ReSpace
Most organisations enter the circular economy through a workshop. The materials get made, the session ends, and the practice does not continue. ReSpace changes that.
ReSpace is The Interchange's programme for organisations and communities that want to move from one-off participation into ongoing circular economy practice, embedded in their own premises and shaped around their own operations.
We design and deliver the infrastructure: the spatial planning, the 9R framework customised to your context, the materials-handling capability, the equipment, and the facilitation. Where specialist expertise is needed beyond our core areas of repurposing and post-consumer materials work, we coordinate a curated network of partners who bring it. You retain the space, the practice, and the capability.
The result is a ReSpace: a working circular economy environment that carries the 9R principles into everyday use, not just awareness.
What we deliver
Every ReSpace engagement includes:
Framework and strategy. We map your waste streams, material flows, and community or organisational context against the 9R principles and design a framework that is specific to your situation, not a generic template.
Space planning and layout. We plan the physical environment: how the space is organised, what infrastructure it needs, and how it supports the circular practices you will be running.
Equipment sourcing and setup. We source and configure the right equipment for your space, including sewing machines and fabrication tools where relevant. The Interchange is an authorised reseller of Brother sewing machines and makerspace equipment, and can bundle a full studio setup as part of the engagement.
Repurposing and materials workshops. We deliver hands-on sessions working with post-consumer waste materials: textile, packaging, and other recoverable materials. These are not demonstrations. They are the start of a practice your space will continue to run.
Staff and volunteer training. We train the people who will carry the programme forward, so capability stays in your organisation after we step back from day-to-day facilitation.
Ongoing programme facilitation. We remain available for continued facilitation, programme review, and iteration as your ReSpace matures. The relationship does not end at handover.
Partner coordination. For specialist areas beyond our core scope, we identify and coordinate partners from our circular economy network, briefing them on your context and integrating their contributions into the overall programme.
ReSpace for Community Centres and Grassroots Organisations
Community Centres are a natural home for circular economy practice. They already bring people together around shared space and shared purpose. A ReSpace gives that gathering a materials dimension: a place where residents can repair, remake, and recover things, supported by a programme that teaches the principles behind the actions.
We work with CC operators and grassroots organisations to design a ReSpace that fits your programming calendar, your volunteer base, and the demographics of your community. The 9R framework is adapted to the everyday materials your community already produces and discards: food packaging, textiles, household items. Repair, reuse, and rematerialisation become regular programme offerings rather than isolated events.
This track is suited to CCs and grassroots organisations that want to build a sustainability offering that goes beyond collection drives, and to give their community a hands-on role in circular economy practice.
ReSpace for Schools
Schools are where circular economy understanding is formed. ReSpace for Schools brings the 9R framework into your physical environment and your curriculum, grounded in practical materials work rather than theory alone.
We design the programme around your existing subject structure. The Making Space and the workshops we deliver connect to Design and Technology, Nutrition and Food Science, and Environmental Science, among other subject areas, giving teachers a resource that complements their teaching rather than sitting outside it. Students work with real post-consumer materials, understand why they are working with them, and see the circular economy as something they can practise, not just study.
The ReSpace we set up in your school is a working environment: equipped, facilitated, and progressively handed over to your staff and student leaders to run. We train the people who will sustain it, and we stay involved as the programme develops.
This track is suited to secondary schools looking to strengthen their sustainability programming with a structured, curriculum-integrated approach that results in a permanent in-school resource.
ReSpace for Social Service Agencies
Social service agencies work with communities that benefit most from meaningful, hands-on activity: work that builds confidence, develops practical skills, and creates something tangible. Circular economy practice, done well, is exactly that kind of work.
ReSpace for Social Service Agencies is designed around the people your organisation serves. We adapt the 9R framework and the materials programme to the abilities, pace, and interests of your beneficiary groups, whether they are seniors, persons with disabilities, or others in your care. The goal is not to run a sustainability programme for its own sake. It is to create purposeful activity around making and remaking things, where the circular economy principles are present but the experience of doing is what matters most.
We work with your staff and caregivers to understand what meaningful participation looks like for your community, and we design accordingly. Sessions are structured, supported, and progressively built into your programming calendar. Where specialist expertise is needed, including therapeutic or occupational dimensions that fall outside our scope, we coordinate with partners from our network to ensure the programme is appropriate and well-supported.
The Interchange currently works with Lions Befrienders and MINDS, and has designed ReSpace engagements with their communities in mind. We understand the operational realities of running programmes within a social service context, and we bring that understanding into every stage of the engagement.
This track is suited to social service agencies that want to offer their beneficiaries a structured, skills-based programme with genuine circular economy grounding, and a physical space in their premises that makes the practice sustainable over time.
How it works
A ReSpace engagement begins with a discovery conversation. We want to understand your space, your community or student body, your existing sustainability efforts, and what you are trying to build. From there, we develop a proposal that covers the framework design, the space plan, the equipment, the programme calendar, and the facilitation model.
No two ReSpace environments are the same. The framework is consistent; the application is always specific to you.
Start the conversation
If you are a Community Centre, school, social service agency, or organisation exploring what a ReSpace could look like in your premises, we would like to hear from you.