Festival of Thrift: Celebration of frugality booms as cost of living crisis bites

As she walked out of the swap shop tent, Hannah Williamson’s smile could have been measured in megawatts.

The 21-year-old had just exchanged an old pair of jeans for a sequinned plunge dress.

“Pair this with a nice pair of shoes, and this is my graduation outfit sorted,” she beamed holding the garment. “I love it. All for the price of some trousers that no longer fitted.”

At the Festival of Thrift, in the northeast village of Kirkleatham, near Redcar, such joy was everywhere this weekend.

By Sunday, some 60,000 people are expected to have attended what is the UK’s only national celebration of both the planet and saving a few pennies.

Highlights included the usual festival staples (music, theatre and beer at £5 a pint) combined with rather more niche attractions: the swap shop tent, make-do-and-mend workshops, budgeting talks and classes on how, for example, to turn waste cardboard into new interior decorations. This, indeed, might be the world’s only festival where a session on how to make your own cheap washing-up liquid was standing room only.

And, while the extravaganza is now something of an established northeast event – it was first held in Darlington in 2013 – its message has perhaps never felt more apposite than amid a cost of living crisis and an environmental emergency.

“When we first started, I think sustainability was still considered a very hippie thing,” said Stella Hall, the festival’s creative director and one of its founders. “These days, it’s become far more mainstream because people are more conscious that they don’t want to create waste, but, sadly, they are also desperately trying to find ways to save money because of what’s going on [with the economy].”

The festival’s whole raison d’etre, reckons Ms Hall, is to help society shift to a more thrifty way of thinking.

“The thing I love seeing most is lightbulb moments,” the one-time music promoter said. “When you see an idea has hit home with someone. If everyone who comes here goes away with one idea, maybe two, of how to be more sustainable – and they apply that in their lives – that has a huge ripple effect in changing society’s mindset for the better.”

Other highlights among the weekend’s 220 stalls, stages and activities included a 36-metre communal lunch, at which diners were fed two courses made from food waste, a mobile disco troupe (complete with glitter ball made of discarded CDs) and a catwalk show featuring models decked out in outfits made from, among other things, old cushion covers and crisp packets. One, in particular, wowed in a corset that had once been a sports jacket.

“The message we’re trying to convey is that you don’t need throwaway fashion to look good,” said Abigail Dennison, the Teesside University fashion lecturer who produced the show. “The most amazing looks can be created out of the most unexpected things.”

A pause as she pulled from a rack a statement dress made from old bedsheets. “Look at that,” she enthused. “I’d absolutely wear that on a night out. And you know for a fact no one else would be wearing anything similar.”

Another attraction – and perhaps an example of the festival’s ambition – was a collaboration between the poet Ben Okri and the artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey, in which an Okri couplet was imprinted and grown on a banner of grass. A larger version had previously been displayed at the Tate Modern.

More? An EnlightenTent offered discussions on everything from budgeting to biodiversity, while a fix-it cafe – all soldering irons, screwdrivers and strongly stewed tea – did an especially brisk business.

“Watches, games consoles, bathroom scales,” reeled off Marek Gabrysch when asked what people had been bringing in for mending. “I think a lot of people here are the kind of people who get genuinely affronted when something they’ve spent a bit of money on breaks and they almost want it fixed on a point of principle – and I think that’s exactly the right way to be. We shouldn’t just accept that we have to throw things away and replace them. That’s just accepting landfill. It’s good for no one.”

For younger people here, thriftiness seemed to be a skill they were keen to develop – 17-year-old Mia Rose was trying to pick up tips on vintage outfits, for example. But for some older punters it felt more like back to the future.

“I’ve seen people describing weaving as an art form,” said one woman. “We used to be given little looms as kids so we could help make our own clothes.”

Her companion nodded and referred to the classes on how to make washing-up liquid. “My mum did that as a matter of course,” she said. “She had to. She couldn’t afford it any other way.”

For now, though, a last question for director Stella Hall.

Can a festival that attracts thousands of car users to a relatively remote village – Kirkleatham is two miles from Redcar – really be good for the environment? A look across the jam-packed field-turned-car-park on Saturday was to see a minor climate catastrophe in play.

She is, it seems, ahead of the query.

The festival will move next year to a town centre site, in nearby Billingham – right next to the train station.

“We said when we started in 2013 that we wanted this to be a festival that toured [the Tees Valley] every few years, so that’s the main reason why we’re moving,” said Hall. “It will be hard to leave here because it is such a fantastic site – but, yes, being in a town centre will allow us to encourage even greater sustainability.”