A couple of days ago, on December 6, a series of local business fairs was opened with an event at Kucha. These fairs will continue in the upcoming December days leading up to the holidays and are ideal if you want to support local artists and small businesses. With the word about fast fashion, needless plastic and mindless consumerism spreading, there’s more and more interest for buying local, organic, bio-degradable, ethical and in support of a small business where you know exactly where your money goes and what kind of an approach you’re supporting.

This particular event opened at 3 pm and was held at a showroom inside an all-plant-based restaurant called Kucha (Mašera-Spasićeva 8, Bežigrad). It was organised in a way that had a little island of tables and business-owners in the middle, and all around the sides of the room, so you could easily walk by everything, ask the owners whatever your heart desired, take pictures, and potentially buy something. The brands ranged from natural, homemade cosmetics to silver crafted jewelry with precious stones, blankets and pillows, clothing that was one-of-a-kind, clothing that you could get more than one of the same, pottery, candles, jewelry made of semi-precious stones, crafts, prints, herbarium-inspired framed ferns and flowers, knitwear, wash bags and passport holders, basically everything you could possibly imagine. The event also hosted a no-borders crafting workshop, where some women that came to Slovenia to seek refuge were teaching different knitting techniques, and a dog of a customer that was happily running around and greeting everyone by popping from under the craft tables and happily coming by for a scratch.

Overall, the event was really nice, it had a good vibe and it didn’t give you the mindset that everyone was in a competition of selling things. People were happy and chatted with the brand owners, with other customers, the staff of Kucha, and so on. Basically everyone looked like they were having a good time and were enjoying each other’s company.
I went to the bathroom to see myself in a Pirate Piška shirt in the mirror, and a woman came out of the stall and said she saw that I put the shirt on earlier and she also now wants one for herself, and a few moments later a Kucha employee rushed by – she must have overheard our conversation, and yelled as she was running into the other direction; “It looks great” – so, of course I got it.

So, I’m here to tell you that there’s a few more of these fairs happening in December, and I would really recommend popping by – even if you don’t buy anything it’s nice to see what the local crafters are up to, and if you have that chance you can do some Christmas shopping by supporting small businesses, and that, I’ve heard, makes an actual person do a happy dance.

The dates and locations of future fairs:

• PREDpraznični ARTish 15.12. (od 13.00 do 20.00) in 16 .12. (od 10.00 do 19.00) / PIONIRSKI DOM, KOMENSKEGA 9
• BOŽIČNI ARTish 22.12 (od 10.00 do 19.00) / PIONIRSKI DOM, KOMENSKEGA 9