Weird Coat Club has finished

We ran monthly from April 2024 to June 2025, with a varying set of participants and approaches.

It's been great, many thanks for all your enthusiasms and weird coat ideas. And thanks to the Pervasive Media Studio for the space and the support.

Maybe we'll revive it one day, in some form or other. The collaborative dreaming and inventing has been marvellous, and it's been exciting to see that flow straight on into fabrication. But it's also asking a lot to do all this making in a temporary space and in a time-contrained session.

I'd really welcome ideas for different ways to do this - maybe something about experimental textiles more widely? Maybe we can find an easier space to do it in? Let me know your thoughts.

In the meantime, I'll leave this site up as a record.

What (was) all this about ?

Make coats in an improvisational jazz style. No pre-existing patterns. Not making everything perfect. Relatively low probability of success, relatively high probability of making some new ideas. Maybe finished wearable things, maybe just prototypes.

We’ll ask everyone to bring their own sewing machines & scissors if they can, plus supplies for themselves or to share - spare fabric, zips & buttons, card for patterns and so on. The venue doesn’t have any supplies, but there are big tables, and the Watershed bar is just down the corridor for impromptu suppers.

We (did) meet (roughly) on the 3rd Wednesday of every month, in the Pervasive Media Studio inside the Watershed, from 18:00 to 20:30.

The corridor that leads to the Pervasive Media Studio has a door halfway down it which is sometimes shut in the evening - if so, press the doorbell button to your right and we’ll come and let you in.

If you’d have questions or you’d like to be mailed when a session is coming up, please mail me: richard@jarkman.co.uk

Here’s a longer version of the Manifesto

Latest 3 Sessions

7 more sessions can be found in the history.