Scottish Ballet x Rags to Riches: A tot(e)ally sustainable collaboration

Rags to Riches is an award-winning upcycling social enterprise using waste materials to promote environmental sustainability, community engagement and education across the southside of Glasgow. Operating since 2014, they employ the circular economy model to provide creative workshops at The Deep End, as well as providing outreach programmes to organisations to upskill, train and empower local groups and support vulnerable communities. 

Scottish Ballet has collaborated with Rags to Riches on a new project – creating tote bags from costume fabrics. We visited Gail Power, Textile Workshop Facilitator at Rags to Riches, and the creator of our new tote bags, to talk about our latest product collaboration;  

Tell us about the work you do at Rags to Riches 

Rags to Riches is part of Govanhill Baths Community Trust, a local charitable organisation that runs community events in the Glasgow southside area. We are particularly keen to increase the amount of upcycling and reuse in the local area as there are currently a lot of materials going to waste including textiles, wood and plastics. Our main remit is to look into upcycling opportunities. We provide workshops to give people the skills they need to be able to reuse and make something new from their own belongings. 

How did this collaboration with Scottish Ballet come around?  

Scottish Ballet approached us to ask if we’d be interested in working with dead-stock fabrics, as there was a small amount of old costume fabrics left over from previous productions. I have been able to repurpose the fabrics and create tote bags from them.

It is a real joy to produce a product which represents audiences’ favourite productions and characters. We’ve produced something really unique, a bag that allows you to take home a little piece of that on-stage magic. The fabrics are repurposed and given a new life, we’ve created a sustainable product that prevents materials being wasted. 

Tell us about the creation process

I’ve had a wonderful array of fabrics to work with, which are hand-delivered by the Scottish Ballet team, who are our close neighbours! It’s been great to work with silks, taffeta, brocade – all really glorious fabrics. I have created a design for the tote bags which is reversible, so it can be worn two ways. Each bag features different patterns on each side with fabrics that were once worn on-stage by a character in a Scottish Ballet production. The bag has a little pocket sewn in, for storing small items.  

The process of creating a tote bag begins with cutting all the fabric, making sure I maximise the use of all the fabric I have, and minimising waste. I then create the handles, they are the very first part that gets attached to the bag.  When I’ve stitched  the handles on I can then do the bag lining, which features the small pocket. I then stitch all the pieces together, and finally add some structure details to the bag to give it a nice shape. Each bag takes me about an hour and a half to handmake, they are created in small batches as and when we have more fabric available. 

I don’t ordinarily get to work with such beautiful fabrics, we’re often using old curtains, bed sheets or industrial poster materials. Getting to work with such wonderful materials is a total pleasure. Some of the fabrics are a little tricky to work with, and those bags take a little longer to create. I’ve been defeated by some silk velvet – I did make one bag but it took me over a day to create! I would like to make something from the silk velvet in future, but perhaps in a different shape that would suit the fabric better.  

Scottish Ballet have provided a lot of natural fabrics, which are great to work with and more environmentally friendly as they will eventually biodegrade when they come to the end of their life.  

What can we expect next?

The bags have been very popular and so we hope to keep creating more, when we have the materials available. We’re also working on some new product ideas, and exploring different fabrics…so watch this space.

Read about Scottish Ballet’s Green Action Plan

Find out more about Rags to Riches

Find out more about Gail Power Art Design