We are GIG
Written by Ricardo Ruiz
The fashion industry has a waste problem. Every year, 92 million tonnes of textile waste is generated globally, while garment use has decreased by 36 percent since 2000, meaning clothes are being made faster and discarded sooner than ever before. Waste is built into the process from the start, where roughly 15% of fabric used … Continue reading “Local Hubs, Global Impact: The Blueprint for a Sustainable Fashion Revolution”
Written by Nicolas Martinez
This year’s GIG week was welcomed by a very special and exciting gathering. On Sunday, May 25th, GIG members from across the world gathered at the Zentral- und Landesbibliothek Berlin for the first GIG reunion of 2025, a dynamic showcase of open, circular, and regenerative innovation that set the tone for the week ahead. Across … Continue reading “GIG Week 2025 Recap: Showcase of Open, Circular, and Regenerative Innovation”
Written by Melanie Chan
Co-hosted with Fab City Foundation, our upcoming make-a-thek community call brings together practitioners, makers, cultural organisations, and circular economy actors to explore how local ecosystems can support more circular textile practices and collective action. We will draw on two grounded examples to spark the conversation. In the Bergisches Region, Adriana Cabrera’s work builds on second-hand … Continue reading “22nd April 2026 Community Call: Towards Textile Circularity – Building Regional Impact Networks”
Written by Melanie Chan
We’re excited to invite you to a special make-a-thek community call ahead of Fashion Revolution Week 2026. The meetup will bring together library practitioners, cultural institutions, and circular fashion advocates to explore how communities can be mobilized around more sustainable fashion systems. Together with Ariane Piper (Fashion Revolution Germany) and Agata Zgliczynska (Circular Fashion Foundation … Continue reading “18th March 2026 Community Call: Driving Collective Action in Libraries”
Written by Melanie Chan
We’re excited to kick off our first community call of 2026 with a conversation on circular and regenerative fashion systems. Join makers, designers, innovators, and researchers from around the world to explore powerful approaches to sustainability in fashion and material innovation. Co-hosted by Global Innovation Gathering (GIG) and the Fab City Foundation (FCF) as part … Continue reading “21st Jan Community Call: Textile-to-textile & circular fashion in Asia”
Written by Melanie Chan
Air pollution and climate change remain urgent global challenges, yet many cities lack the environmental data needed to act. While major developed cities may have regular air-quality monitoring, many countries, especially across Africa, rely on only a handful of sensors to represent millions of residents. Meanwhile, cycling, often framed as an inexpensive solution to urban … Continue reading “senseBox:Bike: Cycling for Citizen Science and Urban Safety”
Written by Melanie Chan
What happens when communities facing climate disasters come together to create their own solutions? In our latest GIG community call, we explored an inspiring journey of grassroots innovation that traveled from Brazil to the Philippines, showing how powerful ideas can replicate across the globe. The call opened with an introduction to LabStorm, a citizen innovation … Continue reading “GIG Community Call: Adapting LabStorm from Brazil to the Philippines”
Written by Ricardo Ruiz
The Global Innovation Gathering Community Call on Solarpunk Visions and Makerspaces unfolded as a continuation of a dialogue first ignited in Berlin earlier this year. The discussion revisited questions of visibility, imagination, and shared futures within the maker movement. Led by GIG member Paweł Ngei, the session examined how storytelling can function as a prototype for social and … Continue reading “Solarpunk Visions and Makerspaces: Prototyping Narratives of Collective Futures”
Written by Ricardo Ruiz
On October 1st, the Global Innovation Gathering (GIG) hosted an inspiring community call centred around the transformative concept of reciprocity as a resource beyond monetary exchange. This session built on enriching discussions from the GIG Day workshops in May, continuing our journey toward alternative systems of value and support. Our guest speaker was GIG member … Continue reading “Exploring Reciprocity as a Resource: A Recap of the Community Call”
Written by Ricardo Ruiz
The latest Global Innovation Gathering (GIG) Community Call brought together members of the network to discuss an open-source project that directly addresses water access challenges in rural and coastal regions. The project centres on a portable, solar-powered reverse osmosis (RO) system with a seven-stage filtration design. Developed through collaboration and knowledge exchange, the system is … Continue reading “Open Hardware Solutions for Rural Water Access: A GIG Community Story”
