Karle and the fashion factory | An immersive, participatory theatre experience about sustainable fashion

Karle eta arropa fabrika is an immersive, participatory family theatre experience created by dot. and driven by BBK together with Fashion Revolution Euskadi. It explores the challenges of the fashion industry and turns them into a creative, educational and transformative experience.

Project Karle eta arropa fabrika

Client BBK Fundazioa

Impact areas

Social impact
Sustainability

Services

New narratives
Changemaker education
Product and service design

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Challenge: Bringing the issues surrounding the textile industry closer to families

The fashion industry is one of the most polluting industries on the planet, yet its impact still feels distant and abstract for most families. BBK and Fashion Revolution Euskadi came to us with the following challenge: How can we translate this global issue into something close, understandable and actionable for children? How can we encourage a shift in habits without relying on moralising messages?

Solution: A participatory theatre experience for families centred on sustainable fashion

To connect with young audiences, simply explaining the problem was not enough: it had to be made tangible, emotional and participatory. With that in mind, we created a hybrid theatre-workshop experience in which families could engage with this reality through an original story, moving from passive spectators to active agents of change.

Act one: Karle opens the doors to her factory

Karle is a girl who discovers the hidden impact of the textile industry and decides to take action by creating her own factory at home. A factory where no new clothes are produced, but instead the clothes we already own are transformed.

Through this theatrical piece, written by Ugaitz Alegría and Itxaso Paya, with original music by Adrián García de los Ojos, the audience is introduced to the problems surrounding the industry and invited to become part of Karle’s factory through two key messages:

[1] The most sustainable clothes are the ones we already own, and [2] the most sustainable textile factory is the one in our own home.

Act two: The lights come on and we become Karle’s helpers

At the end of the performance, Karle switches on the factory lights and the audience discovers that they are inside a huge 400-square-metre textile factory. The immersive set design, conceived as a large-scale production line, presents key facts that reveal the true scale of the problem.

At that moment, the factory comes to life and the audience stops being a spectator and becomes a helper, transforming one of the garments they brought to the theatre through different textile reuse and upcycling techniques.