B-Zar Material Bank participates at ROAR 2024

The ROAR (Les Rencontres Officielles des Récupérathèques, The Official Material Bank Gathering) took place in Liège, at the ESA Saint-Luc. Though the organisation is mostly French-speaking, they are starting to branch out, with DAE being the first English speaking school, and now Hamburg and one Flemish speaking school in Belgium.

BA student Zoe Bruhat and Matilde Bovo enjoyed themselves during their visit, and the event was well organised and welcoming. On display were the many different ways to go about running a material bank inside of a school, which Zoe and Matilde found comforting. When they presented the B-Zar space to the others, they were told by many that the physical size of DAE’s material bank is quite large compared to many others, surpassed only by the spaces of the Liège Material Bank ‘Recycl’art’. The amount of members of the B-Zar was also relatively high in comparison to quite a few other material banks. In contrast, it was very clear that many of the other banks are physically closer to one another, making a larger network of material exchange – Brussels alone has about ten material banks.

Recycl’art, opened its doors to the federation and showed its organisation and spaces, including its own bike-repair shop, and multiple little houses, which gave rise to the nickname ‘the village’. It has been given a lot of support from the architecture department of the school, which built structures and helped realise the projects for the spaces.

The ROAR, as a gathering, was a reminder that the reuse and recycling of materials within a community is an aim more and more are striving for. Whereas B-Zar’s popularity within the DAE community is due both to environmental consciousness and cost of materials and living in the Netherlands, other materials banks, particularly in France, find their purpose purely in the environmental consciousness of the community, as materials are given free of charge to students.