A COMPETITION has been launched to design an eye-catching sustainable pavilion for a popular green festival when it returns to Teesside later this year.

The Festival of Thrift is scheduled to take place again in Kirkleatham, near Redcar, from September 11-13.

The festival, which is devoted to sustainable living, includes food, performances, demonstrations and displays and brings together ethical traders from across the region to help people find out more about what they can do to reduce their impact on the planet.

Last year, thousands of people attended the event, which started in Darlington in 2012 and has been staged in and around the village of Kirkleatham since 2016.

For this year's event, a competition is being run by festival organisers, alongside the North-East’s professional architectural bodies.

They want architects to come up with a sustainable pavilion for the entrance at the 2020 event.

Christine Thornley, of Grove Studio Architecture, near Darlington, who is chair of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Tees and South Durham branch said: “It’s been almost a year since the declaration of the climate emergency and the global movement to act on climate change and over the last twelve months architects have been at the forefront of the conversation about how to design better and more sustainably.

“As the Festival of Thrift has been at the forefront of sustainability in the North since 2012, welcoming over a quarter of a million people to the Tees Valley to learn and celebrate sustainable living, heritage and community cohesion, it’s a perfect opportunity for us to join forces.”

The project is being supported by RIBA Tees and the Young Architectural Practitioner’s Forum (YAPF).

Stella Hall, Festival of Thrift director, said: “This is a hugely exciting competition and a wonderful opportunity to showcase the talents of our region’s architects and the important role they play in creating a better environment through architecture.

“If, due to Government guidance, the festival cannot go ahead this year, the project will be realised in 2021.”

The brief for the project calls for “a group of willing and passionate volunteers to help design and realise a welcome pavilion for the 2020 festival”.

The final design should be able to hold up to five people at once - staff and visitors, using social distancing measures.

It should be sustainable and use recycled materials, and should have a function after the festival is over.

Anyone who would like to be part of the collaborative project, in either a large or small capacity, or would like to find more, is asked to email ribateesside@gmail.com, using Festival of Thrift Pavilion in the subject line.

The line-up of events for this year's festival is yet to be announced but organisers have said they will go ahead with it if it is possible to do so.

Workshops and outreach activity will also go ahead if possible.

Stall applications are open and anyone interested can find out more by visiting www.festivalofthrift.co.uk.