Passionate about reducing textile waste, I discovered KITBACK while planning for my 25/26 HND Textiles course at Dundee & Angus College, East Scotland, where I teach in the Art & Design department.
KITBACK is a social enterprise founded by the charity Street Soccer which combines a love of football with social impact and environmental action, collecting donations of unwanted football shirts and keeping them in play for longer. The KITBACK initiative collects donations of unwanted football shirts which are upcycled and resold on their online store and at pop up events, raising funds for the life-changing work of Street Soccer.
In the summer of 2025 I met with Darryn Cain, Kitback Co-ordinator, and who sent me 3 donated, damaged football shirts that were in the pile for the bin and his team wondered if they could be transformed into product. My plan was to work with my Textiles’ students and I drafted a sustainable textiles brief: Upcycling old football t-shirts into new products to resell with Kitback, as part of Street Soccer Social Enterprise preventing Textile waste going into landfill. But the course never ran. It was cancelled due to lack of uptake and College cuts. A sign of the times.
Gutted.
Not only had I lost my hours at College but the project wouldn’t run and all my personal research / time drafting the brief was wasted. I decided to go ahead as ROOBEDO anyway, sampled up a collection of pieces and gifted them to KITBACK who said they were ‘blown away’ by the result. It was great to have freedom to create and produce knowing that it was textile waste being repurposed and given a second life and I genuinely feel there is a HUGE opportunity for development – to set up another branch to this social enterprise: training cutters and sewers and put together a team to build skills, build confidence, learn tasks building self esteem, produce and promote products that tell the story.
Currently there is no funding to take the project further, despite several avenues explored.
Although I might not know a thing or two about football, I was honoured to ‘shadow’ a mentor to Saville Row in London to see a suit fitting, part of the early days training I sought to improve my Roobedo practice in tailoring around 2001. The client was Sir Ian Wright, a striker who famously scored 185 goals for Arsenal (1991–1998) becoming their second-highest scorer of all time. He was awarded an OBE in 2023 for services to football and charity. It was fitting (excuse the pun) that this experience should help to open a conversation with KITBACK, and heart-warmingly gives me a feeling of full circle as I weave my own tiny and often wobbly path through life’s little moments and my love of Textiles.
KITBACK showed the work at their Launch Party in September – wishing them all every success and I’d LOVE to work with Darryn and the KITBACK team in the future – here’s keeping everything crossed!
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