HACKING COUTURE’s Punk Your Way

Hack using Punk’s Code and get paid for it. Hacking Couture will open a pop-up atelier during the Brooklyn Torch Trade Store. Come in and hack your fashion while collectively indexing and using Punk’s Code and getting paid in Brooklyn Torches

How It Works:
1) Bring anything that represents punk culture, e.g. magazine/newspaper clips of punk style, old rugged clothes, Ramones memorabilia, British flags, records, dog collars, safety pins, etc. that will contribute to the code and the hacks.

2) We will compensate each contribution in Brooklyn Torches, North Brooklyn’s local currency.

3) The materials you sell to Hacking Couture will be used during the fashion hacking workshop from 2:00 to 4:00 PM.

No previous fashion/making skill required.

You Will:
1) Have more spending cash for North Brooklyn goods and services.
2) Develop fashion hacking skills
3) Meet others who are not afraid to reclaim their own fashion and economy

Workshop Cost: 5 BKT, so bring punk materials to trade for Torches. ($1 roughly = 1 BKT)

No previous fashion/making skill required.

Address: 50 Dobbin Street, Brooklyn NY 11222 (west of McCarren Park)

Register here. (Eventbrite)

About Brooklyn Torch
We are a local currency project providing a paper means of exchange in North Brooklyn that circulates and supports the resident community in our neighborhoods. The Brooklyn Torch brings together communities to improve social and economic ties.

About Hacking Couture

Hacking Couture is a creativity and collaboration platform that facilitates  – online and through workshops – the open sourcing, indexing, and re-coding of fashion codes in order to generate new experiences and designs.

What can you buy with the Brooklyn Torches?

ART   /\    FAVORS    /\    SERVICES    /\     ALLOWANCE      /\        SMALL GOODS

We had a lot of fun at NURTUREart this past weekend. We built a childcare coop and worked together a whole year to build a new coop. Although we didn’t manage to guess the final word game, we did reward every player their game salary in Brooklyn Torches. Thank you to everyone who participated- you’re the best!

Special Thanks to David Morgan of Toolbox for Education and Social Action for leading the game, and to Jessie Reilly of TimeBanksNYC for warming up our thoughts about how money works in our lives.

On Sunday, April 28th at 3pm join The Brooklyn Torch and TimeBanksNYC at NURTUREart Gallery for an afternoon of play exploring cooperative exchange. The Brooklyn Torch Project invites David Morgan, a co-creator of new board game ‘Co-opoly’ made by Toolbox for Education and Social Action (TESA) to demonstrate and support gameplay.

In Co-opoly: The Game of Cooperatives, players collaborate to found and run a democratic business. This is an exciting game of skill and solidarity, where everyone wins – or everybody loses.

Jessie Reilly of TimeBanksNYC will also facilitate a variety collaborative games, including a new twist on surrealist drawing and storytelling exercises which explore themes raised by participant’s relationships to time and money. As part of the Brooklyn Torch Economic Kindling Package, everyone who joins and completes a game with gallery visitors and neighbors, will be rewarded for their play-training session in Brooklyn Torches, North Brooklyn’s local currency. Brooklyn Torches are good for a wide range of local services and goods on our registry and in our Trade Stores.

NURTUREart Gallery, 56 Bogart Street, Brooklyn NY
3pm-6pm

Here’s one of the maps detailing in varying shades of blue how dollars move within specific regions. The darker the blue, the less likely the dollar crosses.

As someone who grew up in New England, and lives in New York, I wonder what’s up with that line separating the two? Is it baseball fandom? Literary traditions? Interesting…

Here they are! All printed and ready for exchanging. We had so much fun on March 2nd, if you weren’t able to come by, don’t worry. We are hosting another exchange on April 6th at Dobbin Project Space (50 Dobbin Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn) and have other irons in the fire for future exchange parties.

If you were able to come, and are looking for ways to spend your Brooklyn Torches, please check out our registry. If you can’t find a service there that you would like to contract, try paying a friend if your short on a bill, appreciate a volunteer or intern, or ask your local store to sell you a sale item in Brooklyn Torches.

Next Trade Store Party: April 6th, from 2pm-6pm at Dobbin Project Space, 50 Dobbin Street, Brooklyn, NY. See you there!

Here we go! We are on the presses with the amazing local printing artists. We are on our way to distributing these amazing looking bills at our Brooklyn Torch Trade Store this Saturday! 

We will be holding our next 2013 Pawn and Trade event at Dobbin Project Space, a new workspace and project venue for social engagement arts experimentation in Greenpoint.

Mark your calendars for upcoming events:
March 2
April 6
from 2pm to 6pm we invite you to come by and try out using a local currency.

How it works:

• You: bring an item to sell at our appraisal table.
• We: appraise it and buy the item from you in Brooklyn Torches.
• You: buy any items from our store (including goods that other people have previously sold).
• We: Sell them to you in Brooklyn Torches, keeping a record of all transactions.

You can also just come by and watch if you like, it’s helpful to see what other people do too!

50-52 Dobbin Street (street entrance), Brooklyn, NY 11222.

We will be holding our first 2013 Pawn and Trade event at Dobbin Project Space, a new workspace and project venue for social engagement arts experimentation in Greenpoint.

Mark your calendars:
February 2
March 2
April 6
from 2pm to 6pm we invite you to come by and try out using a local currency.

How it works:

• You: bring an item to sell at our appraisal table.
• We: appraise it and buy the item from you in Brooklyn Torches.
• You: buy any items from our store (including goods that other people have previously sold).
• We: Sell them to you in Brooklyn Torches, keeping a record of all transactions.

50-52 Dobbin Street (street entrance), Brooklyn, NY 11222.

I am pleased to announce that we have won an Art Matters grant to pursue this project in 2013. You can expect to see more from us in the coming weeks and months. Please sign up for our mailing list to stay updated!

Happy 2013!

photo taken with Impossible Film