2025 Street Works Earth
thread Lightly
Sunday, September 21 @ 34th Avenue & 77th Street, Queens, NY 11372
Thread Lightly invites us to wonder together about how we adorn our bodies, as an expression of identity, memory, and care. Through activities like sneaker customization, fabric painting, upcycling, and community beading, we’ll celebrate the personal, cultural, and political power of what we wear or carry.
Thread lightly is co-designed by Kaleidospace, Street Works, MJN, and We Act for Environmental Justice. Reach out to collective@makejusticenormal.org if you have thoughts for how we integrate it into activities in 2026 and beyond,
Activities
Check here for activities designed for Thread Lightly. And click here to see how all activities weave together. If an activity doesn’t have a lead group or individual identified, it means we're still looking! If you have experience in New York City leading on the topic or know somebody that does, we'd love to hear from you. Please email collective@makejusticenormal.org.
Co-Designers
Why
The fashion industry exploits people and the planet. It has organized crime through modern slavery and is responsible for around 10% of global emissions, a cause of climate change. At the same time, it uses up a huge amount of water, in an era of worsening water scarcity because of climate change.
But responsibility for this crisis shouldn’t fall on individuals. Alternatives are expensive, and it isn't our fault that we’re raised from babyhood in a system that tells us we're not enough — not beautiful enough, not wealthy enough, not popular enough — as we are. These messages are even worse for people of color.
We need policy makers to disrupt it, and artists who can shift our relationships to adornment. One way to do that is by making it joyful to build new practices. Through reuse, repair, and repurposing, we hope to create spaces to share the stories behind what we wear and build new habits of self-care in a culture of collective care that centers dignity, creativity, and justice.