience an art medium “that isn’t just drawing and coloring.” “That opportunity to work with materials, like sequins, feathers, zippers, and buttons — things that they haven’t necessarily worked with before — is really exciting for the students,” Wang said. She added that the idea of open-ended art projects — like designing and creating your own fashion line from scratch — was “kind of mind-boggling” to them at first. The availability of programs like the ones offered at SCRAP highlights a scarcity of arts education access on the whole, Wang added. Ex // Top Stories Valkyries set US women’s sports record before playing a single game The WNBA team says it has secured more than three times as many season-ticket deposits before its inaugural season than any other women’s franchise Retail vacancies in San Francisco hit a new record in the second quarter Second quarter retail vacancies hit a record in San Francisco, with empty space at a new peak around Union Square, according to Cushman & Wakefield SF bans automated software accused of price-fixing housing rents Critics say that because the software draws on a vast pool of proprietary industry data, it allows landlords to indirectly coordinate their decisions “I don’t think many of have had an assigned open-ended art project in that sort of way,” she said. “I show them examples of how and tell them there is no right or wrong way to do art, and you can kind of just play around. It’s about play. It’s about experimentation.” According to the California School Boards Association, arts education in the state is plagued by a lack of funding, and on average, only one in five public schools had access to a full-time art teacher. To address the lack of resources, California voters approved Proposition 28 in November 2022, which requires an annual source of funding for K-12 public schools for arts and music education. But the rollout of Prop. 28 funds hasn’t guaranteed access to arts education during and after school hours. CalMatters reported that some school districts planned to use their funds to pay for existing positions and programs, as the loss of pandemic relief funding left many districts — including San Francisco Unified — cash-strapped. Concerns about how the proposition funds are being used and distributed prompted calls for more oversight and transparency. Armstrong said she didn’t have access to unique arts-enrichment programs when she was growing up in The City. “I wish I had programs like SCRAP when I was growing up. Unfortunately, my after-school programming was pretty basic,” she said. “We had homework hour and then playground hour, and that was pretty much it.” She added that she was fortunate enough to have teachers who encouraged her to focus on her craft, but arts education is “something that the schools truly just don’t have funding for.” “I hear it from our educators too, from the schools that we’re at,” she said. “So for us to be coming in after school, it’s a nice reprieve for the kids to still have access to art in such a unique medium.”In the 1970s, the Neighborhood Arts Program of the San Francisco Arts Commission received a grant to employ local, professional artists in The City’s public schools. Eventual SCRAP founder Anne Marie Theilen oversaw the program with a group of over 140 teaching artists. But there was no budget for art materials and the artists struggled to find supplies for their lessons. At the same time, local businesses were discarding items en masse, including fabric samples from interior designers, industrial discards and product overruns. Theilen teamed up with the famous San Francisco modernist artist Ruth Asawa to form SCRAP in 1979 as a conduit between artists and refuse. The center is the nation’s oldest creative reuse facility and is model for similar sites around the country. Beyond filling needs for after-school care and access to arts enrichment, the program trains future designers in a city with a significant fashion history. Despite residents’ apparent affinity for ready-to-wear athleisure, The City’s tourism advocates proudly tout its “costume culture,” and San Francisco’s fashion legacy is even spotlighted at a current exhibition at the de Young, entitled Fashioning San Francisco: A Century of Style.“To wear something, get and say, ‘Yeah, I made this.’ … That’s pretty cool, and a real point of pride ,” Wang said.
Scrap Arts Education After School Programs Fashion Industry Sustainable Fashion Upcycling Fashion Design Fashion Design Education Scrap In A Box Ruth Asawa
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