11/06/2026
🌿 Reviving Urban Fashion & Textile Manufacturing in Athens
🧵 A FABRIX co-creation moment where research became collective action.
On 19 June 2025, we gathered at Impact Hub Athens for the FABRIX Athens Co-Creation Event, bringing together approximately 35 stakeholders from across the local textile and clothing ecosystem: SMEs, designers, facilitators, educators, community organisations and policy-related actors.
The event created a bridge between the WP2 mapping research and the next phase of FABRIX implementation in Athens. It was not a passive conference, but a working session: a space to map, debate, design, prioritise and imagine what a circular urban manufacturing ecosystem could become.
Together, we explored:
🧶 Materials & flows
How can textile waste, deadstock and leftover materials become traceable, usable and valuable resources?
🏭 Space & machines
How can small businesses and makers access shared workshops, compliant production spaces and equipment?
🔍 Data & traceability
How can we build a trusted live map of actors, capacities, resources and flows?
🤝 Skills & inclusion
How can we connect young people, artisans, technical schools, migrant and refugee communities, designers, trainers and businesses?
🌱 Governance & trust
How can FABRIX become a living ecosystem tool that continues beyond project funding?
One of the strongest insights was that the FABRIX platform must be more than a digital map. It must help actors find materials, spaces, machines, skills, partners and trusted information, while being supported by human facilitation, local knowledge and long-term trust.
For Athens, circular manufacturing is not only a technical transition.
It is a re-weaving of relationships:
🧵 between makers and materials
🏛️ between heritage and future industry
📍 between place and production
💡 between digital tools and human hands
🌍 between sustainability, inclusion and beauty
Warm thanks to all participants, awarded SMEs, facilitators and partners who contributed their time, knowledge and vision.
Organised by SOFFA – Social Fashion Factory, Athens University of Economics and Business, and Impact Hub Athens, with the support of Fashion Revolution Greece. Methodology design Dr Fiori Zafeiropoulou
FABRIX has received funding from the European Union Horizon Europe Programme under Grant Agreement No. 101135638.
