Name: ClotheSwap: a sustainable fashion and dance experience
Start: 2025-03-23T10:30:00+00:00
Location: ACM Centre

ClotheSwap: a sustainable fashion and dance experience

Have you ever wondered where your clothes go when you’re done with them? Step into a world where fashion isn’t disposable: it’s exchanged, re-imagined, and given a second life. Fast fashion is one of the biggest contributors to environmental destruction today, with mountains of discarded clothing piling up in landfills and polluting our planet. ClotheSwap invites you to be
part of the solution in two ways:
1) TAKE ACTION: JOIN THE CLOTHES SWAP
Bring a garment, take a garment, and help reduce fashion waste. But this is more than just a swap - it’s an opportunity to reflect on where our clothes come from, where they go, and how we can extend their life. As you exchange garments, you’ll also exchange stories, sharing the hidden histories of the clothes we wear.
DROP OFF YOUR CLOTHES
Monday 17th and Thursday 20th March 2025 (10am and 4pm), Shannon House (Reception), Castleconnell
Bring your clean, gently used clothing items; we accept tops, bottoms, dresses, shoes, and accessories; please ensure items are in good condition - no stains, holes or damage
Un-ticketed
For more information: please email [email protected]
SWAP DAY
Sunday, 23rd March 2025 (10:30am and 4:30pm), Shannon House (Shannon Room), Casktleconnell
Browse and swap clothes. Share stories about your garments. Participate in dance-inspired activities.
Un-ticketed
For more information: please email [email protected]
2) GO DEEPER: BE PART OF THE DANCE PERFORMANCE PROJECT
For those who want to explore the issue further, ClotheSwap
continues with a week-long creative process. Participants will take part in movement-based workshops, inspired by the stories and garments from the swap. The project will culminate in a performance, where dancers swap clothing as they move through the ACM Community Centre garden.
REHEARSALS
Monday 28th April to Friday 2nd May 2025 (3pm and 5pm),
Shannon House (Shannon Room/Boardroom), Castleconnell
Saturday 3rd May 2025 (10am and 4pm, lunch break 12-1pm), Shannon House (Garden), Castleconnell
Sunday 4th May 2025 (10am and 12pm), Shannon House (Garden), Castleconnell
PERFORMANCE
Sunday 4th May 2025 (3pm), Shannon House (Garden), Castleconnell
Un-ticketed
For more information: please email [email protected]
JOIN US!
Whether you come to swap or stay to create, your participation makes a difference. Let’s rethink the way we wear, swap, and sustain fashion - because what we wear should never be disposable.
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CREATIVE TEAM
Artistic director and choreographer: Rita Marcalo
Producer: Susan Cabezas
Co-devisors/Performers: tbc
Technical support and equipment: tbc
Music: tbc
Photographer/videographer: tbc
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CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION ON THE WORK
ClotheSwap is a collaboration between Instant Dissidence and the ACM Community Centre in Castleconnell: the community centre provides the facilities (such as meeting rooms, community secretarial service, typing, photocopying and internet access) to the local community of Castleconnell (community groups and private individuals). Other activities include day and evening classes, children’s santa party and the Castleconnell St. Patrick’s day parade. ClotheSwap merges sustainable fashion with socially engaged dance. Led by choreographer Rita Marcalo, it encourages sustainable fashion choices through a clothes swap event where participants exchange garments, share personal clothing stories, and engage in movement-based activities. Taking place at the ACM Community Centre during Limerick Council’s Climate Action Week 2025, the project fosters inter-generational collaboration, raises awareness of fashion’s environmental impact, and promotes circular economy practices through artistic expression. ClotheSwap is also the latest work in Instant Dissidence’s series titled 12 Works in 12 Years, a series that examines the policrisis that humanity is currently experiencing, and the urgent systemic changes needed.
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ABOUT INSTANT DISSIDENCE
Instant Dissidence (www.instantdissidence.org) is a socially and ecologically engaged dance company based in Cloughjordan Ecovillage, directed by Rita Marcalo: the company foregrounds the role of dance as a social engine, and resists the idea of art as an object produced by a special kind of person called the ‘artist’, and work is often co-created in dialogue with (and performed by) non-professional artists about issues which matter to them: the people whom Rita assembles for each Instant Dissidence project become ‘artivists’, enacting the power of connecting art and social consciousness. Instant Dissidence believes in the ecological necessity of shifting art-making away from its current ego- centric paradigm (art about humans, for humans) to an eco-centric paradigm (a post-humanist epistemology where humans are conceived as intertwined with, and dependent upon, non-human life). 2022 saw the company take on the international stage: the work SlowMo was one of 19 projects EU-wide selected by Perform Europe, Marcalo was the selected Irish artist by CROWD-International Dance Exchange (residency in Finland) and by the Centre Culturel Irlandais (residency in Paris), the company's work was the subject of a feature piece in European dance magazine Springback, and Marcalo presented at three international arts & climate change conferences (Sweden, Denmark and Italy). In Ireland support from the Arts Council enabled the development of two new dance & food activism concepts, and Marcalo was commissioned to deliver presentations as part of the Places Matter Arts Council conference and Creative Europe Ireland's Culture & Climate event. A Spring 2023 writing commission by Create for Create News 33 is here. In 2023 Instant Dissidence received one of the inaugural Culture Moves Europe’s Residency Hosts Grants (Creative Europe), enabling the company to host a Performance & Ecological Practice Residency in Cloughjordan Ecovillage in 2024, in partnership with performance artists from Slovenia and France. 2024 saw Marcalo working with Wendy Houstoun, emilyn claid and Pete Shenton as mentors for a new work titled 12,600 Days (with an initial residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in County Monaghan, Ireland), and the production of Dancing The Orchard: an Arts Council funded work connecting dance and apple juice pressing. An national/international tour of Dancing With Strangers: From Palestine To Ireland also took place (Ireland, Portugal and England). 2025 sees Instant Dissidence partnering with a Portugal-based production company (Octo Productions) to undertake this year's international touring of Dancing With Strangers: From Palestine To Ireland (Germany, Lebanon, Portugal, England). With funding from an Arts Counci’s Co-funding Award, Marcalo will also be travelling to Iceland, Portugal and Bulgaria to co-develop a Creative Europe Cooperation project with partners in all those three countries, and funding from Creative Europe/Island Connect will see Marcalo developing a project titled SlowTides in 4 European islands: Ireland, Suomenlinna, Madeira and Tenerife. Marcalo will also conclude her Creative Climate Action funded project in Castleconnell, looking at dance and anti fast-fashion activism.
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PRESS ON OUR MOST RECENT POLICRISIS WORK
… an ecologically engaged performance… … connect[ing] attendees, performers and apple[s] through the power of community-based art; ‘... fostering discussions in Irish society around alternative ways of living that are less harmful for the planet’.
The Nenagh Guardian
… original dance performance… a humorous and energetic version of apple pressing performed by four joyous young dancers under the eyes of an entranced multi-generational audience.
Tipperary Live
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FUNDING CREDITS
ClotheSwap is a collaboration with ACM Community Centre. Funded by Creative Ireland, and Limerick City and County Council Creative Climate Action – Síolta Glasa. An Instant Dissidence production, with support from Tiny Elephant.
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IMAGE CREDITS
ChatGPT generated image
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FOR MORE INFORMATION AND PRESS RELATED ENQUIRIES AND IMAGES
Contact Rita Marcalo at: [email protected].
Website: www.instantdissidence.org
Instagram: instant_dissidence
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InstantDissidence
X: @RitaMarcalo