At the Luxembourg Urban Garden Festival LUGA 2025, Atelier Spatz translated the theme of urban nature into hands-on costume-making by turning natural materials, ecological ideas, and environmental storytelling into creative workshop processes.
Jo hosted several workshops encouraging kids to think about nature in unusual ways, using costume-making as a playful entry point into ecological ideas. While costumes are not the first thing that spring to mind when thinking about nature and environmental education, it is exactly this creative “out of the box” approach that made many aspects of the natural world more accessible to children. By transforming plants, insects, and ecosystems into wearable, imaginative pieces, children were able to engage with nature not as something distant or abstract, but as something they could explore, embody, and creatively reinterpret.
- Using nature as both material and tool: children worked directly with flowers, leaves, and even vegetables to print, hammer, and stamp organic patterns onto textiles such as crowns, embedding real botanical forms into costume pieces.
- Designing costumes inspired by ecosystems: butterfly wings, floral crowns, and nature-themed accessories encouraged participants to embody insects, plants, and animals, linking costume-making to concepts like pollination, transformation, and biodiversity.
- Connecting craft with environmental learning: workshops incorporated discussions about how plants function, why they matter, and how humans relate to natural systems—aligning with LUGA’s wider goal of “making the invisible visible” in urban ecology.
In essence, Atelier Spatz brought nature into costume making by merging material experimentation, ecological education, and imaginative play, allowing children to physically and creatively engage with the living world through what they wore.
If you are interested in using costume making as a creative element in education for your children, please have a look at my workshop page.
