Free Shops — easy positive action. A Newcastle story

I did a Free Shop this week­end, and it was bril­liant. Free Shops make a pos­i­tive stand against land­fill, con­sumerism, social iso­la­tion and cli­mate change. Let’s have a sum­mer of free shops every­where — at your local com­mu­ni­ty fes­ti­val, on your high street and heck, why not, lets have one against the G8 in Auchter­arder too!

This week­end I set up a Free Shop at the New­cas­tle Com­mu­ni­ty Green Fes­ti­val. By Sun­day it was run­ning itself. This report tells you how to do one, and some of the good things you might get out of it.

The resources need­ed were one small gaze­bo ( bor­rowed ), two tables ( bor­rowed ), a mark­er pen, a bit of gaffer tape, and a vantrip on sat­ur­day morn­ing to deliv­er the first 10 bags of stuff. All that was left at the end was one bin lin­er half-full of ripped and mud­dy bin­lin­ers and plas­tic bags — but as many peo­ple request­ed the bags to car­ry their items away, even that was­n’t too bad.

Amongst the items giv­en away were a gui­tar, three cam­eras, 7 beech seedlings, 2 conker trees, 6 ‘ted­dy bear’ sun­flow­ers, a dozen boardgames, at least 20 pairs of shoes, at least 7 bin­bags full of clothes ( includ­ing swim­ming cos­tumes, pin­stripe suits and bras ), at least 30 books, at least 30 cds, at least 20 videos ( both chil­dren’s and adult ), at least 20 com­put­er games and pro­grammes, crock­ery, fry­ing pans, a dozen mugs, place­mats and orna­ments, a dozen bags, play­ing cards, at least a dozen keyrings, at least a dozen cud­dly toys, a bag of mina­ture sol­diers, 2 water can­nons and a water pis­tol, bags of mar­bles and boun­cy balls, lock­ets and neat con­tain­ers, tea from dar­jeel­ing, incense from new del­hi, fab­ric from thai­land, hip­py clothes and so on. All these things were junk to the peo­ple in pos­ses­sion of them, and they were all in imme­di­ate dan­ger of end­ing up in land­fill.

This was the first time that I’ve known a Free Shop to be not just about giv­ing stuff that we’ve col­lect­ed away, but for oth­er peo­ple to actu­al­ly bring stuff along and keep replen­ish­ing the stock. Tak­ing place on two con­sec­u­tive days was cru­cial for this, and it real­ly worked as a par­tic­i­pa­to­ry exchange sys­tem. For exam­ple, on Sat­ur­day one lass said she was leav­ing the coun­try in 4 weeks time and need­ed to get rid of all her stuff, which duly turned up on Sun­day. I’d pret­ty much run out of my col­lect­ed stuff by Sun­day, so the only rea­son it kept going was cos peo­ple kept deliv­er­ing stuff. I’d wan­der off for a cof­fee, only to find anoth­er 3 bin­bags on my return which I could then spread out and shout ‘get your free stuff here’ and draw anoth­er crowd. One indi­vid­ual brought along a whole batch of longlife light­bulbs with slight­ly dam­aged pack­ag­ing, maybe 50 of them?, and we split them into indi­vid­ual lots to spread around.

Chil­dren picked up things to give to their par­ents ( I had to be care­ful the rude books did­n’t go to them ), and most pleas­ing to me, non-hip­py local moth­ers would come along with their kids and fill a plas­tic bag with the things that appealed to their chil­dren. The so-per­fect-it-almost-makes-you-retch moment was when a woman appeared with a box of baby clothes. She said ‘i’ve got a load more things in the car. they’re every­thing you need for a girl from 0 to 2 years old’ ( a bit spe­cialised, i won­dered, for the free shop? ). So she asked for a hand to unload them, and whether I thought they’d be of use to any­one. Then a sec­ond woman who’d been going thru stock on the oth­er table said ‘well i’m expect­ing in 5 weeks, and it’s going to be a girl’. So I put the two of them togeth­er, they had a chat, and off they went to the car — where I think all the stuff got deliv­ered to the 2nd wom­an’s home.

Oth­er high-lights:

Hav­ing chat­ted to me on Sat­ur­day, a fes­ti­val vol­un­teer and his daugh­ter brought along their 4 foot high play-kitchen on Sun­day, com­plete with plas­tic food and uten­sils. This was pos­si­bly the star offer of the week­end and it attract­ed a lot of atten­tion, but it final­ly went to the grand­par­ents of a young girl. Although I’d writ­ten ‘deliv­ery offered on this item’ on it they said ‘ah no, we just live over there’ and so they car­ried it off towards the sta­di­um end of the park.

Some­one, I for­get who, left mon­ey on the table so I had great fun shout­ing out ‘even the mon­ey is free’ and it was ages before any­one took it — in the end we had two blokes rum­mag­ing thru the clothes rac­ing to find it, with me going ‘warm, warmer, arr your hand almost touched it!’

Sev­er­al stall­hold­ers and per­form­ers got real­ly into the free shop too and said it was one of the best things they’ve seen at a fes­ti­val in ages. On Sun­day for exam­ple, when a clown was float­ing bub­bles on the lake, he got pushed in by a gang of lads and, he says, got very close to los­ing his tem­per. He was soaked, so he came along to the Free Shop and picked him­self up a dry set of clothes and was very grate­ful for it. ( He also donat­ed a bag of trin­kets and assort­ed items ). A cou­ple of our per­form­ers who ear­ly on Sat­ur­day picked up some clothes, then decid­ed to come back every hour or so to donate one pack of bat­ter­ies and one set of recharg­er things each time.

Lots of peo­ple were chal­lenged by the idea of things being free and had to get over their guilt or dis­be­lief, but once they did they were all very chuffed. One chi­nese guy in par­tic­u­lar had to keep ask­ing the price of the small items he was tak­ing, because his eng­lish was­n’t great and he did­n’t want to make a mis­take. One young girl in a wheel­chair who came both days, was so keen that I start­ed to get annoyed with her hang­ing round the stall and try­ing to get the best stuff as soon as it arrived. Most peo­ple how­ev­er were unnec­es­sar­i­ly polite to each oth­er, a lit­tle bewil­dered and scared of get­ting told off, and the only scram­ble for items took place when I got some boun­cy balls out of the bag and there hap­pened to be 20-odd kids from a steel band around the stall!

Two of us took turns to man the stall. But by the time we were start­ing to get tired of it on Sun­day, two teenage lads who I had­n’t met before inde­pen­dent­ly took over and had great fun shout­ing how every­thing was free and must go. I’d expect­ed at least a cou­ple of bin­lin­ers of unwant­ed clothes at the end, but some­how they man­aged to get rid of every last bit. I found only one skirt left as lit­ter in the park.

I great­ly enjoyed the con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple, which cov­ered such top­ics as how to care for sun­flow­ers, why land­fill was bad and got dumped next to where peo­ple live, con­sumer cul­ture, the his­to­ries and prove­nance of items, char­i­ty shops, what to do with mon­ey instead, and so on. Com­ments includ­ed ‘it’s made my day’, ‘all shops should be like this’, ‘it’s not real­ly free is it’ and ‘if only i’d known i’d’ve brought…’

I promised peo­ple the free shop would become a reg­u­lar fea­ture at this fes­ti­val, and will adver­tise it more wide­ly next year.

Free Shops can also work on high streets, at gigs and on your neigh­bour­hood street cor­ner. A bit of pre-adver­tis­ing helps but is not essen­tial.