Sustainable Fashion Debate: From Awareness to Action

Next week, I'll be taking part in a panel discussion exploring sustainable fashion.

This event is hosted by MA Fashion & the Environment Students and the panel includes Amisha Ghadiali, Rbecca Attwood, Julia Drew, Katelyn Toth-Fejel and Anna-Maria Hesse charred by Tasmin Omond.

To reserve a place contact globalvslocal@gmail.com

Future Everything

Future Everything: Handmade's Digital |DIY | Craft Fair

Come down to Victoria Baths on Saturday 14th May to join crafters, hackers and makers from all over the country, as they showcase their work and ask you to get involved!

Jen Ballie will be presenting the Shared Scarf Project and invite you to participate in an interactive alternative fashion experience by enabling you to rip and mix past and present fashion trends to make them your own.

A collective collection will be co-designed live from london and streamed to the stand... lots of digital tools will be on hand to enable new design concepts. All very interactive and experimental... alternatively please check www.thesharedscarfproject.com and watch the next collection evolve - online contributions welcome.

If your in Manchester please come and say hello!

The Shared Scarf Project @ DESIGNERS|MAKERS

This Saturday the Shared Scarf Project will be running some DIY fashion workshops in collaboration with DESIGNERS|MAKERS Market Place. This interactive market stall will enable participants to rip and mix past and present fashion trends to make and style their own bespoke scarf.

A selection of vintage scarves and The Shared Scarf Project's first "Collective Collection" will also be on sale within the market stall.

Please come along and say hello. Workshops will be running from 11-5pm

Location:

SPACE

129-131 Mare Street

Hackney

London

UK

E8 3RH

For further info visit www.designersmakers.com

Co-Design Workshop 2/6: Collaborative Consumption

The Scarf Project: Think | Make | Style | Share

This interactive workshop offers an opportunity to engage in an alternative fashion experience by enabling participants to think and make for themselves. A co-design toolkit will be used to facilitate action and enable the generation of a bespoke printed scarf for each participant. The workshop will end with a style session and photo shoot.

Are you a designer? A fashion / textiles student or graduate? Or are you a consumer / fashion enthusiast? Come along and get involved in a new and exciting fashion experience which will enable you to produce a scarf unique to your own style and personality.

This workshop is free and all materials will be provided. To participate send an email to : textiles2.0@gmail.com

Future Fashion Textiles Competition

+ + + + + + TFRC’s Future Fashion Textiles Competition, 2011 + + + + + +

with VF Corporation, USA

Textile Futures Research Centre is to host a design competition with VF Corporation.

VF Corporation is a US based, $7 billion apparel conglomerate and parent company to over 25 global apparel brands, including The North Face, Vans, Lee, Wrangler, Eastpak, Jansport, and Nautica, as well as several others. They will hold an Innovation Summit to in September 2011 for the executive teams of each of VF's brands, where there will be an opportunity for University of the Arts London students to present cutting-edge design research and concepts.

The Textile Futures Research Centre (TFRC) is one of the UAL’s six research centres, and is renowned for its innovative and ground breaking work in the fields of practice-based textiles design research, which explores digital, science and sustainable textiles. This TFRC / VF competition is open to all students and recent graduates (2 yrs) from Central St Martins, London College of Fashion and Chelsea College of Art and Design, including: BA and MA Textiles at CSM and CCW; MA Fashion, CSM, and MA Digital Fashion, LCF; and TFRC & UAL Research Students

Themes

The competition covers five future textiles themes, which will be explored by eminent researchers in the various fields. The launch event will be on Monday 21^st February 2011 (2 – 6pm, Lecture Theatre 272 High Holborn):

Theme 1 ‘Simplicity Regained’ – Dr Emma Neuberg, Slow Textiles and Fashion Design

Theme 2 ‘Trust Rebalanced’ – Adam Thorpe, Design Against Crime (DAC)

Theme 3 ‘Networked Lives’ – Di Mainstone, Peformance, Technology and Fashion

Theme 4 ‘Responsible Living’ - Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Interaction Design

Theme 5 ‘Health & Wellness’ – Suzanne Lee, Biocouture

Prizes

· 10 x TFRC Making and Mentoring Awards (£250 cash and 2 feedback sessions with a mentor)

· Top prize of £1500, work included in the VF Corp USA Summit exhibition, & trip to the summit, September 2011

Timescale

Launch Event: Monday 21^st February 2011;

Deadline for Proposals: March 2011

Mentoring Awards announcement: April 2011

First Mentoring Session: May 2011, Innovation Centre, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design

For Further Info Visit http://tfrcconnections.blogspot.com/

Call for Participation

*Call for Participation*

AN EXCITING OPPORTUNITY

Calling all current fashion or textile design students/graduates interested in collaboration: you are hereby invited to participate in a practice-led research project exploring co-design.

Design has transitioned from an era of designing ‘for’ people towards the current era of designing ‘with’ people. Brown (2010) predicts that in the future, design will become a social experience and no longer practiced in isolation.

The term Generation Y is used to define a demographic (born between 1977 and 1997) who have grown up surrounded by digital media. Tapscott (2008) argues that this group are a force of social transformation:

- As consumers they want to be prosumers co-innovating products and services

- They use digital media to edit, create and distribute their own content

- They collaborate by constructing their own social networks

- They innovate by becoming active participants within the design process.

Economic changes bound up with globalisation are increasing pressures for people to re-think current models of design and production. The fashion industry is exploring new models to enable Gen Y to participate through exploratory marketing campaigns and streaming fashion week live online. There is huge potential for digital media and design to collaborate to construct new ways of working, but a re-think of the relationship between the designer and the consumer is required: both to consider how new technology can be used to enable the exchange of skills and knowledge, and to bring us into the future with consideration to the users needs and wants.

The selected participants will be invited to a design meeting where the project will be pitched and they will play an active role in defining the overall brief. You will leave with a goodie bag of design tools, tips and tricks to get started on your design research and development.

The following week we will meet again and get to work collectively designing a collection of fashion fabrics and accessories.

This is an exciting opportunity for you to participate in a live research project and play an active role in defining new design approaches, an excellent CV opportunity.

Participant Criteria

- A current fashion or textile design student or graduate

- An Interest and familiarity with digital media tools for example, blogging, twitter, Flickr and Facebook.

- Available for two weeks to participant from Monday 7th - 18th February 2011. There will be x2 real time meetings and the rest will be online.

How to Participate

Send a few short sentences describing YOU as a designer.

Send an email to: textiles2.0@gmail.com

Include: Your name, contact information, University of study, and a blog link if you have one.

Visit - http://thetextilesampler.blogspot.com/ for updates and further information. This is the first in a series of new projects so if your unavailable and would like to be considered for up and coming events just send a quick email.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Design Council: Design Glossary #1 - 'Co-Design'

The Design Council are in the process of 'crowdsourcing' a series of design terms to help designers define their value to clients. The first term is: co-design...

The term 'co-design' is frequently used within the field of design but use, application and principles vary depending on context and discipline. Last year I carried out come research into co-design and presented on open lecture to a large group of students, tutors and my PhD supervisors.

Co-Everything: Defining Co-Design within the field of fashion & textiles was a thirty minute presentation followed by a question and answer session. This was a really valuable exercise for me as a designer and researcher... I found that the landscape is huge and the term co-design is associated to multiple modes of design practice. The question and answer session enabled the audience to challenge co-design, contribute their opinions and share their insights with me.

Following on from 'Co-Everything' I designed and facilitated a series of exploratory co-design workshops with textile design students. These workshops are going to be expanded upon over the next twelve months... If you are interested in participating please send me an email.

What is co-design? Instead of a definition I have made a list

Co-design is a method / an act of collective creativity / it bridges the gap between the designer and the user / goes beyond specialist mindsets / welcomes the unexpected / should encourage a playful approach / is a shared experience / ...

To add your definition visit the design council facebook page... I am going to submit something more specific this afternoon.

My Crowdsoucing / Crowdvoting Experiment!

My Entry 2010

I am participating in a little project inspired and driven by my research project. As well as exploring co-design concepts for fashion and textile design, I am really inspired by social networking and new technology. Therefore I have set myself a 'crowdsourcing / crowdvoting' challenge and would love you to participate!

Crowdsoucing is an act of outsourcing tasks to the crowd through an open call for participation. The designs produced are openly revealed to the pubic who can cast votes and submit comments.

"Talenthouse is a platform providing opportunities to the world’s creative community – a place to participate in unique projects with artists and brands, collaborate, gain recognition and compensation."

I have submitted a fashion design concept for their creative invite to design a stage outfit for Florence from Florence and the Machine.

The Process

Stage 1: Create a design concept and submit

Stage 2: Gather support

Stage 3: Collect votes

Stage 4: Voting closes

Stage 5: the votes are counted

Stage 6: the top ten awarded a runner's up prize

Stage 7: the final five are sent to the artist who chooses the winner!

How it Works: all participants need to gather a bit of a following... they can use twitter, facebook, google news and email to promote their design and invite people to support them within this process. So, I have uploaded my design and am now working on stage two - gathering support!

If you would like to participate and support me during this experiment visit my Talenthouse and click the 'support jen' button. Stage three: voting, begins tomorrow and all supporters will be invited to vote via email or facebook!

I am going to blog about my progress and the experience itself throughout the duration of the week.

Will it be easy to collect votes or will I fail miserably... how will be design be received... do people love/hate it? It is officially out my my control and in your hands...

View my submission and show your support

Textile Environment Design: D-Day

Old T-Shirt Before & Old T-Shirt After



Textiles Environment Design (TED) is a Research Group based at Chelsea College of Art & Design. I am a PhD student there and was lucky enough to participate within one of their workshops last Friday.

The Workshop titled 'D-Day' defined durability day and was inspired by the recent Martin Margiela exhibition hosted at Sommerset House, London.

Using a variety of different print techniques a collection of old garments were transformed. I really enjoyed this workshop experience and was amazed at how quickly old garments could be transformed into something new and desirable.

I transformed an old t-shirt that I no longer wore due to damage and stains (images above). You can see some of the other work produced on the TED and Make it Digital.

The full report and next event will be documented on the TED blog.

100 DAYS OF ACTIVE RESISTANCE