Design Materials and Making for Social Change: From Materials We Explore to Materials We Wear 2022058036, 9781032168265, 9781032196909, 9781003260356

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“Design Materials and Making for Social Change wonderfully demonstrates why textile design is about world making through and through. It showcases a new breed of material designers engaged in social change at the interface between the material, the ecological and the social. By bridging research and practice through collaborative approaches across continents, the authors demonstrate why a circular approach underscoring the agency and aliveness of materials can yield workable answers to the social and ecological challenges of the industry. From ‘material drafts’ and literacy in the North to decolonizing materials and vernacular circularity in the South, this volume illustrates paths for transitions from object-oriented designing to design as a relational praxis of repair, care, and regeneration of the web of life.” —Arturo Escobar, author of Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence and the Making of Worlds (2018) and Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible (2020) “Making in the context of a planetary emergency should not be guilt-ridden, but rather a means to prototype how creative knowledge can reconnect us to the natural world. This book will help to ground design research and textile making in a rigorous yet hopeful journey towards a circular future.” —Carole Collet, Professor in Design for Sustainable Futures, Central Saint Martins UAL

Design Materials and Making for Social Change

Design Materials and Making for Social Change spans the two interconnected worlds of the material and the social, at different scales and in different contexts, and explores the value of the knowledge, skills and methods that emerge when design researchers work directly with materials and hold making central to their practice. Through the social entanglements of addressing material impacts, the contributors to this edited volume examine homelessness, diaspora, migration, the erosion of craft skills and communities, dignity in work and family life, the impacts of colonialism, climate crisis, education, mental health and the shifting complexities in collaborating with and across diverse disciplines and stakeholders. This book celebrates the role of materials and making in design research by demonstrating the diverse and complex interplay between disciplines and the cultures it enables, when in search of alternative futures. Design Materials and Making for Social Change will be of interest to scholars in materials design, textile design, product design, fashion design, maker culture, systemic design, social design, design for sustainability and circular design. Rebecca Earley is UAL Chair of Circular Design Futures and co-founder of Centre for Circular Design at Chelsea College of Arts, University of the Arts London. Rosie Hornbuckle is Senior Researcher in Complex Design Collaborations at Centre for Circular Design at Chelsea College of Arts and Associate at the Service Futures Design Research Lab at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.

Design Research for Change

Series Editor: Paul A. Rodgers, University of Strathclyde

Design Research for Change includes books that highlight the wide-ranging social, cultural, economic, and environmental impacts of emerging design research on industry, governments, and the wider public. The series will reach across disciplinary, methodological, and conceptual boundaries and will include scholars from around the globe. The series will be of interest to scholars working in the fields of social design, design history, design research, design culture studies, and design studies. Design for People Living with Dementia Edited by Paul A. Rodgers Metadesigning Designing in the Anthropocene Edited by John Wood Designing Interventions to Address Complex Societal Issues Edited by Sarah Morton Design, Philosophy and Making Things Happen By Brian Dixon Design Materials and Making for Social Change From Materials We Explore to Materials We Wear Edited by Rebecca Earley and Rosie Hornbuckle

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ Design-Research-for-Change/book-series/DRC

Design Materials and Making for Social Change From Materials We Explore to Materials We Wear Edited by Rebecca Earley Rosie Hornbuckle

Designed cover image: © Helen Storey Embroidery samples from different women in the Syrian Stitch pilot project, Helen Storey, November 2021. Photograph by Helen Storey. First published 2023 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Rebecca Earley and Rosie Hornbuckle; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Rebecca Earley and Rosie Hornbuckle to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Earley, Rebecca, editor. | Hornbuckle, Rosie, editor. Title: Design materials and making for social change : from materials we explore to materials we wear / edited by Rebecca Earley, Rosie Hornbuckle. Description: New York, NY : Routledge, [2023] | Series: Design research for change | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022058036 | ISBN 9781032168265 (hbk) | ISBN 9781032196909 (pbk) | ISBN 9781003260356 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: Product design—Social aspects. | Materials—Social aspects. | Fashion—Social aspects. | Social change. | Social responsibility of business. Classification: LCC TS171.4 .D484 2023 | DDC 744.7—dc23/eng/20230213 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022058036 ISBN: 978-1-032-16826-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-19690-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-26035-6 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003260356 Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

Contents

List of Contributors Foreword

ix xiii

JESSICA H EM M I NGS

Preface

xvii

R E B E C C A E A R L E Y A N D RO S I E H O R N B U C K L E

Acknowledgements Introduction

xix 1

RO S I E H O R N B U C K L E A N D R E B E C C A E A R L E Y

1 From food waste to circular materials for design: experimenting with matter from unconventional origins

8

VA L E N T I N A RO G N O L I , L U C A A L E S S A N D R I N I A N D B A R B A R A P O L L I N I

2 Multimorphic textiles: prototyping sustainability and circular systems

30

H O L LY M c Q U I L L A N

3 Hands-on/hands-off: on proximities to materials and systems in design research

46

RO S I E H O R N B U C K L E

4 Sensory prosthetics: materials-led and user-centred research for more inclusive prosthetic limbs

69

SA R A H W ILK ES A N D CA I T LI N McMU LLA N

5 Decolonising materials: the story of Govindgarh village

85

B H A AV YA G O E N K A

6 NTU X Emmanuel House: developing a responsible design practice with fashion students and service users K AT H E R I N E T OW N S E N D , E M M A P R I N C E , A L I S O N E S C O T T A N D G I L L B A R K E R

102

viii Contents 7 Sewing Box for the Future: facilitating participatory fashion experiences to influence change

124

J EN BA LL I E , M ER EDI T H MOR E A N D BECCA CL A R K

8 Re-creation and recreation: playful sustainable fashion textile projects with school children

138

REBECCA EARLEY

9 Fashion activism and design for social change – the Making for Change: Waltham Forest project

159

FR A NCESCO M A ZZAR ELLA

10 Decolonising design perspectives: steps towards more inclusive circular economies

178

S O P H I E T E N DA I C H R I S T I A E N S

11 Making for our time: a journey told through the dress as catalyst for change

197

S A N DY B L AC K A N D H E L E N S T O R E Y

Index

213

Contributors

Luca Alessandrini is a PhD candidate (Politecnico di Milano) investigating within the entanglement of designers, sustainability and materiality. He worked as Designer and Project Manager, before graduating with distinction in the double MSc/MA in Innovation Design Engineering (Royal College of Art and Imperial College London). Recently, he worked as a freelance R&D consultant. Jen Ballie  currently has a dual appointment to lead on Design Research working across DJCAD, University of Dundee and the V&A Dundee. She is passionate about the role and responsibilities of the design professional and through her research and actions seeks to explore and understand how we can add value to our everyday lives through design. Gill Barker (Marketing and Fundraising Assistant, Emmanuel House) is passionate about the “Reduce, Reuse and Recycle” approaches. She encourages mindful consideration of the deeper values we hold as individuals and the impact of our actions towards ourselves, our communities and our planet. Gill enjoys working with people to consider ways of making the best use of the resources we have. Sandy Black is Professor of Fashion and Textile Design and Technology, Centre for Sustainable Fashion, University of the Arts London. Her current research examines the role of creative fashion entrepreneurship, design and new business models in addressing issues of sustainability in the fashion and textiles sectors. Sandy is Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Fashion Practice. Becca Clark (Assistant Curator, V&A Dundee) supports the exhibitions programme to deliver major touring exhibits, residencies, commissions and both public and participatory programmes. Her research interests include DIY practice and presentation, participation and communality, familiarity and framing, learning continuously and consciously and the convergence of culture. Rebecca Earley is UAL Chair of Circular Design Futures and Co-Founder of ­Centre for Circular Design, University of the Arts London. She is an award-winning researcher, designer, maker and communicator. In October 2020 she co-founded World Circular Textiles Day 2050 – a collaborative platform working towards technical, environmental and socio-economic change. She delivers and advises on EU research projects. Alison Escott  is Senior Lecturer, BA (Hons) Fashion Design, at Nottingham Trent University) and has worked in the fashion industry for 24 years as a Designer for a

x Contributors variety of suppliers and brands. Her love/hate relationship with fashion means she embeds ethical practices within the course to give designers knowledge to disrupt the industry, facilitating much-needed change. Bhaavya Goenka graduated in craft design with a specialisation in textiles from the IICD, India. She founded IRO IRO and works with circular design, specialising in the reuse and upcycling of industrial textile waste through indigenous craft practices of India, building replicable systems that allow decentralised development whilst creating conversational products through zero-waste practices. Jessica Hemmings is Professor of Craft at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and the Rita Bolland Fellow at the Research Centre for Material Culture, the Netherlands (2020–2023). Forthcoming publications include a monograph about the Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen and the second edition of The Textile Reader (Bloomsbury: 2023). Rosie Hornbuckle is a Senior Researcher at the University of the Arts London, with a current research focus on design methodologies to support complex collaborations, aimed at systemic change. Rosie has worked on three large EU Horizon2020 technology development projects in the areas of circular materials and healthcare. She currently leads the collaborative methodology in HEREWEAR project. Francesco Mazzarella  is Senior Lecturer in Fashion and Design for Social Change at London College of Fashion, UAL. His work at Centre for Sustainable Fashion explores ways in which design activism can create counter-narratives for sustainability in fashion. Francesco was awarded a PhD from Loughborough Design School and was subsequently an AHRC Design Leadership Fellow Research Associate at Imagination, Lancaster University. Caitlin McMullan is a Glasgow-based Independent Researcher and Filmmaker with a background in design. Often exploring her own identity within her practice, Caitlin is interested in creating work that changes perceptions and creates new ways of thinking about disability. Caitlin worked as Research Assistant on the project Sensory Prosthetics at the Institute of Making in 2018. Holly McQuillan is Assistant Professor, Multimorphic Textile Systems, TU Delft and has 18 years of experience in research, writing, consulting and designing in sustainable fashion/textiles. Her current work encompasses the design and fabrication of animated textiles for new manufacturing and use cases, methods for the automation of on-demand production of woven textile-based form and designing circular transitions. Meredith More is Curator at V&A Dundee specialising in Scottish Design and has worked on major exhibitions as well as site-specific commissions with artists and researchers. She co-curated the museum’s Scottish Design Galleries while working at V&A South Kensington and was part of the team who opened the new museum on Dundee’s waterfront in 2018. Barbara Pollini is a PhD candidate in Design, Polytechnic University of Milan and has a master’s degree in Ecodesign and an MA in Computational Design. Since 2010, she has been working in the field of sustainable design and materials. For her PhD,

Contributors  xi she is addressing biodesign – defining the restorative and regenerative ability of biofabricated and bioreceptive materials. Emma Prince  is Course Leader, BA (Hons) Fashion Design, at Nottingham Trent ­University and is a Nottingham-based Designer-Maker, with an industry track record as a lingerie designer. At NTU, she has been sharing her passion for rethinking, reimagining and reviving textile waste by leading live student projects that support the community. Valentina Rognoli is Associate Professor, Politecnico di Milano, a pioneer in the field of materials design and an internationally recognised Researcher and Educator. Her expertise includes materials for sustainability transition; DIY-Materials, biobased and fabricated approaches; and material interactions, tinkering and speculative design. She is a Co-Founder of Materials Experience Lab (2015). Helen Storey, MBE, is Professor of Fashion and Science, University of the Arts ­London. Her pioneering work brings art and science together, producing hybrid works that have broken new and award-winning ground. Since 2016, she has been working as a Social Artist, travelling between Jordan and London as the first UNHCR “Designer in Residence” at Zaatari Refugee Camp. Sophie Tendai Christiaens is an interdisciplinary Researcher with interests that lie at the intersection of decolonisation, circular economy, design thinking and practice. She is a Research Partner and Board Member for Fashion Revolution Zimbabwe and Co-Founder of SEWN Africa, which explores smarter material sourcing and regenerative and circular design practices for textiles and apparel. Katherine Townsend is Professor of Fashion and Textile Practice, Nottingham Trent University and focuses on emotionally durable, environment-centred design methodologies. Recent projects have been supported by the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF 2018–2022) and NHS and AHRC (2021–2023). She is Co-Editor of Crafting Anatomies (Bloomsbury 2020) and the journal of Craft Research (Intellect). Sarah Wilkes  is a Social Scientist with a background in anthropology, materials research and object-centred learning. Sarah’s postdoctoral research includes user-centred materials selection for healthcare design; the development of hands-on educational programmes that promote STEAM participation amongst underrepresented young people; and the development of methodologies to help designers and materials scientists work together successfully.

Foreword

Writing in 1944 the weaver Anni Albers observed, “Life today is very bewildering. We have no picture of it which is all-inclusive”.1 Part of the challenge, Albers determined, lay in the fact that “we have to make a choice between concepts of great diversity. And as a common ground is wanting, we are baffled by them.”2 She went on to link mental health with daily creative outlets3 before establishing the crucial role direct work with materials can provide: Civilisation seems in general to estrange [wo]men from materials, from materials in their original form. The process of shaping these is so divided into separate steps that one person is rarely involved in the whole course of manufacture, often knowing only the finished product. But if we want to get from materials the sense of directness, the adventure of being close to the stuff the world is made of, we have to go back to the material itself, to its original state, and from there partake in its stages of change.4 Albers’ text appeared during the devastation of the Second World War, the culmination of a global crisis that had irrevocably changed the course of her own life. While her call to return to “material itself” was written for different times, our current lives undeniably face contemporary versions of Albers’ bewildering challenges. It is our contemporary versions of Albers’ bewildering challenges that the contributors to Design Materials and Making for Social Change tackle. In various ways, contributors seek the lessons material knowledge can teach us in the face of ongoing environmental damage and social fragmentation. Their breadth of responses confirm that while the term circular design has, in recent years, moved beyond niche vocabulary, circular design entails no one fixed vision. In fact, one of the distinctions of circular design is an active disinterest in the false hopes raised by one-size-fits-all solutions. As editors Rebecca Earley and Rosie Hornbuckle recognise, each of the contributors is, in their own ways, “in search of alternative futures.”5 Alternatives require the tenacity to ask beyond the familiar, even set aside the well regarded, to allow space for more uncomfortable and less heroic research. This requires replacing what have arguably become a small stock of repetitive sustainability references with research from contexts and perspectives that pose different challenges answered through different alternatives. Newness, for example, often over-sold as the sole definition of contribution to knowledge, is refreshingly not a prerequisite here. As Sophie Tendai Christiaens recognises: “many designers on the [African] continent,

xiv Foreword particularly in the fashion industry, have inherited, developed, and deployed circular practices for years.”6 Their observation offers a sobering reality that academic conventions are typically ill suited to celebrate. Rather than research being formed by the conventions it is expected to operate within, Design Materials and Making for Social Change recognises that it is the conventions themselves that need to change. Contributors ground themselves, as Albers encouraged, in material itself. This stance is far from as simple as it may first sound. Hornbuckle and Earley note the sustainability discourse has raised concern over the volume of unneeded “stuff” designed for the world, but “intentionally or not, embedded a sense of shame and guilt amongst some designers and researchers for whom materials and making is their passion, their literacy, their expertise and their research currency.”7 Welcoming material knowledge in the face of material excess, and from perspectives beyond the tried and tested, also requires the considerable effort and desire, undertaken by this publication’s editors, “to circumnavigate the ‘closed’ ­academic infrastructure” that contributes to “systemically exclude many voices from design research discussions.”8 Holly McQuillan offers a caution against an oversimplified approach to material prototyping when she insightfully warns “prototypes that are the result of a linear way of thinking reinforce linear processes.”9 But it is only when we actually try to set aside linear thinking that we learn of its dominance in many of the educational systems that have formed us as researchers today. Participatory strategies offer one way to break linear research traditions. But less conventional research methods often remain subject to conventional measurement. As many of the contributors touch upon, placing trust in alternative methods requires advocating for different forms of “measurement” that value entirely different types of information. A “responsive, relational place that gives value to the measurable and immeasurable in equal form, the recognisable and the yet to be recognised”10 is how Sandy Black describes Helen Storey’s ongoing work with the Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan. It is precisely this “yet to be recognised” that can be so extraordinarily difficult to convey to others. Despite best intentions, understanding and recognition tend to cluster around the familiar and close-to-familiar. Breaking deeply engrained habits and behaviours, as Earley reflects, requires an acceptance not only of risk but the accompanying emotions of confusion, uncertainty and potential misunderstanding. But when emotional intelligence is allowed to move from the academic periphery where it, at best, is begrudgingly allowed to exist today, to a more meaningful position the presence of empathy, intuition and play – words recurring across this book – move from being outliers to the very heart of things. Albers may not have anticipated the full weight of research culture today, but she certainly understood the importance of the real when offering the suggestion: “we must come down to earth from the clouds where we live in vagueness and experience the most real thing that there is: material.”11 As an astute set of responses to Albers’ prescient call, the timely contributions to this book have exchanged clouds of ­vagueness for materials, real life scenarios and the insights of knowledge long overlooked. Jessica Hemmings

Foreword  xv

Notes 1 Anni Albers “Work with Material” College Art Journal, Jan. 1944, Vol. 3, No. 2, p. 51, first published in Black Mountain Bulletin #5. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Abstract. 6 Sophie Tendai Christiaens, “Decolonising Design Perspectives” p. 181. 7 Rosie Hornbuckle & Rebecca Earley, Introduction, pp. 1–2. 8 Rosie Hornbuckle & Rebecca Earley, Preface, p. xvi. 9 Holly McQuillan, “Multimorphic Textiles” p. 42. 10 Sandy Black & Helen Story, “Making for our time” p. 211. 11 Anni Albers “Work with Material” p. 52.

Preface

Imagine a room full of researchers, presenting their findings to the general public. On the right side of the room, researchers stand by a series of posters that explain their work using words and graphics, photos and diagrams. On the left side of the room, a row of researchers stand beside tables on which materials and objects are placed. Both sides of the room are busy – people are looking at the work, trying to take the ideas in. They are interested and want to know about the future, about what might be possible, what we might be able to do to solve pressing and urgent issues. On the right side, the audience listen to the researchers and ask questions. They engage. They try to keep up with all the new information being offered to them. On the left side, the noise level is much greater. People are handling the materials and objects, touching stroking and feeling the textures and qualities with their fingers. They giggle nervously at soft and squidgy materials; they gasp and then drop sharp and cold ones. They hand the materials to each other and tell each other what they just learned. They hold things against their skin to feel the sensations that the material brings about, deciding for themselves whether they could comfortably wear it or not. Materials speak to people. They draw people in, and they engage them, especially if this means they get to touch them. As a researcher, starting a process which involves materials will mean that your audience may connect with you in a way that a slide talk or poster cannot. As material researchers, we have known this for a good while. Materials and materiality provide a level of relatability that can be useful. Whether it’s to do with the way people behave with their clothes, or whether it’s to do with how they feel about themselves, it’s a very powerful mode of working and therefore we must find ways of harnessing it and understand it better. For design researchers working with materials and making, the act of turning visual thinking into words can be quite challenging. The very act of making things – of exploring and thinking through touch and manipulation – can feel like a kind of magic in the moment. Yet writing down what happened afterwards can seem inadequate and stilted. As researchers we must write our ideas up. But how can we do this without losing the magic? How can we convey in words, the golden thread that binds people when they are on that left side of the room, touching, feeling and experiencing new ideas, in their hands? This book was very much about trying to find the words for both our material and visual knowledge, and the magic that happens when we are interacting with other people. Through our approach to design research, we bring meaning, insights and ideas for action to people in a tangible way. At a time when our lives are full of factory-produced consumer goods, design researchers working with materials create

xviii Preface a proximity for people, enabling them to engage, understand and then change things for themselves. If the problems that the design researchers are working with are material and social, then this way of working presents itself as a logical starting point to begin to address them. In editing this book, we sought to support a community of researchers in articulating their visual and material thinking. We wanted to bring to life some of our most recent experiences with materials and making, to explore this emergent quality or realisation that making and working with materials was amplifying and progressing our efforts as we seek to bring about both material and social change. We intuited and observed that there are many design researchers treading a similar path and so our aim was to invite them in, to reflect on the methodological aspect of their experiences with materials and making, thereby formalising the discourse and giving it a shape and agency. However, we hadn’t anticipated the challenges we would face in finding practitioners who were already articulating this aspect of their work, or even acknowledging that this was something they were engaged in through their research. The focus, of materials exploration and making approaches, as well as theoretical approaches to sustainability, is (understandably) still on the outcome and the change itself, rather than the “HOW”. This discovery only reinforced our purpose; how might we encourage and support design researchers to reflect on and communicate the HOW of what they do? One implication is that educational and academic establishments might find more inclusive and accessible formats and forums for developing methodology discourses, both in “Global North” academies and in the diverse design research and practice communities in Asia, Africa and South America. Like many design research centres operating primarily in Europe, we have come (far too late) to the realisation of how our knowledge, methods and the systems we interact with are products of colonial attitudes and norms. This volume is the beginning of our journey towards changing this attitude and framing, and so we actively searched for authors who might challenge this perspective. This was not without difficulty. We discovered that although practitioners in previously colonised regions are doing incredible materials and making exploration, this is rarely framed as “design research” or an academic setting. We found that these critical and reflective explorers are keen to be included in academic debate around circularity and sustainability. We therefore had to take a creative approach to ensuring that these voices were represented in this volume, to circumnavigate the “closed” academic infrastructure by welcoming these authors into the Centre for Circular Design as associates, finding alternative means of value and participation within our community in exchange for their valuable participation in this volume. The point here is to highlight the deep inequality in the academic structures that systemically exclude many voices from design research discussions. We have found this process to be deeply humbling, and we have learnt hugely from all contributors to this volume, who have held a mirror up to Eurocentric assumptions and conceptual frameworks and shown a glimpse of worlds and innovation approaches we would otherwise have not encountered. The HOW is what unites the global design research communities and is also where we must open our minds, share and collaborate more openly to move forward with the change we want to see. There is a wealth of experiences that are not yet widely represented and communicated. Rebecca Earley and Rosie Hornbuckle, October 2022

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the authors for their generosity and perseverance. Special thanks to Professors Kay Politowicz and Kate Goldsworthy for their expertise, support and long-time collaboration and friendships. Thanks to the University of the Arts London and Chelsea College of Arts for supporting the research at Textiles Environment Design and Centre for Circular Design (CCD) since 1996. The CCD researchers, associates, students and trusted colleagues have been a vital part of the thinking represented in this book. Thanks to Elaine Igoe and Paul Micklethwaite for reviewing texts; Laetitia Forst and Cathryn Hall for understanding and enthusiasm. Particular thanks to Clare Lowther for supporting the final stages. Thanks also to the team at Routledge for their patience – this took longer than any of us expected. Finally, the editors are grateful to the funders who have invested in our research in the last few years, especially the Mistra Future Fashion Programme, Research Institutes of Sweden and the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme.

Introduction Rosie Hornbuckle and Rebecca Earley

Beginning with materials and making Our first encounter with a material other than our mother is the swaddling wrapped around us at birth. This simple muslin cloth often becomes the transitional object that helps us become independent, but inevitably is a part of our mother, a substitute for the comfort her skin gave us as a new-born. What could be more personal, more affective in the world that the materials we wear close to our skin, that we wrap around ourselves? It is perhaps this direct, physical connection we have with worn materials that engages people on a transformative level. Design, materials and making for social change as a publishing idea has been a long time coming, inspired by mentor, guide and founder of our textiles design research community, Professor Kay Politowicz. The making of this book has itself been an act of discovery and knowledge co-creation with the contributors. Here is a community of design researchers that feel instinctively that starting with materials and making is important for bringing about diverse forms of change; this volume aims to build a collective shape for that feeling. Craftspeople, makers, artists, hobbyists, designer-makers and more recently material curators and material designers: these are people who hold materials ‘in their hands’ and their hearts. In this community, materials are valued for their dialogic nature: they live, have affordances and give agency through their tactility, shape-giving and tangibility. Even the natural language that has emerged around novel materials implies life: materials have ‘personalities’ and ‘characteristics’; they are ‘smart’; and they can ‘grow’, ‘sense’, ‘move’ and ‘react’.1 Materials are a tangible leverage point in systems when seeking change or transition, a touchpoint by which we engage with systems of production, and they are increasingly our collaborators, our mediators and our communicators in new and challenging contexts. 2 Material prototypes can be our allies when we seek to engage with people, and they mobilise knowledge where words and images have failed to grant access. The increasing complexity of environmental and social challenges has forced design research to reassess its relationship with materials, and what has emerged is a new era of materials and making as part of a collaborative, relational and dialogic practice. With this book there is also an underlying motivation, to provide a counter to the erosion of making and materials, as a legitimate form of design research and practice for bringing about change, that has prevailed for too long in sustainability discourses. The notion that ‘we don’t need to make more stuff’3 has, whether intentionally or not, embedded a sense of shame and guilt amongst some designers and researchers for whom materials and making is their passion, their literacy, their

DOI: 10.4324/9781003260356-1

2  Rosie Hornbuckle and Rebecca Earley expertise and their research currency. It has forced design researchers, makers and materials experimenters to reflect and rethink the value of their practice. In response, these chapters chime: we must keep making and encouraging others to make, we can harness the relatability of materials to invite participation, demonstrate and enable dialogue, re-wire and develop new behaviours and attitudes. As a means of value creation, making is the most meaningful way we connect to and understand the physical world, and our ever-increasing distance from it diminishes our ability to act ethically, our agency and our choices, with devastating consequences for people and planet.4 Materials and making are an important part of our past, our present and the future of design research for change.

Material and social entanglements The authors and collaborators in this book are addressing a range of challenges through their research and dealing with the interactions and interconnections between the material and social dimensions in a variety of contexts. Many focus on the wastefulness of conventional, linear systems of production, with the associated environmental impacts, and therefore speak to the principles of circularity. However, through the social entanglements of addressing material impacts, these researchers also encounter and interact with: homelessness, diaspora, migration, the erosion of craft skills and communities, dignity in work and family life, the impacts of colonialism, climate crisis, education, mental health and the shifting complexities in collaborating with and across diverse disciplines and stakeholders. Material change begins a chain reaction which, once initiated, impacts the social dimension of the system. It is commonly accepted that behaviour change is an important factor in countering environmental damage and erosion, similarly, environmental impacts have been detrimental to the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities with great disparity and injustice. Co-dependencies in ‘sociomaterial systems’5 means that to seek either material or social change, inevitably requires encountering and interacting with both. The design research approaches and methodologies presented in this volume fully embrace and acknowledge this reality, demonstrating through their research that the materials we make, make with, wear, and then ‘make us’, have the characteristic of speaking to both environmental and social dimensions. This has provided a narrative for the volume, which starts from materials design with Valentina Ragnoli, Barbara Pollini and Luca Alessandrini’s focus on ‘material drafts’ and transformation techniques for making materials from food waste. Sarah Wilkes and Caitlin McMullen provide a pivot point in the volume: still with a material focus, they explore how focusing on user perceptions of materials could have a powerful impact on the lived experiences of those who wear prosthetics. The volume concludes with Sandy Black and Helen Storey’s chapter which explores the social dimension of materiality when making garments in the Zaatari refugee camp. The chapters in between deal with these common elements – materials, the environment, making, wearing and social change – in different measures. The eleven chapters are written by researchers from the UK, Italy, India, New Zealand and Zimbabwe and reference collaborative research which has taken place across three continents. The search for diverse voices has opened up a dialogue around decolonial perspectives on the value of materials and making for social change that had previously been underrepresented in these discourses.

Introduction  3 In this regard, SophieTendai Christiaens’ chapter firmly challenges the Eurocentric view of circularity and shines a light on a resourcefulness that is embedded in African culture in her review of the state of the art in Zimbabwean Circular Fashion Design. Tendai Christiaens provides a window onto a world where garment design is in close proximity to the realities of resource limitations, with frequent power cuts, water shortages, fabric scarcity and limited infrastructure and innovation funding. Highlighting the material approaches of a range of Zimbabwean designers, the author shows us how circular innovation can be meaningfully framed within the real material constraints we are currently oblivious to in the Global North, but that will surely soon find us. With her case study of decentralised textile production in Govindgarh village, Bhaavya Goenka presents an inspiring example of how an Indian textile designer and entrepreneur might support rural artisan communities with a circular design business model, a consideration for cultural history and behaviours, and by recognising the importance of family life. This chapter is at once a reaction against the legacy of harm imposed by the British and a critique of how materials have been a political vehicle for colonial oppression and more recently for civil politics. Goenka tells a powerful story of how a focus on materials and making has had wide-ranging impacts on individuals within the village.

New spaces for materials and making for change There is a recognition within these chapters that change requires researchers to explore new spaces and places for materials and making which invite participation, collaboration and engagement in different contexts. Whether that’s an anthropologist collaborating with an amputee in the case of Wilkes and McMullan’s chapter, or a design researcher working with a digital technician in Holly McQuillan’s chapter, these authors have pushed the usual boundaries of their research to try to change things beyond the accepted influence of the design researcher. Ragnoli, Pollini and Alessandrini’s chapter demonstrates how the role of the design researcher is changing, and the engagement with abundant resources such as food waste requires a new set of physical interactions with the materials in order to understand and transform their affordances: ‘peeling, skinning, grinding, cutting, sorting, collecting, scutching, washing…’. This brings into focus the changing space for materials and making that responds to environmental and social crises, and the evolution of methods to reorient design research towards these new challenges and the opportunities therein. Design researchers in this volume build proximity to materials, making, their collaborators and participants by taking an ethnographic or autoethnographic approach. Rather than inviting participants into the academy, these researchers are taking materials and making to real-world contexts. Sometimes this requires a new skillset from design researchers, and bravery in exploring beyond the confines of their disciplinary training into new and uneasy territories, where their value may not be fully understood. Here, the relatability of materials and making, and of wearing, again provides valuable currency, a role and an approach that can be articulated in the simple language of the senses, a needle and thread in Jen Ballie, Meredith More and Becca Clark’s chapter, a material sample in the hand for Wilkes and McMullan or a ‘clicking press tool’ in the case of Francesco Mazzarella’s chapter. However, there is also a sense of authenticity when researchers are already embedded in a community

4  Rosie Hornbuckle and Rebecca Earley and therefore have an easy rapport and common ground with participants. For example, Mazzerella resides in the locality of his research, Rebecca Earley speaks about the significance of being part of the parent community in her overlapping roles as practitioner, mother and researcher, and Goenka sees her embeddedness in the artisan community of Rajasthan as central to her approach. Katherine Townsend, Emma Prince, Alison Escott and Gill Barker’s chapter puts user participation at the centre of their methodology with transformative impacts on collaborators. Their work steps into an educational space within the context of the design school, looking at how experiential learning through engaging with materials and making can facilitate meaningful and life-altering learning. Along with Ballie, More and Clark and Wilkes and McMullan, this chapter extends this blurring of conventional boundaries through the co-production and democratisation of knowledge by co-writing with their non-academic partners. Furthering the educational discussion, Earley’s chapter focuses on the learning-through-making that can be achieved in a primary school setting, where exposing children to the materiality of their clothing and its impacts at a young age is seen as hugely important in raising a new generation of materials-literate young adults. The hope is to seed a generation who are considerate in their relationship with clothes and other material things, as they try to act responsibly in the over-produced material world they have inherited. However, Earley also notes the gendering of materials in education proliferates, demonstrating how materials provide (and take away) agency and are often politicised. These chapters reflect on the value of materials and making as a pedagogic tool in different learning environments. From the museum to the school, to the science lab and the consortium project workshop, in the refugee camp, in the artisan’s workshop and in the home. In pursuit of change, the site for making and materials exploration in design research has also changed.

Materials we wear Drawing insights from an in-depth interview, Black guides us through Storey’s experiences as a design researcher in residence in the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan. Together they take the reader on a journey which starts with humble engagements through mending and embellishing clothing but soon expands into art, community, experience and enterprise, towards real political change. Together the authors explore how the most basic of human needs – to be clothed, and in the absence of identity due to displacement – making can provide a sense of worth and agency, which later becomes an opportunity to share and trade, having a wider impact on the community. Storey’s experiences are testimony not only to the power of handling and making with materials but also to the importance of the unique knowledge and approach of the designer-maker-researcher in realising seemingly impossible social and systemic transformation, by starting with the simple act of material manipulation with another. Also, taking the theme of mending and embellishing, Ballie, Moore and Clark demonstrate how focusing on worn materials can be powerfully affective with participant groups in the active museum setting, not only reviving the act of mending textiles but also bringing people together at times of extreme isolation. Albeit in a very different context, Wilkes and McMullan demonstrate the overlooked material experiences of prosthetics wearers, who comment on the impact of material choice for both practicalities – the comfort and ‘clamminess’ – and identity

Introduction  5 afforded through aesthetics of different material choices. This is deeply personal – a part of the body – yet as the authors highlight, user perspective is not currently taken into consideration in the design of prosthetic limbs in the same way as we might expect in the design of garments. Cross-over themes between this use of materials in engineering and the worn materials of circular clothing design are evident in this chapter. The authors report that identity is important in determining the long-term success of prosthetics similarly to the way longevity of style is considered important in preventing clothing waste.6 Moreover, the prosthetic materials interact with the textiles worn over them, making holes and forcing wearers to mend or replace damaged garments.

Materials, making and systems When beginning from the level of materials and making, a design researcher may first seek material change. However, as their practice encounters the real context of the challenges they seek to address, they inevitably travel through the orders of design from ‘symbolic and visual communications’ and ‘material objects’, to ‘services’ and ‘complex systems or environments’ (Buchanan,7 Wahl and Baxter8) and find themselves ‘dancing’ higher up the system hierarchy (Meadows 20089). More intuitively perhaps than other types of research, designers who focus on making while seeking change, find themselves travelling up and down, in and out of system elements, subsystems and hierarchical levels in a typically ‘creative’, ‘messy’ and iterative manner. McQuillan’s chapter describes this dance and explores how collaboration with different disciplines and stakeholders enables dynamic movement through the system hierarchy to inform design decisions and research. Importantly McQuillen draws attention to the prototype as a boundary object between different discourses and forms of knowledge to enable progression in the research. In McQuillan’s work, also echoed in many of the other chapters, a provocation is enabled through prototyping, not as fantastical as the artefacts and contexts created in Dunne and Raby’s previous work,10 but instead gently tethering participants to something relatable and tangible, anchoring different perspectives to something solid to understand and interact with the intended change. Actively seeking to interact with system elements beyond the material and the body requires different design research methods and approaches to engage with multiple partners with different expertise and with diverse stakeholders. Rosie Hornbuckle’s chapter seeks to address this challenge by exploring the relationship between ‘hands-on’ and ‘hands-off’ design research approaches to build proximity between materials and human actors in projects which aim at systemic materials innovation. Reviewing the approaches to collaboration reported by design researchers and makers in the literature, as well as reflecting on the author’s experiences in consortium research projects, the chapter considers the role of familiar methods such as site visits, residencies and workshops, reflecting on how these can maintain proximity to material and social system elements that may be geographically distributed or difficult to access because of cultural, cognitive or epistemological difference. Hornbuckle considers that when combined in a project eco-system, these approaches can enable designers in a variety of contexts (beyond materials development) to build and maintain proximity to the subject so that they can innovate meaning and value, whether that subject is a material, a community, a production facility, a police toolkit or something else.

6  Rosie Hornbuckle and Rebecca Earley

What changes? Much of what design research seeks to engage with in pursuit of ‘change’ seems outof-reach. This is where materials and making will continue to be a powerful ally, shifting down the gears from the upper echelons of systems and culture to the place where dialogue happens, where people experience life, and each other, and are moved to act. Mazzarella’s research is situated in the hyper-local, where engaging with artisans in the Waltham Forest area of London has had a multiplier effect on the small enterprises situated in the area and on the local community, reviving practices which may be lost. Unforeseen, this design research intervention laid the foundations for a new revenue stream and a renewed sense of self-worth for the artisan and learning opportunities for people in the local community, so that the skills could be kept alive. Many of the positive social interactions and influences observed in the chapters were unintentional outcomes of the materials and making process. Ballie, More and Clark, for example, couldn’t have foreseen that their participatory workshop would provide a safe haven for parents with young children who were vulnerable to isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic, or that the Sewing Box for the Future Toolkit would be taken home by 2,000 visitors, or that it would be embraced by the local authority and used in remote workshops with 60 EU stakeholders. However, that doesn’t undermine the importance of these outcomes: they highlight the emergent nature of design research and the unpredictable quality of material and making encounters, being personal and emotive, which must surely be harnessed and allowed to thrive. Concomitantly, researchers in this volume have noted the dualist nature of change, affecting both the participants and the researcher. The interaction between maternalistic sensitivities, doing research and making with textiles, surfaces a number of feminist issues, discussed variously in Earley, Ballie, More and Clark and Goenka’s chapters. The common factor is that these happenstances took place because the researchers strongly believed in the power of their process to seed new impact pathways and bring about change. Now this research community also needs to build the confidence and the skills to scale these approaches across to new locations and new contexts to expand the impact. Through their reflections on what changed and how, the contributors to this volume have elevated materials and making as central to social change to build a strategic, purposeful and increasingly mission-oriented, design research methodology. In these contexts, change is difficult to evaluate; impact pathways are set in motion; change is experienced and observed by researchers as it emerges. New appropriate methods of evaluating change achieved through design research are being shaped and tested,11 which take into consideration different notions of value12 and the heterogenous nature of materials and making research as well as the impossibility of predicting long-term impacts. However, there is evidence in these chapters of immediate and tangible change: on student learning and attitude in the case of Earley’s work, on policy in the case of Black and Storey’s research and on local maker communities in the case of Mazzarella’s and Goenka’s work. Becoming better at evaluating and communicating what changes undoubtedly means making evaluation training and services within academies, more accessible and appropriate to design research involving materials and making.

Introduction  7

Notes

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1

From food waste to circular materials for design Experimenting with matter from unconventional origins Valentina Rognoli, Luca Alessandrini and Barbara Pollini

Introduction There is a common belief that today’s wastes are tomorrow’s raw materials (Franklin and Till, 2018). This chapter embraces this point of view, presenting a complete framework of case studies related to the design of materials created starting from the processing and valorisation of food wastage. The aim is to demonstrate that materials developed out of waste, mainly by designers, are now available and can be considered feasible alternatives when selecting a material medium for a project. The development of materials originating from discarded sources is a consolidated practice that gives excellent results and insight for future production, encouraging a new and more accepted idea of waste. The investigation of the increasingly widespread practices of obtaining materials from food wastage is the focus of the chapter. Designers are at the forefront and among the greatest promoters of these practices in general. Thanks to the DIY-Materials approach, material designers (Cleries and Rognoli, 2021) are enabled to reason about new compounds derived from waste streams as possible material components. By tinkering, designing and developing material drafts – meaning materials samples created with the purpose to be tested in their physical and expressive-sensorial qualities (Rognoli, 2010) – designers define and assess their experimentation outcomes and potentialities in developing new possible materials. Scholars (Rognoli and Parisi, 2021) defined as “materials drafts” the results of the hypotheses from the activity of tinkering with materials. These are experimental and underdeveloped materials ready for further development or to be used as a source of inspiration since, in the process of their conception, there is no priority to find certain purposes or applications. Furthermore, the urgency of the environmental issue pushes for alternatives, calling for more sustainable and circular materials to be developed. There is also a desire to investigate and find new aesthetic and meaningful solutions to be applied to the world of materials for design. A collection of 136 case studies was built by desk research (academic and grey literature). Subsequently, a framework was created to analyse and divide the case studies according to the stages of the Food Supply Chain (FSC). The framework aims to be employed as a tool to visualise better data around the phenomena of DIY-Materials made from food waste (FW), including information on the phase of collection, the origin and the processes used to create new circular materials. This tool aims to serve designers and companies to better understand the phenomena and its potentialities in terms of circular economy and material outcomes, avoiding significant food losses

DOI: 10.4324/9781003260356-2

From food waste to circular materials for design  9 and waste. From the collection of case studies, two areas of application, in particular, stood out for having the most consistent research and breadth of experimentation with new materials: the fashion sector and plastics. The case studies described in the following sections will help explain the potential in obtaining novel DIY-Materials from food waste. In the attempt to describe the state of the art of the phenomenon, the study reports the main processes used by designers and companies to turn organic waste into valuable materials sources for new materials. Moreover, the study highlights the typologies of the more popularly used wastes and the supply chain phase. All the information collected and shared in this research can positively support designers and companies in these good practices of material design through creating similar circular outputs for different waste streams.

Materials Experience and DIY-Materials Designing materials that will be an indispensable part of the products is not a new idea in the domain of product design. The first universally recognised school of design, the Bauhaus, at the beginning of the 20th century already had in its didactic framework courses and teachings dedicated to the understanding of materials, their properties and qualities even before the shape of the object itself was framed (Rognoli, 2010; Wick, 2000; Itten, 1975). In the history of Italian Design, it must be mentioned the approach called Design Primario (Primary Design). This considers the soft qualities of materials as fundamental for the success of the final project (Trini Castelli and Petrillo, 1985; Branzi, 1984). Furthermore, in the 1990s, some researchers (Ceppi, 20141; Manzini and Petrillo, 1999; Doveil, 1998; Manzini, 1996; Petrillo, 1988) described the figure of the material designer as someone who in the first instance is attentive to the material dimension of the project. To this identity is intertwined the concept of Materials Experience (Karana et al., 2008), which focuses on the experience that the material can bring, as an added value, to the perception of the designed object. The Materials Experience encompasses the sensory dimension related to expressiveness and meaning (which concerns the emotional dimension and finally the performance, i.e. what the material suggests doing), as a condition for our behaviour (Pedgley et al., 2021; Giaccardi and Karana, 2015; Karana et al., 2014). The complex concept of the Materials Experience is fundamental to defining the identity of the materials and is very useful when the materials in question are new ones, with weak, unconsolidated and yet to be established identities. In this case, it is beneficial to know the Material Driven Design (MDD) method (Karana et al., 2015). The MDD method is a new methodology for the exploration and design of materials focusing on the notion of material experience and combines practical experimentation, user studies and vision. It allows guidelines for designing meaningful material experiences precisely when the materials in question are new and recently developed materials. One of the fundamental phases of this method is related to the tinkering activity, which is the design practice characterised by specific features, procedures, supportive activities and goals. It aims to extract data, understand material properties, understand constraints and recognise its potentialities. It helps to gain knowledge about materials and to develop procedural knowledge through experiential learning (Parisi et  al., 2017). The material becomes an active participant in the experimentation

10  Valentina Rognoli et al. process, and the agency extends to the material itself, which participates in the ­ rocess and co-performs with the tinkerer. As Rosner (2012) states, “Materials are p collaborators in the craft process”. These direct, engaging and creative experiments are often used by material designers to develop low-tech, self-produced materials. On these foundations, the concept of DIY-Materials (Rognoli and Ayala-Garcia, 2021; Rognoli et al., 2015) was ­developed, which encompasses materials created through individual or collective practices of self-production, often through techniques and processes invented by the designer. Moreover, the dissemination of workshops, fab labs, maker spaces, access to knowledge and sharing through online platforms facilitated this type of experimentation. Thanks to this democratisation of knowledge and technologies, even inexperienced people can tinker and create their material drafts or demonstrators. With DIY-Materials, designers decide not to look at materials that someone has already designed and developed, but instead, they inquire/challenge themselves by experimenting and thinking about their own design of materials. In the context of DIY-Materials, the material designer typically begins to conceive the material draft by thinking about a source or selecting the appropriate source (­Ayala-Garcia et al., 2017). The sources’ choice guides the experimentation as it directs the material designer on a particular type of ingredients. Then, the material designer starts a process of manipulation which allows them to understand, by learning the material’s constraints and recognising its potential, the properties and qualities of the material in hand (Rognoli et al., 20212; Barati and Karana, 2019). The initial choice of the source for the development of the material is a very delicate phase, which will affect the whole process and future considerations. Nowadays, it is observed that the designer’s intentions are directed towards sources that can be useful for developing circular materials. For that reason, food waste is considered an excellent material source. Bak-Andersen (2021) pointed out that the designer is a solutions provider, and not only a creator of objects (Roux, 2011). The designer who focuses on material experimentation through unconventional sources and original ingredients wants ­ to ensure material solutions that inspire those who will then use the materials. Therefore, the materials draft and demonstrator are used to speculate, build scenarios and imagine probable and preferable future solutions. Nowadays, it’s evident that a specific profile of a material designer is emerging as a professional capable of simultaneously managing circular design, material manipulation and creative processes based on practical experimentation and tinkering (Cleries and Rognoli, 20213). Moreover, on the occasion of the MADE project,4 it has been stated that Material Designers are agents of change. They can design, redesign, reform, reuse and redefine materials giving them an entirely new purpose. Increasing the potential of materials, they can research, advise, educate and communicate what materials are and can be in the immediate, near and far future, implementing positive social, economical, political and environmental change across all sectors towards a responsibly designed future. The outcomes of the project MADE demonstrated the potential that specialised material designers have in putting forward circular design, by developing materials

From food waste to circular materials for design  11 from waste streams, thus inspiring new and circular manufacturing processing and ­material solutions; such design activity can boost the circular material use rate in the coming decade as required by the EU Circular Economy Action Plan. In fact, material designers today refer to the circular economy approach as their goal; they use creativity as a tool for innovation, addressing materials and processes to achieve this. The work of the material designers showcased here shows hybrid profiles of creativity intertwined with a science-driven approach. The material designer has a multidisciplinary, eclectic and transformative approach. Depending on the occasion, they can become a chef, an alchemist, an activist, a scientist and a biologist (Lee, 2015; Ribul, 2013; Humier, 2012; Myers, 2012).

State of the art Considering the data promulgated in the What a Waste 2.0 report, 5 if humans do not act promptly to stop, or at least curb the phenomenon, by 2050, the amount of municipal waste produced will increase from the current 2.01 billion tonnes to 3.14 billion. An increase of 70% due to constant demographic and economic growth and ever greater urbanisation. Considering data from the EU Commission,6 around 88 million tonnes of food waste are generated annually, with associated costs estimated at 143 billion euros.7 Globally, approximately a third of all food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted: the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that around 14% of all food produced is lost from the post-harvest stage.8 Interesting is the data from the UNEP Food Waste Index 2021,9 which gives a slightly more precise idea of the origin of food waste. Overall, around 931 million tonnes of food wastage were generated in 2019, 61% of which came from households, 26% from food service and 13% from retail. In general, food wastage indirectly generates a diverse series of events that negatively impact the environment, such as soil erosion, deforestation, water and air pollution, as well as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that occur in the processes of food production, storage, transportation and waste management (Schanes et al., 2018; Mourad, 2016; Abeliotis et al., 2015). Not only ethical and economic issues are pertinent with food wastage, but also pollution problems: valuable biomass and nutrients get lost, while the limited natural resources of the environment get depleted. Furthermore, the decomposition of food waste in landfills leads to releasing gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane: impactful GHGs responsible for accelerating global warming.10 International attention on the issue of food wastage is firmly reflected in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Specifically, Target 12.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which embodies this agenda, calls for the halving of the per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels by 2030 and the reduction of food loss along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses.11 Resource scarcity and pressure will increase in the future, and the ability to recover and manage these losses will become essential for a sustainable global economy (­Desing et al., 2021; Vea et al., 2018; Tonini et al., 2013). According to the concept12 of industrial ecology, a coupling between waste and production sectors is necessary to ensure sustainable development; this can be obtained by applying waste as an input for the industrial production systems. Consistently with what is theorised and practised by the Zero Waste approach,13 the use of secondary material flows (which inevitably

12  Valentina Rognoli et al. arise in the manufacture of a product), are becoming increasingly important against the rising price of raw material and their increasing scarcity. Using food waste to create materials to develop artefacts is not really part of the chain of food generation and supply. However, using food as a material to create new objects is undoubtedly a practice that concerns food design (Bassi, 2015), and also eco-design for by doing so, intelligent solutions can be found to reduce waste. In the literature, many recent references testify how academic research is very active in the creation of bioplastics by food waste upcycling (Comino et al., 2021; Santagata et al., 2021; Suganya et al., 2021; Liu et al., 2020; Ramadhan and Handayani, 2020; Jõgi and Bhat, 2020; Caliendo et al., 2019; Sindhu et al., 2019; Tsang et al., 2019; Lucarini et al., 2018; Cecchini, 2017; Galentsios et al., 2017; Girotto et al., 2015; Bayer et al., 2014). Increasing concerns about the pollution and environmental impact of conventional petrochemical plastics have encouraged research and innovation in the field of bioplastics, of which the global demand is constantly growing.

Food wastage case studies framework analysis Food takes a long journey before reaching our tables. From being harvested as raw matter, transformed in multiple and complex ways, stored, collected and distributed; food travels, changes its nature, often becoming just a good to be quickly consumed before deterioration. In 2011, FAO presented the estimate that around 1/3 of the world’s food was lost or wasted every year along the way.14 What is left after its consumption could either be considered a resource to be upcycled again or just disposed of as Food Loss and Waste (FLW)15 representing a global scale issue. Designers are frequently those who draw the line between these two choices, opting for the more virtuous one through their good practices of design. For this reason, a comprehensive variety of case studies of design practitioners and companies working with FLW were collected and analysed for their design relevance in the practice of creating new circular materials, materials that were then organised into five different phases of the FSC. Figure 1.1 results from the re-elaboration of the charts proposed by scholars (Ishangulyyev et al., 2019; Lipinski et al., 2013). The diagram represents the FLW within the five phases of the FSC, to which it was decided to add the phase of consumption as part of our theoretical framework, the opinion of the research team was that it is indispensable to understand where the FLW ends its journey. In fact, a large variety of the case studies collected involve the FLW produced within the household and urban context where the most significant portion of it is generated, up to 42% in the EU (Lipińska et al., 2019). Consequently, this diagram was created to clarify and define the phases of the FSC considered in the framework and highlight the amount of material loss that occurs in each step. It is undoubtedly helpful to define the FSC concept, which includes all the steps of food products, from production to consumption. It connects multiple sectors and stakeholders: the agricultural, breeding and fishing sector, the food processing industry, the distribution sector (wholesale and retail) and the catering sector (restaurants, bars, coffee shops, etc.). The FSC ends when the food is consumed by people, discarded or otherwise removed from the chain. The FSC sees food wastage occurring at different stages,

From food waste to circular materials for design  13

Figure 1.1  Food Loss and Waste (FLW) within the Food Supply Chain framework.

and as emerged from the study, possible unconventional raw materials for the new circular materials are produced in each step. Therefore, food initially intended for human nourishment can be removed from the FSC becoming FLW, even if it is reused in other sectors (bioenergy, animal feed, new materials). Despite the recognised difference between FL and FW also highlighted graphically in Figure 1.1, in our analysis, we didn’t want to use this distinction to characterise the different kinds of waste, mainly addressing food wastage in a comprehensive definition of both (see note 25). For the study, was adopted the FLW definition given in the project of FUSION EU,16 which establishes that any kind of food and its inedible parts is to be removed from the FSC to be disposed of (including composted, crops ploughed in or not harvested, anaerobic digestion, bioenergy production, ­co-generation, incineration, disposal to sewer, landfill or discarded to sea) or recovered. To better analyse the circular materials derived from FLW and contextualise them within the above-mentioned framework, 136 case studies were collected, each deriving from various phases of the FSC, due to the very different nature of processes involved. In this scenario, our collection of case studies wants to develop a valuable framework for reframing the FLW from the designer’s perspective. The case studies have been classified following the five FSC phases previously mentioned, in order to identify where the FLW is occurring. In Figure 1.2, the five selected phases in the FSC are represented, and their waste flows coming from each of them and following the food journey until reaching the consumers in the catering sector and the household/urban phases. Using the framework (Figure 1.1), the case studies collection was organised to obtain a helpful tool for designers and companies to analyse and inspire new ­practices. The tool with the classification of the 136 case studies based on the framework is detailed in Table 1.1, which will be possible to find in the complete version online following the QR code (Figure 1.4). Furthermore, in Figure 1.3, it is possible to see the relations occurring between all the FLW used by the designers in the collected case studies, the

14  Valentina Rognoli et al.

Figure 1.2  Food Supply Chain Food Loss and Waste (FLW) flows.

transformation processes and the multiple outputs realised. The selected clusters of information present in Table 1.1 are the following: – Origin: from which phase of the FSC the FLW is coming; – Time scale: the year of the project’s realisation; – The project output: if the designer or brand released a new product such as a chair, a food container, a new shoe model or if they developed a new material, such as a new composite, a new textile of a polymer; – The type of material developed to realise the project output showing how the FLW has been developed, becoming a filler, a bioplastic, a pigment, a fabric, leather or a non-woven textile; – Type of process: in order to have a slightly deeper understanding of the FLW flow, five generic processes, happening along with the five FSC phases of our framework, were summarised. According to the data collected during the study, these phases are those actually producing FLW: – peeling, the action, mechanical or manual, of removing the external part of fruit or vegetable products. This can be done to fruits, like apples or oranges, and to vegetables, such as cabbages or artichokes by removing the outer leaves; – skinning is the process of removing the skins of animals like cows, pigs, and scales from fish; – grinding uses mechanical grinding to separate unusable parts from food, such as nutshells, fibrous parts from rice and wheat (milling), or it can consist in crushing food to obtain other products, such as olive oil or flour; – cutting is the process that separates what is exploitable from the food industry and what is turning in FLW; crop harvesting is a good example of a process involving part of the plants being cut off (e.g. leaves and trunks);

From food waste to circular materials for design  15

Figure 1.3  Connections between the collected case studies.

Figure 1.4  QR code to view a table of collected cases studies classification.

– sorting is the most recurrent process of all the FSC phases, it consists in the operation of selecting and organising raw, uneaten, spoiled, or discarded food parts. The last section of Table 1.1 (accessible online via the QR Figure 1.4) represents a collection of processes involved in the making of the materials used to produce the

16  Valentina Rognoli et al. case studies for the project outputs. Twenty-six different processes were listed. These were used by designers and companies when working with the FLW and modified to obtain novel DIY-Materials: peeling, skinning, grinding, cutting, sorting, collecting, scutching, washing, peeling, drying, melting, extracting mixing, polymerisation, dyeing, cooking pressing, heat pressing, extruding, yearning, weaving/non-weaving, moulding, manipulating, curing and coating. Most of the projects have in common multiple phases, especially if the type of material developed is the same (bioplastic, fabric, leather, non-woven textile, filler, etc.) and if they are using the same FLW. The authors of this study believe that by comprehending the similarities between these practice-based activities, other designers and companies could be inspired to follow the same good practices and create similar outputs using different waste streams. With this in mind, the research will attempt to envision a DIY practical approach fostering the generation of potential processes of scalability of these material design practices and outputs, while creating a trend in terms of positive impact.

Main findings Following the FLW within the FSC framework (Figure 1.1), in this section, the authors will describe the main findings obtained from the analysis of the collected case studies by the phases of the FLW in the FSC. Each phase is characterised by different types of waste, corresponding to a wide range of possibilities in terms of their enhancement through material design. For each phase, a few of the main FLW and case studies are further analysed to better describe the state of the art and the possibilities in terms of design and processes to be applied in the development of new circular and bio-based materials. Food wastage from the agricultural, breeding and fishing sectors Following the FSC waste flow in Figure 1.2, there is the raw food production in the agricultural, breeding and fishing phase, for which 25 case studies of materials made of FLW were collected in this first step (9 bioplastics, 6 fabrics, 2 fillers, 3 types of leather, 4 non-woven textiles). Here is where natural resources are organised, collected and harvested, often becoming a scalable capillary process producing an average of 23.7 million food tonnes per day worldwide.17 In this phase of the FSC, designers and companies could use a wide variety of leaves and trunks coming from different harvesting processes: various valuable fibres, typically left on the fields, are obtained favouring the realisation of textiles and fabrics. Various case studies addressed alternative solutions to contribute to the solution of the well-known environmental problems and implications related to the fashion industry (Purvis et al., 2019; Rognoli et al., 2022). In particular, three types of waste are highlighted by this research, materials used by designers who can envision the opportunities hidden in the experience of working with natural textile fibres coming from developing countries (banana, pineapple and sugarcane), designers who choose to locally process these fibres and create, all-around them, sustainable forms of business. Notoriously, the massification of the industrialised fashion industry represents a social issue and the following case studies aim to draw different paths that propose the equal sharing of goods, by enhancing local cultures and traditional manufacturing.

From food waste to circular materials for design  17 Banana is the fourth most produced fruit globally, reaching 72.5 million tonnes every year.18 When the banana fruits are harvested, the plant needs to be cut and disposed of, creating a significant source of fibres (around 100,000 tonnes/year only from the Abaca type19). Several case studies use these to generate different products and solutions. Among them, there are the banana stem fibre shoes designed by the Colombian duo of designers Diana Feliu and Iván Rojas; they cooperated with 60 artisans using traditional techniques, part of the local indigenous communities in the Andes mountains. 20 Bananatex is a Taiwanese-Swiss brand crafting natural fabrics by extracting fibres from the banana plant trunks cut after the harvest. The brand involves the local populations in Taiwan in all the artisanal activities on the field, such as fibre extraction (scutching). 21 Studio Mirei utilises natural fabric from banana leaves to manufacture products, such as chandeliers and table lamps. 22 The textiles the designer uses are crafted by small artisans communities in the Philippines. Fibres are not the only material obtained by banana agricultural FLW; banana plant trunks are rich in starch, which a group of researchers from Sydney University has extracted to develop a process for the manufacturing of plastic bags. 23 Fibres suitable for fashion products can come from different crops. Pineapple leaves are a great source (up to 25 kg per 1 tonne of waste leaves). The Philippines are the biggest pineapple producer worldwide, with 2,169,230 million tonnes in 2010, potentially producing around 72,000 tonnes of fibres per year (Hijosa, 2015). Pinatex is a pineapple leaves fibre-based leather developed in the Philippines by the Spanish designer Carmen Hijosa working together with small cooperatives of local farmers. Pinatex leather has been used by Adidas in their collections and by the stylist Stella McCartney. Pineapple leaves fibres also inspired the designers Cao Zheng, Liu Fei and Liu Xiaodong who, during a workshop promoted by Creative Food Cycle in 2019, 24 designed a series of clothes adopting a DIY and tinkering approach to process the fibres.25 Andrea De La Peñaa worked on a pineapple fibre deriving material for tiling and food packaging. 26 The steps involved in processing the natural fibres are quite the same for banana trunks and pineapple leaves: scutching, washing, drying and weaving. In the case of fabrics, on the one hand, there are woven versions such as the shoes designed by Diana Feliu and Iván Rojas, on the other hand, there are non-woven or felted versions, used for example as the fibrous base of leathers (e.g. Piñatex and the material developed by Andrea De La Peñaa). Another inspiring crop enabling interesting materials is sugarcane. Sugarcane is usually left in the field after harvesting, but a few good practices show how this crop can be used to grow a deriving bacterial polymer: polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA). Sugar is the primary product coming from sugarcane. Sugar is a plant-derived organic compound able to crystallise, becoming a solid material. The designer Ella Bulley exploited this property in her project Extreme Sugar. 27 Ella experiments, using a DIY approach, with different sugar and sugarcane leftover composite fibres to realise new materials drafts; for example, in her project Saccharum 28 she designs a new tableware concept collection.

18  Valentina Rognoli et al. Food wastage from the industrial food processing The industrial food processing phase is the most tackled by designers and companies, where more than 50 case studies have been collected. Among the different materials developed, there are 20 bioplastics, 1 fabric, 18 fillers, 7 types of leather, 1 non-­ woven textile and 3 pigments. The FAO has defined food processing as “any change made to a food to alter its eating quality or shelf life”. 29 In this phase, a considerable amount of the FLW output is disposed of in multiple ways, depending on the local conditions. Referring to the case studies collection, there are projects conducted mainly using parts of inedible food sorted during the food processing: nutshells, fruit peels, fibrous parts separated from crops (rice husks, wheat bran), eggshells, animal parts like blood, intestines or bones (from cow, pigs and fishes) and fish scales. Among these, the most relevant FLW chosen to work with by brands and designers were selected: rice husks, fruit peels (apple and orange), animal processing waste (blood and eggshell) and FLW from the seafood industries. Approximately 680 million tonnes of rice is grown yearly, only second to wheat for the most food produced around the world (Friedman, 2013; Foo and Hameed, 2011). For every rice grain produced, there is a husk sorted from it. The process used to separate fibrous parts from cereals and grains like rice is grinding. This industrial process creates FLW, reducing the husks to small dimensions, making them easy to be used as fillers in compounds and bioplastics. The companies Biotrem, 30 Futurepower31 and Biogusto32 used these particles as fillers to manufacture disposable tableware. Rice husks represent a precious silica resource. The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. founded a joint venture to use more natural materials as components of pneumatics using silica from rice husks.33 Every year, 124.73 million metric tonnes of fruit are produced globally, and approximately half are wasted along with the FSC. The FLW from the fruit processing can vary from 10 to 70% during production (Sagar et al., 2018). Fruit FLW has been enhanced in multiple projects among our case studies, especially in the textile field, tackling the need to use new sustainable materials for the fashion industry. The companies Frumat34 and Happy Grenie35 use leftovers from the apple industrial processing to produce vegan leather. After apple, orange is the fruit most used by the selected designers and brands. Twenty million tonnes of citrus peel is wasted each year (Rezzadori et al., 2012). The majority of it comes from the fruit processing industry, being wasted during the production of juices, jams, sauces, oils and so on (Cypriano et al., 2018). The Italian company Orange Fiber uses orange juice leftovers to create fabrics (that are mixed with silk) that have been used by major fashion brands such as H&M, Salvatore ­Ferragamo and E. Marinella (Figure 1.5). 36 In the processing phase of industrial food also animal-derived FLW are significant: in 2018, the global production of meat was around 340 million tonnes, contributing about 14.5% of the total human-induced GHG emissions per year, which is 7.1 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent (Karwowska et al., 2021). It is estimated that as much as 23% of production in the meat sector contributes to becoming part of the total food waste (Lipinski, 2020). Blood is one of the most diffused FLW produced by the slaughtering industries, and designers started to work with it, and while experimenting

From food waste to circular materials for design  19

Figure 1.5 Orange Fiber recovers the by-product of the citrus fruit pressing industry, transforming it into new material for sustainable design. Created by Luca Distefano content creator × Orange Fiber.

discovered its potential to be used as biopolymer and pigment.37 Shahar Lvine uses blood as pigment to dye parts of a sneakers model called Nat-2. 38 The designer Basse Stittgen makes blood come back on the dinner table with Blood Related’s tableware project.39 The researcher Ku Ishak Ku Marsilla from the Universiti Sains Malaysia published an article in 2013 about the extraction of nitrogen from blood meal that could potentially have an economic impact in terms of this primary element supplying (Marsilla and Verbeek, 2013). Eggshell waste amounted to 8.58 million metric ton globally in 2017 (Waheed et al., 2020). They are mainly made out of calcium carbonate, having different p ­ roperties and are employed by designers to obtain unconventional outcomes. Eggshells have been utilised as fillers for various materials: Basse Stittgen used them to design eggs holders and tableware.40 In contrast, Egg Shield used them to fill different compounds for different outputs like 3D printing vases, wall panelling and lamps.41 The designer Hye Hyun Song used the membrane that divides the eggshell from the albumen to craft anti-COVID face masks. It has a peculiar property of making oxygen pass, while filtering air and unwanted substances.42 Meat processing produces substantial waste also in the seafood sector. In 2018, the fishing industry reached 51.3 million tonnes of volume in production.43 Similar to meat, fish has different parts that are sorted and disposed of, such as bones, skins and scales. One of the most remarkable projects winning the Dyson Award in 2019 was designed by Lucy Huges, founder of the startup MarinaTex,44 which managed

20  Valentina Rognoli et al. to use fish scales disposed of by fish processing industries to create bioplastic suitable for packaging. Fish skin itself keeps representing an unusual material to be upcycled, becoming a source of precious leather. Brazilian designer Oskar Metsavaht fights one of the major causes of Amazon deforestation: bovine breeding. He repurposed the skins from the pirarucu fish found in Amazonian rivers and lakes by transforming them into sustainable garments and fashion accessories.45 Another fish-derived leather was developed by the UK-based company G.H. ­L eathers Ltd in 2016 by using the Nile Perch as a source.46 Furthermore, the most eaten fish globally (reaching 2.68 million metric tonnes of production in 2018)47 can give leather. The company Chilote shoes48 adopted salmon leather to make baby shoe soles. Food wastage from the distribution phase The distribution sector treats mainly food and products ready to accede to the phase of consumption. During this phase, edible food can be discarded because it does not conform to aesthetic quality standards or remains unsold after the expiration date. Moreover, there is currently increasing globalisation of the FSC, directly affecting the development of the distribution sector. To function, the distribution system requires materials and energy for packaging, transportation and storage. Packaging has the highest emissions, contributing 5.4% of total food systems emissions in 2015 (Crippa et al., 2021). Thirteen case studies have been collected from this FSC phase. There are eight bioplastics, three types of leather, one non-woven textile and one structural element. The primary cause of food loss (up to 44%) is spoilage in the retailing phase and during food transportation.49 When food gets spoiled, it gets disposed of, reaching its End Of Life (EOL) stage in various ways, most of the time without being separated from its packaging (Vitale et al. 2018). Following, the authors outline four case studies tackling this specific issue using FLW to realise biodegradable packaging able to decompose with the food they can contain. In this way, a full circular path is given to food distribution, especially when the FLW used to make the packaging comes directly as FLW from the contained food. For the designer Vladis Steinars, unsold spoiled meat parts could come back as a sustainable form of packaging for the meat itself. With his project Bioplastic Skin, Vladis rethinks a new concept of meat packaging made out of animal skin from meat processing. 50 Smart Materials Lab from the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) proposed an alternative packaging using artichoke fibres obtained from the local vegetable market leftovers51 used to contain artichoke. MakeGrowLab developed kombucha SCOBYbased materials suitable for packaging in the form of thin layers able to be wrapped around fresh food. 52 One of the most simple and effective solutions has been adopted by the Thailandese supermarket Rimping, which used banana leaves as fresh food packaging to drastically reduce the use of plastic in their branches. 53 Food wastage from the catering food sector The catering food sector is responsible for 14% of food waste production in the EU (Lipińska et al., 2019). In this phase, it is possible to include restaurants, bars,

From food waste to circular materials for design  21 pâtisseries, coffee shops and all the activities preparing food to be served to the final consumers. The food waste coming from the kitchens and the uneaten cooked food is various and complex, but it is a potential source of new materials and solutions. Thirteen out of 19 collected case studies working within this FSC phase are using spent coffee. Among the others, designers and brands developed 1 bioplastic, 16 ­fillers, 1 leather and one pigment. As for the previous phases of the FSC, two of the most ­significant FLW able to inspire ideas and solutions in designers and brands were selected: As mentioned, spent coffee can be an accessible resource to work with since it is already in a powdered form and rich in lignin, a natural binder. These characteristics make it a perfect filler to be implemented in multiple applications by companies: Decafè54 and High Society55 designed lamp collections; Orineo56 realised tiles for pavements; Pladec57 created wall panelling by pressed spent coffee and PLA; Ochis58 diverging from deigning for home interiors, produces sunglasses from spent coffee; C2renew59 uses spent coffee as a filler for 3D printing filament; Kaffeform60 brings back spent coffee using it as a filler for a coffee set pottery set; Dishbratta61 produces a tableware set, and Lovely Trash62 launched a Kickstarter campaign for selling its collection of vases composed of mycelium seeded with spent coffee. Additionally, designers have realised projects including spent coffee, like the design ­studio ­Henry&Co,63 who designed an arch-shaped lamp having elements made out of coffee; Studio Objects and Ideograms,64 3D-printed architectural models with spent coffee; and Kristen Wang65 crafted a stool made out of coffee and casein within the contest of Salone Satellite in 2019. Unlike the other case studies, the company Scafè creates fabrics from spent coffee through the extraction of cellulose fibres. The fabrics developed have the exceptional property to deodorise the human skin.66 After coffee, in this phase, orange peel is also a significant source of inspiration for designers. The designer Alkesh Parmar experimented with it from 2011, producing different items and an orange peel made juicer.67 The designer Luca Alessandrini  designed a chandelier made out of an orange peel composite material manufactured by the UK-based startup Biohm (Figure 1.6).68 An interesting example is Ohmie The Orange Lamp69: the first orange peel lamp by Krill Design.70 It is reclaimed, organic and 3D printed in a fully circular loop. Spent grain from beer-serving breweries has been the FLW source for the designer Mi Zhou who developed a new leather adopted by Stella McCartney.71 Food wastage from the household and urban disposing After the industrial food processing sector, the consumption phase encompassing the widest variety of projects done using FLW is at household and urban disposal. After consumption, FLW is the currently most significant portion, representing 42% of the total in the EU (Lipińska et al., 2019). Post consumption, FLW EOL is responsible for a large portion of CO2 emissions affecting global warming yearly (about 11% globally) (Lipińska et al., 2019). The FLW used in the collected projects is the most varied in this phase, composed of kitchen FLW and inedible food parts like inedible ­artichoke fibres, nutshells, fruit and vegetable peels, crustacean parts, tea leaves and animal bones. The FLW from the consumption phase can be composed of uneaten food.

22  Valentina Rognoli et al.

Figure 1.6 Orange peel to 3D printing filament, material development board by Krill Design.

For this phase, the authors collected 31 case studies: 15 bioplastics, 7 fillers, 1 type of leather, 2 non-woven textiles, 4 pigments and 1 material able to produce energy. In  the majority of the collected projects, the designers adopted a DIY approach. Behind this choice, there are two reasons: firstly, working within the private context doesn’t allow the chance to use sophisticated equipment to process the FLW and, secondly, some of the projects considered have a potential educational purpose. With this, we mean that designers have focused on designing the process of upcycling FLW to make it adoptable in a daily contest, by the general public, to foster an improvement of the private FLW management. The intent of disseminating alternative FLW upcycling practices could potentially create scalable phenomena, starting from changing the habits of the single citizen until reaching more complex systems such as urban contexts. Among the collected case studies, the most remarkable FLW are mentioned here: kombucha, chewing gums and, finally, projects able to transform the flow of FLW coming from the urban and household environments via innovative and smart solutions. Kombucha scoby72 is the primary ingredient and, at the same time, the waste of kombucha fermented tea. While fermenting, a substrate of bacterial cellulose grows on the tea surface. This material has been an excellent resource for multiple designers due to its easy processing and strong materials output. Among all the case studies, the designer who made kombucha-based leather popular, Suzanne Lee and her project Biocouture,73 is worthy of note. In 2014, Suzanne Lee designed the first collection of clothes made with leather-like material. This project also helped spread the idea of “growing materials” instead of sourcing them from animals or agriculture. After Suzanne Lee’s work, kombucha leather keeps having its space in fashion-based projects, such as the one developed by Lea Klein and Lara Carbonaro74 who design hats entirely made by it. Kombucha can also be dyed using different pigments, but Studio

From food waste to circular materials for design  23 Lionne Van Deursen developed a process using household food scraps to obtain beautiful results in texture and tonalities.75 Vans is one of the oldest fashion brands promoting skateboarding culture. It partnered with Mentos, one of the producers of an FLW widely diffused in the urban areas: spent chewing gums. Eighty to ninety percent of chewing gum ends up not being binned properly by the consumers.76 So, the designers Hugo Maupetit and Vivian Fischer ideated a collecting system that could source enough chewing gums to create Vans branded skateboard wheels. Among the case studies, there are two examples showing projects able to use the whole flow of FLW coming from the urban or the household context. One of them has been developed by a team of researchers from the Colorado School of Mines, who extracted precious minerals from food leftovers collected from the local FLW municipal sites. The researchers have extracted enough silica to make glass components,77 demonstrating that by developing ever more efficient upcycling processes can lead to reduced reliance on the primary exploitation of materials. Transforming FLW into clean energy has been the key used by the Filipino student Carvey Ehren Maigue to win the Dyson Award 2020. He developed a compound made out of new material from vegetable leftovers which converts UV light into renewable energy78; this has a wide range of applications, from windows to building facades. The Japanese ceramist Kosuke Araki collected food leftovers for two years before burning them and using their ashes to create his tableware collection called Anima. He used this evocative name, meaning soul, signifying that the food leftovers could come back to the dinner table as the soul does through reincarnation.79 Some of the cases collected may still seem at a research level or communicated with a speculative slant; however, to focus on the importance of food waste in the economy of circular models, we have analysed that among all the analysed cases, 38 are an effective business to date. Among these, 24 cases refer to designers who, thanks to a DIY-Material approach, have used food waste to self-produce for commercial purposes or found a startup. These data represent the current scenario that, due to the quickly evolving nature of the above-mentioned artisanal and entrepreneurial leaps, can be considered in constant development.

Conclusion An important key aspect in designing for sustainability is to reduce the need to use primary resources by improving the availability of secondary cycle resources. For this reason, designers are motivated to work with waste, developing new material scenarios to reintegrate human activity into the natural system. As shown, the FSC is a generator of food wastage; therefore, there is the need to make the path of food waste advantageous from an environmental and socio-economic point of view. This study presented an extensive analysis of the FLW within the FSC framework, detailing where and how waste occurs, extending into the food consumption phase, given its vital role in understanding where FLW ends its journey. Moreover, a table collecting 136 case studies of DIY-Materials from food waste has been presented as a valuable tool for visualising food waste’s potentialities as secondary raw material. The majority of the case studies collected showed the possibility of offering sustainable and alternative materials to some of the most impactful sectors, such as plastic packaging and fashion.

24  Valentina Rognoli et al. Today’s real challenge is to create materials from scraps and not from crops, a ­ rimary source of sustenance not only for humans. In this regard, DIY-Materials, actp ing as demonstrators of feasible alternatives, can trigger new manufacturing niches, as well as new businesses. This study has shown that wastes from the food chain have enormous potential in creating new, innovative, circular and sustainable materials for design. As emerging materials, one of the greatest challenges is the investments in research that the innovative formulation of these materials entails; on the other hand, the opportunities are demonstrated not only by the number of case studies collected but also by the fact that many of these are currently on the market. The collection of case studies presented here is part of ongoing research, which it’s expected to be further developed. The authors also believe that the tables proposed in this body of work could serve as tools for new studies and analyses of materials deriving from waste – a beneficial instrument of investigation for designers and companies interested in developing circular materials from unconventional sources such as food wastage. In conclusion, this research demonstrates the strategic role of design in the sustainable transition faced today, and how the role of the material designer – an expert in circular and sustainable materials – holds a strategic position impossible to ignore.

Notes 1 Retrieved from: www.aisdesign.org/aisd/nascita-del-design-dei-materiali-in-italia-il-­ contributo-specifico-del-centro-ricerche-domus-academy-dal-1990-al-1998 – September 2021. 2 Retrieved from: http://materialdesigners.org/Book/ – September 2021. 3 Retrieved from: http://materialdesigners.org/Book/ – September 2021. 4 http://materialdesigners.org/. 5 A Global Snapshot of Solid Waste Management to 2050 published by World Bank Group, 2018 (retrieved from: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/30317 – ­September 2021). 6 https://ec.europa.eu/food/safety/food-waste_en 7 Estimates of European food waste levels, 2016 (www.eu-fusions.org/phocadownload/­ Publications/Estimates%20of%20European%20food%20waste%20levels.pdf). 8 https://ec.europa.eu/food/system/files/2019-10/fw_lib_fao-2019_en.pdf 9 www.unep.org/resources/report/unep-food-waste-index-report-2021 10 It is estimated, on a worldwide scale, that food waste is responsible for approximately 8% of the total anthropogenic GHG emissions, according to the World Resources Institute – EC, JRC/PBL, 2012 Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research, version 4.2. 11 www.fao.org/sustainable-development-goals/indicators/1231/en/ 12 Industrial ecology is a new approach to the industrial design of products and processes and the implementation of sustainable manufacturing strategies. It is a concept in which an industrial system is viewed not in isolation from its surrounding systems, but in concert with them. Industrial ecology seeks to optimise the total materials cycle from virgin material to finished material, to component, to product, to waste product, and ultimately into disposal (Jelinski et al., 1992). 13 Zero Waste Europe is a fast-growing movement of communities, local leaders, businesses, experts, influencers and other “change agents” working towards the same vision: eliminating waste in our society. The mission is to empower communities and change from around Europe to redesign their relationship with resources, to adopt smarter lifestyles and sustainable consumption patterns in line with “circular” resource management (https:// zerowasteeurope.eu/). 14 http://www.fao.org/food-loss-and-food-waste/flw-data

From food waste to circular materials for design  25 15 Food wastage (FLW) refers to any food lost by deterioration or waste. Thus, the term “wastage” encompasses both food loss and food waste (www.eu-fusions.org/index.php/ about-food-waste/280-food-waste-definition). 16 www.eu-fusions.org/phocadownload/Publications/Estimates%20of%20European%20 food%20waste%20levels.pdf 17 http://www.fao.org/3/i6488en/I6488EN.pdf 18 www.intechopen.com/chapters/64570 19 www.intechopen.com/chapters/64570 20 https://brightboys.org/2140-shoes-made-with-banana-fiber-local-and-sustainable-ar.html 21 www.bananatex.info/index.html 22 www.studiomirei.com 23 https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-tech/packaging-made-banana-plants-­ peeling-alternative 24 https://creativefoodcycles.org/2019/08/01/food-shakers-food-remakers-workshop-results/ 25 https://creativefoodcycles.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/5.-WS-GOA-_-F-Ananas.pdf 26 https://isola.design/Designer-Projects-Sustrato#Projects 27 www.ellabulley.com/saccharum 28 https://www.ellabulley.com/saccharum 29 www.fao.org/3/y5113e/y5113e04.htm 30 http://biotrem.pl/en/ 31 www.futurepowersrl.eu/en/vipot/ 32 www.biogusto.cl/ 33 www.aftermarketnews.com /goodyear-converts-waste-from-rice-harvest-into-fuel-­ efficient-tire-treads/ 34 www.technofashionworld.com/frumat-the-leather-alternative-made-from-apples/ 35 https://happy-genie.com/ 36 http://orangefiber.it/ 37 www.clemencegrouinrigaux.com/projects-7 38 www.shaharlivnedesign.com/blood-sneakers-by-shahar-livne-x-na 39 https://bassestittgen.com/Blood-Related 40 https://bassestittgen.com/How-do-you-like-your-eggs 41 www.gp-award.com/en/produkte/egg-shield 42 https://isoladd.co/Hye-Hyun-Song#Projects 43 www.fao.org/3/ca9229en/CA9229EN.pdf 4 4 www.marinatex.co.uk 45 www.dezeen.com/2018/11/15/oskar-metsavaht-pirarucu-fish-skin-sustainable-fashion 46 https://materialdistrict.com/material/perch-leather/ 47 www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/global-salmon-market-report-2020–301210020. html#:~:text=The%20global%20production%20of%20farmed,over%20the%20past%20 few%20years. 48 https://chiloteshoes.com/pages/our-impacthttps://chiloteshoes.com/pages/our-impact 49 https://ec.europa.eu/environment/eussd/pdf/bio_foodwaste_report.pdf 50 https://valdissteinars.com/Bioplastic-Skin 51 w w w.t hemed iteleg raph.com / it /g re en- a nd-te ch /te ch nolog y/ 2018/ 02 /12 /news / dai-carciofi-l-imballaggio-biodegradabile-targato-iit-1.38085494 52 www.makegrowlab.com/scoby-packaging 53 w w w.geo.fr/environnement /en-thailande-un-supermarche-remplace-lemballage-­ plastique-par-des-feuilles-de-bananier-195078 54 www.decafe.es/about-decafe/?lang=en 55 https://highsocietystudio.com/coffee 56 https://materialdistrict.com/material/touch-of-nature-walking-on-coffee/ 57 https://materialdistrict.com/material/coffee-panels/ 58 https://ochis.co/ 59 www.c2renew.com/materials 60 https://creativefoodcycles.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/6.-WS-GOA-_-CoffeePuzzle.pdf

26  Valentina Rognoli et al. 61 https://creativefoodcycles.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/10.-WS-GOA-_-Dishbratta.pdf 62 www.kickstarter.com/projects/1755959093/lovely-trash?ref=ksr-collections-shapeshift 63 www.henryandco.it/it/portfolio/arco-lampada-in-caffe/ 64 https://isola.design/Designer-Projects-Caffeinated-Architecture#Projects 65 www.kristenwangdesign.com/work 66 https://scafefabrics.com/en-global/about/story 67 http://matandme.com/alkesh-parmar-nature-inspired-design-principles/ 68 http://lucaalessandrini.com/orangepeel 69 https://it.ohmie-krilldesign.net/ 70 https://www.krilldesign.net/ 71 www.matrec.com/en/trends-news/leather-from-beer-production-waste 72 Widely used acronym for “symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast”, the organisms ­responsible for producing the bacterial cellulose layer during tea fermentation. 73 www.dezeen.com/2014/02/12/movie-biocouture-microbes-clothing-wearable-futures/ 74 https://isola.design/Designer-Projects-ScobioticBacterial-Cellulose-As-Sustainable-­ Textile-Material-#Projects 75 www.lionnevandeursen.com/ 76 www.custommade.com/blog/sustainable-gum/ 77 www.pbs.org/newshour/science/future-mining-resides-city-dump 78 www.dyson.com/newsroom/overview/features/november-2020/interview-aureus-systemtechnology-jda-2020 79 www.kosuke-araki.com/anima

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28  Valentina Rognoli et al. Lipinski, B., 2020. Why does animal-based food loss and waste matter? Animal Frontiers 10(4), 48–52. https://doi.org/10.1093/af/vfaa039 Lipinski, B., Hanson, C., Lomax, J., Kitinoja, L., Waite, R., & Searchinger, T., 2013. Reducing food loss and waste: Working paper. Washington, DC: World Resources Institute. (Retrieved from: http://pdf.wri.org/reducing_food_loss_and_waste.pdf) Liu, M., Arshadi, M., Javi, F., Lawrence, P., Davachi, S. M., & Abbaspourrad, A., 2020. Green and facile preparation of hydrophobic bioplastics from tea waste. Journal of Cleaner Production 276, 123353. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.123353 Lucarini, M., Durazzo, A., Romani, A., Campo, M., Lombardi-Boccia, G., & Cecchini, F., 2018. Bio-based compounds from grape seeds: A biorefinery approach. Molecules 23, 1888. https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules23081888 Manzini, E., 1996. Nuovi materiali e ricerca progettuale. In Andrea Branzi (ed.), Il design italiano 1964–1990. Milano: Electa. Manzini, E., & Petrillo, A., (eds.) 1999. Neolite. Metamorfosi delle materie plastiche. Milano: Domus Academy. Marsilla, K. I. K., & Verbeek, C. J. R., 2013. Properties of bloodmeal/linear low-density polyethylene blends compatibilized with maleic anhydride grafted polyethylene. Journal of Applied Polymer Science 130, 1890–1897. https://doi.org/10.1002/app.39323 Mourad, M., 2016. Recycling, recovering and preventing “food waste”: competing solutions for food ­systems sustainability in the United States and France. Journal of Cleaner Production 126, 461–477, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.03.084 Myers, W., 2012. Bio design: Nature, science, creativity. New York: Museum of Modern Art. Parisi, P., Rognoli, V., & Sonneveld, M., 2017. Material tinkering. An inspirational approach for experiential learning and envisioning in product design education. The Design Journal 20(sup1), S1167–S1184. https://doi.org/10.1080/14606925.2017.1353059 Pedgley, O., Rognoli V., & Karana E. (eds.), 2021. Materials experience: Expanding territories of materials and design. Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann. Petrillo, A., 1988. Il progetto della materia. Ottagono 89. Purvis, B., Mao, Y., & Robinson, D., 2019. Three pillars of sustainability: In search of conceptual origins. Sustainability Science 14, 681–695. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-018-0627-5 Ramadhan, M. O., & Handayani, M. N., 2020. The potential of food waste as bioplastic material to promote environmental sustainability: A review. IOP Conference Series: Materials Science Engineering 980, 012082. https://doi.org/10.1088/1757-899X/980/1/012082 Rezzadori, K., Benedetti, S., & Amante, E. R., 2012. Proposals for the residues recovery: Orange waste as raw material for new products. Food and Bioproducts Processing 90(4), 606–614. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fbp.2012.06.002 Ribul, M., 2013. Recipes for material activism. Open source publication (retrieved from: https:// issuu.com/miriamribul/docs/miriam_ribul_recipes_for_material_a, November 2021) Rognoli, V., 2010. A broad survey on the expressive-sensorial characterization of materials for design education. METU Journal of the Faculty of Architecture 27(2), 287–300. Rognoli, V., & Ayala-Garcia, C., 2021. Defining the DIY-Materials approach. In O. Pedgley, V. Rognoli, & E. Karana, (eds.), Materials experience: Expanding territories of materials and design, pp. 227–258. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Rognoli, V., Ayala-Garcia, C., & Pollini, B., 2021. DIY Recipes: Ingredients, processes and materials qualities. In L. Cleries, V. Rognoli, S. Solanki, & P. Llorach (eds.), Materials designers. Boosting talent towards circular economies, pp. 27–33. Barcelona: All-Purpose. Rognoli, V., Bianchini, M., Maffei, S., & Karana, E., 2015. DIY materials. Materials & Design 86, 692–702. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matdes.2015.07.020 Rognoli, V., Petreca, B., Pollini, B., & Saito, C., 2022. Materials biography as a tool for designers’ exploration of bio-based and bio-fabricated materials for the sustainable ­fashion industry. Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy 18(1), 749–772. https://doi.org/10.10 80/15487733.2022.2124740.Rosner, D. K., 2012. The material practices of collaboration.

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2

Multimorphic textiles Prototyping sustainability and circular systems Holly McQuillan

Introduction The world is in crisis. Textile and textile-based form designers lack relevant design methods to design with a deeper understanding of the systems and futures thinking required to transform their industries. This essay aims to bridge the gulf between holism in theory and holism in design practice. Building on my earlier explorations of holism in practice (McQuillan, 2020; McQuillan & Rissanen, 2020), I define Multimorphism as holism through practice that encompasses multiple scales, forms, times and perspectives, that ranges from nanoscopic material behaviours to the social and environmental contexts the materials and outcomes exist within. In this context, we can view textiles as a system of materials that emerge through fibre-yarn-textileform interactions, and, I argue, the greatest potential for any textile system can be found when the design and fabrication of these occur in symbiosis. Moreover, this symbiosis is a differently scaled version of the interactions between material, textile, product, industry, society and ecosystem. It can be read as a tangible manifestation a possible link between circularity (MacArthur, 2013, 2019; Stahel & MacArthur, 2019) and material-centred design models (Karana et al., 2015; Tandler, 2016). While these interconnected ways of thinking can transform how we design, make, use and recover textile-based form, we lack the design methods and examples to support this way of thinking and working.

The circularity gulf The majority of the environmental issues caused by the fashion sector are endemic, not incidental. They are a consequence of how the current model is structured. The better the sector performs, the worse the problems will get. Fletcher and Tham (2019) In the circular economy waste is designed out (Stahel & MacArthur, 2019). However, this has mostly occurred through reimagining product use and supporting recycling. The fashion and textile industries are exploring circularity with some enthusiasm; however, the holism required of circular design is complex and unwieldy in this famously siloed industry (Whitty, 2021). To ease management and lubricate the supply chain, the fashion and textile industry divides the actions required to make a garment into smaller parts.1 While superficially pragmatic, the silos limit the implementation of circularity due to the lack of holism in practice. The industry is provided with theory

DOI: 10.4324/9781003260356-3

Multimorphic textiles  31 and theoretical models for circularity, new materials and machinery, critiques about its treatment of its workers, but limited examples of how design interacts with these together in a system in practice (Dokter et al., 2021; Sumter et al., 2020). Brooks et al. (2018) argue that the industry’s attraction to recycling is because it does not require holistic changes such as a reduction in resource use or a significant change in design processes, supply chains or consumption habits. Radical transformations are disregarded as too disruptive to the economy and industry. Because the circular economy is viewed through this western, anthropocentric lens, many of the biggest opportunities to mitigate the threats to humanity’s experience and existence are missed.

Designing in a crisis Design’s particular view of the world has shaped, literally and conceptually, the forms and details of the material world. The contemporary fashion industry’s methods are the result of hundreds of years of development and practice and have recently transformed into the fast-paced beacon of (aesthetic) innovation that it is today. These methods are primarily situated in the context of cut and sew (C&S) – and these approaches are due to the technological limitations of constructing three-dimensional (3D) garment forms from two-dimensional (2D) materials. The streamlining and standardisation of C&S methods have been governed by cost and speed of production. Such variables are the result of a destructive world view; therefore, the worldview, system, the methods and evaluation matrix need to be questioned. There is a gulf between the conventional systems of the fashion and textile industry and the actions needed to ameliorate its significant adverse impacts. Stuck between the need to transition to circular economies, the baked-in nature of issues such as waste and resource overuse and expectations of the users of their products, many designers utilise ways of thinking, design methods and evaluation frameworks that are no longer fit for purpose. Yelavich and Adams (2014) articulated the difficult position designers are placed in, writing in Design as Future Making that ‘designers are increasingly being called on to contribute their particular knowledge and experience to the hornet’s nest of contemporary crises exacerbated by the habitual default to obsolete systems’. Clearly articulated knowledge and examples regarding how to navigate this complex circular design-focused space (Sumter et al., 2020) is missing. In my nearly 20 years of experience advocating for sustainability and circularity to be included in fashion design education this challenge is replicated. It is common for these issues to be addressed in theory, but in design practice limited to making ‘better’ material choices. One colleague, when discussing where to situate knowledge on sustainability in design master’s level curriculum, argued that the best place is for it is in theoretical courses. ‘Afterall’, they said, ‘you can’t prototype “sustainability”’. Furthermore, this push to extract the personal experience of practice from research is reinforced the more senior I become in academia. Many senior academics are not encouraged to work ‘in the lab or studio’ as that is something PhD and master’s students should ‘do’ for us. However, in my experience of making design theory (Redström, 2017), if we divorce the personal experience of practice from ‘real research’, particularly in the context of sustainable and circular design, we miss the fundamental role that prototyping and making plays in deeply understanding what we do and could do.

32  Holly McQuillan

How can we prototype ‘sustainability’? So, how can we prototype ‘sustainability’? We have been prototyping ‘unsustainability’ since the dawn of the industrial revolution. This essay argues that prototyping is one of the most effective places to situate, experience and generate deep, interconnected sustainable thinking. Designers and researchers of physical outcomes need to move between the wider system and its implications, and the specific materiality of the outcome and its implications, while being bold enough to challenge existing frameworks of evaluation. To do so, there needs to be ways of understanding practice and evaluating outcomes in the context of the holistic change required. There is no ‘correct’ place to enter the Multimorphic Textile System (MTS) model (Figure 2.1). In the model as in reality, all factors are situated and interact across scale and time. We can divide the model into four segments (Figure 2.2): materials have properties that interact in textile systems; textile systems are constructed in

Figure 2.1 The Multimorphic Textile System model traverses material-human- ecology across time and scale, and an ‘ideal’ holistic product would positively impact on all areas.

Multimorphic textiles  33

Figure 2.2 To simplify use of the model we can divide it into four zones. A. Materials in a textile system. B. Textile systems in anthroposystems. C. Anthroposystems in ecosystems. D. Ecosystems provide materials. The development of a physical outcome can begin anywhere, but all four zones must be traversed.

and for anthroposystems2; all anthroposystems exist within ecosystems; and ecosystems provide us with the materials we use. Notions of scale are relative (consider what is micro in the context of material and compare this to micro in a textile factory), and importantly, things change over time. The more of the model that is traversed in a design process, the more multimorphic, holistic and ‘sustainable’ an outcome can be. 3 The MTS model can be entered from any point. As designers typically explore tangible materials, textiles and form, this may be a comfortable place to begin. When examining a tangible outcome using the MTS model, knowledge embodied in it can overflow into adjacent zones in the model and back again and so progressively connect material practices to more abstract notions of anthroposystems and ecosystems. When examining material, perhaps considering its functional benefits due to microscopic features, directly adjacent either side we can see extraction and textile. We could ask, how can we utilise this material in a textile structure to amplify its functional performance, and how we can manipulate the processes of extraction to improve its environmental impacts? Conversely, theoretical knowledge about ecosystems can progressively be embodied in physical outcomes and back again. We might begin by knowing that polyester microplastics enter our ecosystems via laundering

34  Holly McQuillan and wearing and then consider cultural notions of cleanliness as enacted by everyday citizens. Working our way around the MTS model we might then consider stacking technological processes to capture microplastics, with forms that require less washing, made from textile structures that lock in more of the fibres. The model discourages both ‘drop-in’ material or technological solutions, and ‘awareness raising’ or other cultural actions in isolation. Problems and opportunities are encountered through the making process in ways that a solely theoretical understanding cannot reveal, and without considering wider and longer-term implications of the things we make, we cannot hope to transition to a circular future. Next, I will discuss some of the experiments conducted in my PhD and subsequent research to provide tangible examples that illustrate how my emerging understanding of holism in practice was experienced, and in doing so articulate MTS as an emerging method for circular textile and textile-form design research and practice. Unfolding holism in existing processes through prototyping The experiments in the following section explore the current system – where fashion designers are trained to frame their practices at the intersection of textiles as a raw material, form for the body, industry and users. These practices are multimorphic, everything is interconnected, but designers and industry act as though they are not. Waste in industrial contexts is treated as a management problem; yet, its origins are in the aesthetics and 2D patterns of the garments. The field tests aimed to interrogate this origin, exploring new methods and the implications of eliminating textile waste from the production of clothing and other textile-based forms at the pre- consumer stage. Two field tests are described which apply waste reduction strategies in the design and marker-making processes, exploring the role various prototyping processes had in unfolding the participants’ understanding of holistic ways of thinking. Experimental field test 1 Experimental Field Test 1 (EFT 1) tested zero waste design strategies in the context of a large, low-price, high-volume, high-street brand (Fast Fashion). EFT 1 collaborators were McQuillan (design researcher) and contracted marker-makers, while buyers and technical designers from the contracting company observed, and later evaluated the outcomes. The collaborators worked over two days to co-create a lower-waste version of an existing style using a predetermined fabric width and garment pattern. Fundamental zero waste design concepts were introduced to the marker-makers and technical design team in a hands-on workshop working with paper to explore yield improvement while discussing the context of various actions, decisions and roles. The initial prototypes from this process were paper models that reveal the direct relationship between efficient fabric use and garment form. Three different possible outcomes were developed, one of which added a single seam, but reduced material use by 26%. These were sampled and ‘costed’ by the buyers and technical designers – an evaluation process that prioritises economics above all other factors. As the cost of sewing one additional seam outweighed the savings made through the significantly reduced material yield,4 none of the proposed changes were made.

Multimorphic textiles  35 Experimental field test 2 EFT 2 tested methods and processes for the implementation of a zero waste design through the entire supply chain of a large sustainable outdoor brand. Prototyping holistic processes in this field test revealed deep-seated problems with existing industrial systems. Experimental minimal waste digital prototypes were developed using the supplied garment pattern and a ‘digital twin’ of the fabric for an existing, high-volume style. The company tested the digital samples for improvements in yield. Promising designs were progressed from a digital approach to a conventional physical sample-making process. Successful design strategies were developed collaboratively with the company technical design team and factory staff in Colombia. Samples were developed, tested and sewn collaboratively with factory staff on the factory floor, an important step as pattern pieces for zero waste or low waste designs may be unconventionally shaped, making co-development important. The team continually evaluated the design outcome and then passed the minimal waste, low-yield version up the company hierarchy for further evaluation. At this stage, the Head of Design (who was not involved with the development process) made small changes to the placement of seams, which returned yield and waste percentage to the original figures. The resulting design, which carries all the aesthetic outcomes of the minimal-waste design process but none of the material savings that guided the design process, was approved for production. Role of prototypes in mapping the present The prototyping process was key to unfolding holism in EFT 1 in two ways: providing agency to undervalued skills and increased comprehension of the impact that siloed roles have on sustainability goals. Workshop participants were contracted marker-makers who usually have no input into the design of the products they develop markers for. Prototyping enabled us to work through assumptions and into a shared space created by the making. As the workshop progressed the marker-makers expressed that they could see the value their specific skill set brought to the design process, giving them energy and, importantly, agency. For the wider team that included buyers and technical designers, as the crude paper prototypes physically embodied the connection between design and waste in production, they deepened understanding of the unseen but symbiotic relationship between the actions of the garment designer, and how these impact on the outcomes that marker-makers are held responsible for. Koskinen and Krogh (2015) state that design researchers see prototypes ‘like hypotheses in science’ while design and industry regard them as ‘preparations for production’ (p. 124). In zero waste design practice, they can be both. In both EFT 1 and 2, the development of production prototypes also manifested the connections between the conceptual and the material. In EFT 2, an apparent conflict emerged between the technical/performance requirements of garments made for outdoor activities and the design research goals of the project, especially regarding the emergence and establishment of aesthetics. The existing design is an aesthetic choice resulting from decades of evolution driven by technical and functional considerations. The aesthetic of the minimal waste version, by comparison, was a dialogue between these existing models and new methods (zero waste design) that respond to the climate

36  Holly McQuillan crisis. While conventional garment design processes use digital prototyping primarily to develop fit and aesthetics, or for presentation and sales purposes, in EFT 2, it enabled thinking-through-process to occur, providing simultaneous understanding of the process of making and its expression, in the context of the structures of the system being explored. The digital-physical zero waste prototyping process in EFT 2 was a frustrating one, continually revealing the mismatch between linear expectations and holistic processes, manifested in a (digital or physical) object. Despite this difficult negotiation, a suitable outcome was successfully developed. However, the conventional and somewhat external (to the design development) process unmade the improvements achieved that addressed wider sustainable goals. By attempting to take a holistic prototype through the existing linear process, areas of tension were revealed, and when we see and experience this tension through a design process, manifested in a prototype, the call to action is strong. Zero waste has two interconnected facets: it is both a design method and a way of thinking. The decisive constraint of ‘zero waste’ enforces a holistic way of thinking through practice and, in doing so, reveals in established practices an unwillingness to change, even when those changes achieve the industry’s explicitly stated goals. When research is situated in industry itself, prototypes have different roles for these two intersecting spaces of design practice and design research. At first, it can seem as though the design research goals of the prototyping were limited by the industry system. However, what was prototyped wasn’t only a physical design, but also the holistic interactions of a system. Prototypes are the physical manifestation of unsustainable and sustainable systems, and we can use them to understand the impact of our actions within systems. In the context of design practice in industry, the existing norms of the system usually prevail despite stated goals of circularity and waste reduction. While in design research, these existing systems provide an opportunity for inflection – a chance to pivot and challenge the industry to both see itself and act differently. Prototyping the future: woven textile forms The fashion and textile industry requires holistic ways of working that reject established processes and understandings of aesthetics, conception and production. Textile-forms are textile things in which form and surface are simultaneously conceived of and constructed in the context of their methods of conception and systems of creation. Woven Textile-form (WTf) (McQuillan, 2020; Piper, 2019; Piper & Townsend, 2015) enables yarn to weave directly into textile-based form and can ameliorate some of industries unsustainable practices, such as C&S and over production. There is a lack of foundational knowledge in how to design for complex WTf systems. Most current examples build out from existing systems of design and production with an anthropocentric view of the world. However, even though many of these examples emerge from what is already understood about expression, technology, form, material or yarn, the inherent entanglement of WTf’s enforce other ways of thinking that provide an opportunity for transformation through practice. Making space Since knitting entire garments with minimal waste is already feasible in industry (see Knit&Wear by Stoll; WholeGarment by Shima Seiki), this research explored

Multimorphic textiles  37 a whole-garment approach for weaving. Prototyping began with an exploration into foundational design and production techniques while considering how specific approaches might benefit sustainability and circularity goals. Digital tools (such as CLO3D, Illustrator, Photoshop and ScotWeave) were used to understand the potential relationship between 2D woven structures and 3D garment form – later embedding 3D form into multi-layered textiles. The digital prototyping process enabled a high degree of experimentation with low risk and time commitment. Since I had never woven on a digital jacquard loom before, simple multi-layered woven samples developed understanding of the textile design and programming processes for multi-layer textile structures. This early-stage prototyping sought to develop digital and analogue processes, while also connecting the form and textile knowledge required to operate in this interstitial space. T-shirt series The T-shirt series of experiments designed recognisable T-shirt forms that are zero waste by making ‘space’ between the layers of fabric woven on a digital jacquard loom (seen also in Figure 2.3). The T-shirt was selected because it is recognisable but difficult to achieve utilising existing conventional zero waste pattern cutting techniques while having enough topological complexity to provide a challenge for the developing method. A standard T-shirt pattern was stacked in CLO3D to mimic the multiple layers possible on a jacquard loom. 5 The Map of Bindings6 (MoB) resulted in a rectangular woven textile with standard 2D T-shirt pieces embedded within, and once cut and separated, the pieces were stitched back together in a conventional way to make a standard T-shirt form. This yielded a result that was somewhat analogous to fully fashioned knitwear – without waste, utilising standard machinery and requiring a standard construction process after cutting. The experience of standing at the loom while the T-shirt was woven was profound – because I knew exactly what was being interlaced in the warp and weft, it felt as though I were 3D printing a T-shirt out of yarn. I realised I was constructing a woven garment using an additive manufacturing process. The practice of then cutting the fully fashioned pieces and sewing the T-shirt form was laborious and drove the direction of the subsequent experiments. The third and fourth T-shirt iterations therefore reduced or eliminated the post-weaving construction required and resulted in outcomes that construct a relatively conventional T-shirt form with either two, or no, seams required. I was prototyping ‘sustainability’, and in doing so, it enabled me to critique and understand the implications of the methods as they were developing. As with the C&S examples in EFT 1 and 2, digital prototyping here enabled a different kind of simultaneous understanding. As weaving entire garments using this design method was novel, digital 2D and 3D prototypes provided low-risk space to explore design concepts. Basic comprehension of jacquard weaving theory could be rapidly digitally developed and applied. The digital design processes revealed both the construction process and its relationship to the surrounding systems of production and use. For example, the second iteration of the T-shirt series stacked larger garments within the confines of a 40 cm loom repeat. Unexpectedly, the 2D to 3D animation revealed unfolding as a method to embed multiple adaptable forms within

38  Holly McQuillan the textile, suggesting new relationships could be embedded for citizens to have with their garments over time. Tools shape prototypes, both digital and physical. Programming the first T-shirt iteration in Scotweave provided an applied case to understand the software and theory of weaving in use. Once off the loom, the cutting and sewing processes required revealed the prototype was more fully fashioned than 3D woven. Designing within loom width constraints developed new solutions. Further extending this notion of thinking-through-process, the digital-making process revealed a sliding action when rendering, that then developed a sliding-expanding binding. Without the peculiarities of the digital animation function in CLO3D, it is possible that this specific application would not have been developed. The unconventional use of digital technology revealed another way of seeing and understanding the digital prototype, which led to novel methods being developed. The process of digitally and physically prototyping provided unique insights into the developing processes that may not have emerged or been noticed without engaging fully with the making process. While the MTS model challenges the designer to work through all four segments, to consider adjacent zones and develop alternative ways of working with materials and tools in the identified context to meet holistic goals. Prototyping the near future: trouser These experiments developed a weave-able, wearable trouser form with conventional design elements. McQuillan and Milou Voorwinden (multilayer jacquard design specialist) developed design processes to enable the transferral of information between disciplinary specialists and ways of thinking and then use these prototypes and newfound knowledge to engage with external weave and finishing experts in the luxury market. All prototypes were woven on looms with a polyester yarn warp.7 We explored the use of circular (recycled denim yarn) and local fibres (wool yarn) in the weft, which, unlike the warp, could be easily controlled and changed. The prototypes bracketed the application of the developing design-to-weave processes, with a strong focus on waste reduction, automation and weave program systems development which could later be applied to local, on-demand, circular systems of design and production. The trouser form was designed digitally, generating both a 3D digital model and annotated 2D MoB which was used to communicate the textile-form concept with Voorwinden. We then tested materials, yarns, bindings, density and suitable systems for managing the complexity inherent in multimorphic outcomes. Voorwinden had some experience programming woven textile forms, so drew on this existing knowledge to develop eight development prototypes. New knowledge and design theory emerged out of the prototyping process, and the prototypes themselves proved useful when explaining the new method to a luxury fashion brand. They are a vertical manufacturer – from yarn spinning, through fabric manufacturing and finishing, and garment design and production, almost every part of the supply chain is in physical proximity. At the time of writing, this collaboration is at an early stage; however, the prototypes are useful vehicles of communication between McQuillan, Voorwinden and the various experts located at the company. Despite differences in language (between the team three languages are spoken), the physical prototypes are proof-of-concept as well as teaching devices, enabling mutual

Multimorphic textiles  39 understanding when negotiating complex and holistic practices. A key utility of the prototypes was in aiding communication between the research undertaken in a ‘lab’ context and research undertaken in the ‘field’. The physical tactility and familiarity of the prototypes makes them embodiments of the process and therefore learning tools for all involved. The weave structures are in many ways simple (mostly twill weaves, with a variety of layer arrangements), also the form is recognisable, they clearly result in a trouser and the tools and materials used (jacquard loom, yarn, the form and weave software) are standard. However, the way they come together is unfamiliar. So, in this context, the prototype pulls together what is known and translates it through an unfamiliar process into something we understand. The WTf prototypes are conduits between the 2D form language of a weaver and the 3D form language of the form designer. The prototypes are in this way multimorphic things that communicate a multimorphic process. Prototyping the far future: experiment 0 (trouser) This stage of prototyping explored processes of thinking through form and textile which introduced time is a key component of the design process. Active Textile Tailoring (Tessmer et al., 2019) explores whole garment knitting and heat-reactive yarn to produce garments from and for the torso. Experiment 0 (tunic) explored similar processes but for weaving and with a more open aesthetic brief, moving beyond function. Here, the form embedded in the weaving process can be further modified over time through the use of a mould and heat in interaction with heat-reactive yarn to control 3D form (see McQuillan et al., 2021). Experiment 0 (trouser) refined the new garment design and construction processes of Experiment 0 (tunic). Holly McQuillan, Karin Peterson and Kathryn Walters embedded time as a design element in the development of the trouser textile form to expand the design and production method, aesthetics and life cycle of a trouser. The MoB for the trouser was designed so that it would fit within the 40cm repeat of the loom used while expanding to fit the 3D mould with enough room to then shrink when heat is applied. Digital samples explored the potential aesthetic and form results from the proposed MoB interacting with the mould (Figure 2.3). Previous prototyping had shown that to maintain a high enough fabric density for structural integrity, the MoB should split the trouser into left and right legs, to be woven separately. This halved the number of layers required, which in turn doubles the fractional density.8 Only the crotch seam needs to be stitched to complete the form, and this interaction of weaving factors, form outcomes and finishing methods raises questions about how to balance durability and automation in the design process. Sections of the MoB were woven at 1:1 scale to test the bindings, and after adjustments, a full-scale trouser prototype was woven using cotton warp, with alternating cotton and NSK weft yarn. After the crotch seam is sewn, the form can become four different styles: it is wearable as is; can be shrunk on the 3D mould it is designed for; shrunk on a body to fit; or shrunk in a domestic dryer to activate all of the textile forms shape-change potential (Figure 2.4). Prototyping Experiment 0 (trouser) unfolded my understanding of the potential of temporality in the context of woven textile forms. They are an example of an animated textile form (Buso et al., 2022) which embed in them new production methods and use practices by treating fibre-yarn-textile-form as an interconnected system of

40  Holly McQuillan

Figure 2.3 Top left: 3D model. Top centre: 2D MoB. Top right: micro-scale digital textile systems. Bottom: layer sections. The digital prototype and related MoB and micro-digital textile systems embody plan and elevation views in three and two dimensions as well as change over time, and meso (top left) to micro scales (top right).

Multimorphic textiles  41

Figure 2.4 Top left: trouser on loom. Top middle: loomstate textile. Top right: detail of yarn behaviour after cutting. Bottom left: unshrunk trouser. Bottom right: the same trouser shrunk in dryer. Darker cream yarn in weft direction (most easily seen in third image) is NSK heat-reactive yarn, and lighter cream is cotton weft and warp. This colour difference reveals the variety of layer composition in the resulting loom state textile that causes complex behaviours to emerge once 3D form is released through cutting and heating.

42  Holly McQuillan material interaction over time. It tested and revealed the potential for ‘programming’ differences in a yarn with uniform behaviour by manipulating the weave structure. The processes of prototyping also revealed the joy in animating their transformation, as well as problems in controlling the application of heat, while their unexpected expression (often people assume they are knitted) challenges expectations of aesthetics that are the result of new, holistic processes. The trousers also embody a contradiction and an invitation in one: the use of polyester heat-shrinking yarn with cotton warp and weft is inherently unsustainable; however, the possibilities of that mechanism for embedding change over time motivate future explorations in alternative shape-change fibres.

Role of prototypes in connecting scale, time and material Everything about the things we make is cultural, political and ecological and is complex, messy and interconnected. Yet, our design methods and ways of thinking about materialised things focus on aesthetics, cost and ease of production – conventional design’s ‘critical zone’ (Jensen, 2021). Designers often concentrate on the scale and timeframe they routinely operate at: the scale of the material or the body or the timeframe contained in a user’s experience of wearing a static garment. But in fact, design’s critical zone expands to encompass ecosystems and use across time. Jensen proposes a rethink of the notion of scale in ‘such a pragmatic manner that it becomes useful for design… as a “gestalt” that at times may relate to geographical hierarchies and spatial borders, and at other times to mental relations and imaginaries’ (2021, p.  46). This pragmatic/abstract relationship is a useful one when differentiating between interlinked but differently expressed multimorphic fields – that of pragmatic materials in textile systems (Figure 2.2A) or textile systems in anthroposystems (Figure 2.2B); and abstract understandings that traverse ecological time and scale: anthroposystems exist within ecosystems (Figure 2.2C); and ecosystems provide us with materials (Figure 2.2D). The discourse has situated sustainability and circularity in theory, as abstractions and ideas; however, as all physical outcomes embody these ideas, if we don’t do sustainability when designing, prototyping and making, it cannot happen anywhere else.

Conclusion Circularity requires practices which embrace holistic complexity, while the processes commonly used in the fashion and textile industry are linear, resulting in a mismatch of goals and outcomes. Prototypes that are the result of a linear way of thinking reinforce linear processes by prototyping ‘unsustainability’. In reality, all design practice is multimorphic – but our attempts to solve the big, complex issues we are facing fail because we do not treat everything as interconnected. Conventionally, textile and fashion designers focus on matter at the meso scale, and for a single moment in the very near future. However, textiles – perhaps more so than many other products – have the ability to embody multi-scale, multi-time states. A designer needs to understand on some level the nano- and microscopic behaviours that interact with the structure of the material (like the mechanism for wool felting as the tiny scales on the surface of the fibre are entangled). This microscopic fibre behaviour in a particular textile structure generates behaviours in a 3D form that exists as

Multimorphic textiles  43 an object a human interacts with, which can change over time. These forms are made in an industrial and cultural context that has implications for ecology now and in the future, and the ecosystem is what allows us to grow9 materials, build communities and exist in relative safety. All of this should be understood in a holistic, circular and healthy design and research process for textiles. We cannot expect to develop sustainable outcomes by avoiding prototyping sustainability. Prototypes when approached as a holistic practice hold within them the past, present and future while also providing the means to evaluate, vision and enact proposed futures. In this way, prototypes can be ideal conduits for holistic ways of thinking and design theory – if we let them be. An MTS framing of prototyping provides a way of traversing complex scales and spaces by linking tangible design practices for textiles at a range of scales in material and textile systems (something designers inherently understand) with more abstract and theoretical notions of holism in anthroposystems and ecosystems. In MTS, prototypes are mediators of this knowledge. In the complex intertwined fibres and yarns, and the interstitial spaces between layers that change with interaction and use, is a scaled understanding of the broader contexts they were conceived within. Within the textile form is the soil and farmer that grew the fibre, the machine and technician that wove it, the person who will wear them and the environment that will carry its materiality until; eventually, it becomes earth again. Navigating all this is not easy, but, by ‘staying with the trouble’ that is often encountered when prototyping sustainability, unforeseen outcomes and possible futures emerge. We can lean on their pliable, ordinary, everyday textileness (Gowrishankar et al., 2017; Buso et al., 2022) to communicate complex and multi-dimensional relationships – visualising possible futures and providing the means to achieve them.

Notes 1 See pp. 122–123, Forty, A., & Cameron, I. (1986). Objects of Desire: Design and Society Since 1750. Thames and Hudson. 2 Santos, M. A., & Filho, W. L. (2005). An analysis of the relationship between sustainable development and the anthroposystem concept. International Journal of Environment and Sustainable Development, 4 (1), 78–87. Santos and Filho defined the (if not the definite, then it should probably be ‘anthroposystems’) anthroposystem as encompassing all human systems and is a concept that ‘forces society to think in terms of sustainable human systems, not just sustainable economic development’. 3 While the examples provided in this chapter are specific to textile-form design, it is proposed that a broader application of Multimorphism might be possible for a range of other design practices which build (or can build) their designed things up from basic matter across multiple scales, temporalities and perspectives. This could be called Multimorphic Design Systems (MDS). 4 Because the cloth used for this style was so inexpensive. 5 Borrowing from the structure of Double weave. 6 Map of bindings is sometimes known as the weave ‘artwork’. ‘Map’ is more appropriate here as maps are a 2D representation of 3D space, and these MoB serve the same function. 7 This was a limitation driven by availability. This is a common occurrence when prototyping particularly for the near and far future – often what you would ideally use, is not readily available, and consideration for substitutes must be made. 8 Fabric density in unfolded 3D form is a function of the total 2D fabric density divided by the number of layers –fractional density. 9 Alternatively, we could reach back into prehistory to extract carbon deposited millennia ago to make polyester that ends up in our water and tissue as microplastics.

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References Brooks, A., Fletcher, K., Francis, R. A., Rigby, E. D., & Roberts, T. (2018). Fashion, sustainability, and the anthropocene. Utopian Studies, 28(3), 482–504. Buso, A., McQuillan, H. L., Jansen, K. M. B., & Karana, E. (2022). The unfolding of textileness in animated textiles: An exploration of woven textile-forms. In D. Lockton, S. Lenzi, P. Hekkert, A, Oak, J. Sádaba, & P. Lloyd (Eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, Bilbao. Dokter, G., Thuvander, L., & Rahe, U. (2021). How circular is current design practice? Investigating perspectives across industrial design and architecture in the transition towards a circular economy. Sustainable Production and Consumption, 26, 692–708. Fletcher, K., & Tham, M. (2019). Earth Logic: Fashion Action Research Plan. London: The JJ Charitable Trust. Forty, A., & Cameron, I. (1986). Objects of Desire: Design and Society Since 1750. London: Thames and Hudson. Gowrishankar, R., Bredies, K., & Ylirisku, S. (2017). A Strategy for Material-Specific e-Textile Interaction Design. (pp. 233–257). London: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50124-6_11. Jensen, O. (2021). Rethinking Scale – Relationality, Place, and Critical Zone. Denmark: Nordes 2021: Matters of Scale. Karana, E., Barati, B., Rognoli, V., & Zeeuw van der Laan, A. (2015). Material driven design (MDD): A method to design for material experiences. International Journal of Design, 9(2), 35–54. Knit&Wear by Stoll. https://www.stoll.com/en/machines/knitwear/ Koskinen, I., & Krogh, P. G. (2015). Design accountability: When design research entangles theory and practice. International Journal of Design, 9, 121–127. MacArthur, E. (2013). Towards the circular economy. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2, 23–44. MacArthur, E. (2019). Circular Economy Systems Diagram. Ellen MacArthur Foundation, www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org. McQuillan, H. (2020). Zero Waste Systems Thinking: Multimorphic Textile-Forms. Högskolan i Borås. McQuillan, H., & Rissanen, T. (2020). Mind–body–garment–cloth. In K. Townsend, R. Solomon, & A. Briggs-Goode (Eds.), Crafting Anatomies: The Body as Site in Fashion and Textile Research Practice (p. 149). London: Bloomsbury Publishing. McQuillan, H., Walters, K., & Peterson, K. (2021). Critical Textile Topologies X Planet City: the intersection of design practice and research. Research in Arts and Education, 2021(1), 241–268. Piper, A. (2019). Material Relationships: The Textile and the Garment, the Maker and the Machine. Developing a Composite Pattern Weaving System. Nottingham: Nottingham Trent University. Piper, A., & Townsend, K. (2015). Crafting the composite garment: The role of hand weaving in digital creation. Journal of Textile Design Research and Practice, 3, 3–26. https://doi.org /10.1080/20511787.2015.1127037 Redström, J. (2017). Making Design Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Santos, M. A., & Filho, W. L. (2005). An analysis of the relationship between sustainable development and the anthroposystem concept. International Journal of Environment and Sustainable Development, 4(1), 78–87. Stahel, W. R., & MacArthur, E. (2019). The Circular Economy: A User’s Guide. Oxfordshire: Routledge. Sumter, D., de Koning, J., Bakker, C., & Balkenende, R. (2020). Circular economy competencies for design. Sustainability, 12, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12041561 Tandler, L. (2016). The Role of Weaving in Smart Material Systems. Newcastle (United Kingdom): University of Northumbria.

Multimorphic textiles  45 Tessmer, L., Dunlap, C., Sparrman, B., Kernizan, S., Laucks, J., & Tibbits, S. (2019). Active textile tailoring. In ACM SIGGRAPH 2019 Emerging Technologies (SIGGRAPH ‘19). New York: Association for Computing Machinery. Article 6, 1–2. https://doi. org/10.1145/3305367.3327995. Whitty, J. (2021). Fashion Design for Holistic Systems. In Sustainable Design in Textiles and Fashion (pp. 1–22). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2466-7_1WholeGarment by Shima Seiki. https://www.shimaseiki.com/wholegarment/ Yelavich, S., & Adams, B. (2014). Design as Future-Making. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

3

Hands-on/hands-off On proximities to materials and systems in design research Rosie Hornbuckle

Introduction Much attention has been paid to the important role of materials experience in design practice. For many designers, hands-on materials exploration is one of the main sources of knowledge used to innovate meaning (Ribul, Goldsworthy & Collet 2021; Karana et al. 2015; Verganti 2009). Materials have a primal draw for designers: the artefact in the hand, the feel, the look… they have a powerful enzymic role in the creative process. Materials, as the subject of investigation or application, epitomise the need and desire for proximity, more so perhaps than any other work-related ‘thing’. Yet, proximity is not always possible or appropriate. We are in a time where proximity to materials is being eroded, through zoom calls, MIRO boards and digital sampling; through necessity and choice (not all designers are materials led), to prevent the spread of disease, transport emissions and the waste of excessive physical sampling and prototyping. Meanwhile, new models of design for change, towards social wellbeing and sustainability require closer engagement with ‘systems’, meaning multi-stakeholder, multi-disciplinary collaborations. In the context of circular textile design in the Trash-2-Cash project,1 I observed that this can draw textile designers away from materials and making, leading them to deny that part of their knowledge and practice that could be fundamental in framing the project, and the discovery of new ideas and meanings which have the potential to bring about change. I have found that in some cases facilitation and mediation is necessary to bridge gaps in understanding (Hornbuckle 2018b). This raises some questions: what is the relative value of proximity to materials and proximity to systems in design research for materials development? Where is the balance? When is proximity to materials most important and when can we manage with mediated support? What tools and tactics do we have at our disposal to enable materials development with and without hands-on materials experience? By exploring the characteristics of proximity to materials and proximity to systems, this chapter seeks to better understand the relationship between hands-on materials methods and hands-off methods, to reveal the best conditions for design research that supports systemic change as well as innovation at the level of materials. This will first involve a deep dive into the concepts of ‘proximity’ and ‘circular textile design’ in Part I to understand the specific design research context to which the concept is being applied. Part II will take a closer look at how hands-on and hands-off approaches are treated in the materials design and development literature, to reveal

DOI: 10.4324/9781003260356-4

On proximities to materials and systems in design research  47 their characteristics. The relevance of each approach for different parts of a material development timeline is also considered, which has implications for project design and planning that accommodates design methods to engaging with materials and systems. Finally, I will briefly contemplate the relevance of the findings beyond materials development. Central to the transferability of this concept is understanding what can be substituted for ‘materials’ in other contexts of design research and practice; fundamentally, what do design researchers need proximity to in order to support transition and change?

Methods My research focuses on developing design methodologies for complex collaborations (Hornbuckle 2022). Although I have worked with textile design researchers on projects aimed at circularity for the past seven years, my practice does not involve designing materials, but using my design skills to support material interactions and collaborations which bring about knowledge exchange and innovation. The premise for this chapter comes in response to the challenges my colleagues at the Centre for Circular Design and I faced during one large multi-disciplinary consortium project – Trash-2-Cash – which aimed at a holistic collaboration involving diverse disciplines. I  refer to this type of collaboration as ‘complex’ (where an attempt was made to involve actors from the whole material lifecycle) and the type of materials development as systemic; recognising the equal importance of all stakeholders in ‘driving’ the innovation (Hornbuckle 2020). Some of the challenges in Trash-2-Cash were related to the different epistemological stances of partners, cultural backgrounds, languages, terms, mindsets, traditions and so on. In a more practical way, it was also to do with the tension between the hands-on experiential methods of materials-led designers, the form/function-first approach of industrial designers, garment designers and the project methodology, the availability of materials, and therefore a consequential mismatch between the provision for the consortium as a whole and provision for hands-on materials approaches (see Tubito et al. 2019; Dell’Era et al. 2016). The result was that materials experimentation had to be fought for, by the materials-led designers that desired it, and the opportunity for mutual learning and meaning-making through materials experience was sometimes missed (Barati, Karana & Hekkert 2019). As in many circumstances where the material or technology is unfamiliar to the designer, hands-off methods (facilitation/mediation/translation/interpretation) were used to bridge these gaps in materials understanding (see Hornbuckle 2018b). A similar pattern is being observed in the current project Herewear2 which also seeks to develop circular textiles but with a regional focus. It is too soon to include an analysis of methods here, but anecdotally I was able to use the lessons of Trash-2-Cash to build in methods which addressed the themes raised here, albeit with some remaining challenges. The aim of this chapter is to reflect on the challenge posed by large collaborations which aim at a holistic or systemic perspective and identify support mechanisms, tactics and approaches for design research in materials development. ‘Systemic’ here is used to refer to the involvement of multiple stakeholder perspectives within a given system; in the case of Trash-2-Cash, the system is defined as ‘the material lifecycle’. Although this is a broad descriptor, there is an assumption common to circular

48  Rosie Hornbuckle approaches that the interdependence of the actors within the lifecycle, and the impact of their decisions on the outcome for the material, means that it is important to involve those actors in the development of materials, to bring about systemic change (Karell & Niinimakki 2019; Goldsworthy & Ellams 2019). Typical of European-funded research, the system definition in Trash-2-Cash can be seen as ‘techno-economic’ (Birch 2017). It is not within the scope of this chapter to question that assumption or to review approaches to systemic definition or change; however, it is important to acknowledge that understanding the relationship between design and systems is the subject of ongoing debate and there is still work to do in critiquing and defining the boundaries and stakeholders of circular material systems (Hornbuckle 2020). The Trash-2-Cash project methodology was studied from several perspectives involving ethnographic approaches and action research, as described in the resulting literature (Hornbuckle 2021, 2018a, 2018b; Goldsworthy & Ellams 2019; Karell & Niinimäki 2019; Niinimaki 2018; Earley & Hornbuckle 2018; Hornbuckle 2018a; Niinimäki, Tanttu & Kohtala 2017). The observations and insights emerging from this research, as well as from similar projects, and exposure to the practice of colleagues at the Centre for Circular Design, provide the background for theory building in this chapter, focusing on the relationship between hands-on and hands-off approaches through the lens of proximities to materials and systems. I will draw on the literature relating to collaborative approaches within the context of multistakeholder and multi-disciplinary materials development projects as well as observations from the Trash-2-Cash project to explore this territory. I have coded the different methods as they emerged from the literature review and tabulated the results and key characteristics to delineate and draw comparison. I used visualisation practices to reflect on how the literature relates to my observations from the case of Trash-2-Cash, resulting in a series of speculative sketches of how these methods can co-exist within a material development timeline and project methodology, which allows for proximity to materials and systems. This mixed-methods approach allowed me to build theory in this new area of design research and practice.

Part I: Context Circular textile design The practical buyer of wool fabrics seems unable, when looking at materials, to keep his hands away from them. He thinks and speaks in terms such as: pliable, supple, soft, kind, lofty, firm, hard, or harsh – and all these are associated with the sense of touch. It seems probable that the stress laid on ‘handle’ results from a close appreciation of the requirements of the purchasing public… (Binns 1926:238) Writing in the British Journal of Psychology, decades before conversations around ‘designing materials’ emerged, Henry Binns describes a unique behaviour afforded by textiles: the ability to understand subtle differences in the properties of a material through the ‘handle’ or touch. This observation signifies a rich history of textiles ‘handlers’ – including textile designers – in the hands-on experiential understanding of materials. ‘Hand’ is a term used to describe the tactile quality of textiles and predates the academic discussions about the experiential knowledge acquired through

On proximities to materials and systems in design research  49 touching materials. For centuries, textile designers have been quietly creating new characteristics for materials by combining fibres and yarns in different ways with varying functions, aesthetics and experiential values. The ability to change the characteristics of a textile through making and craft is unique, giving textile designers a set of skills well-suited to navigating the terrain between materials design practice and industrial production (Dormer 1997). Until recently, the stakeholders with which textile designers might collaborate mainly comprised fabric mills and clothing brands. However, over the last decade, aspirations towards achieving ‘circularity’ have led textile designers into new collaborative spaces, expanding their traditional stakeholder eco-system to include Life Cycle Assessment experts, social scientists, fibre scientists and recyclers to name a few (Goldsworthy, Earley & Politowicz 2019). Textile designers seeking sustainable solutions have come to the understanding that it is necessary to engage with stakeholders from across the whole material lifecycle in order to design textiles and clothing for circular systems. This new focus for materials development adds complexity to the knowledge landscape for the circular textiles designer, the materials developer or materials designer. The requirements of the new material move beyond the expertise of one person, one organisation or even several organisations. What is needed is the knowledge of a wide range of actors within the materials system. So, proximity to materials is important, but it is no longer enough. What designers need now is an increased proximity to the system of actors and to the material and making process. This new context of design research and practice has necessitated the development of methods and approaches to support collaboration with materials and systems. Arturo Escobar observes that the move to expand beyond traditional siloes of design practice in pursuit of change is symptomatic of a wider design approach to transition towards alternative futures: Shared by most transition discourses is the contention that we need to step out of existing institutional and epistemic boundaries if we truly want to envision the worlds and practices capable of bringing about the significant transformations seen as needed. (Escobar 2015:13) The aim of circular textile design is to develop materials that are better for people and planet that can replace materials that perform poorly against sustainability criteria. Circular textile design seeks change through technologies, processes and behaviours – or Materials Models and Mindsets as articulated by Earley et al. (2016) – that will prevent material loss and maintain material value, putting an end to ‘cradle to grave’ material trajectories. One of the central challenges is to make material technologies appropriate, relevant and applicable to the people who will make, use, capture and regenerate these materials. Design research can play a central role in both the experimentation and the translation stages of material innovation for alternative future scenarios, for example circular systems. Perhaps what sets circular textile design apart is that it represents a form of design research that has made the need for proximity to materials and systems explicit in order to change practice. Whether this concept is useful beyond the specific case of circular textile design to ‘transition design’ more broadly will be discussed at the close of this chapter.

50  Rosie Hornbuckle Ways of thinking about ‘proximity’ Proximity has been considered in various fields of research and in different contexts of practice. The following discussion aims to navigate, on the one hand, what happens when there is proximity to materials and what forms of knowing and doing are enabled and on the other hand, how notions of proximity change with a systemic approach, where geographical distance – as well as other forms of distance – may threaten proximity to materials and system actors. Proximity to materials Beginning with what could be described as ‘extreme proximity’, Levinas contends that proximity brings the self to a feeling of responsibility for the other (in Bergo 2015). If we consider that materials can be seen as embodying ‘others’ with whom that material has interacted with either directly or indirectly during its journey from raw state to finished product, then it becomes clear why proximity to materials (and to the evidence of their impacts) can lead designers to act with a moral and ethical responsibility and in some cases to seek alternative scenarios of practice. Smitheram & Joseph (2020:303) have moved beyond being close to the material itself to a truly immersive process: These open experiments heightened our awareness of the dynamics of materials and how they combined with other things in the environment at Karekare, sparking new ideas and areas for research and practice. Walking barefoot on the salt-crusted beach sand led to experiments with salt crystals. Through trial and error, we learned what conditions aid or impede their formation, the materials and forms they like to grow on. (Smitheram & Joseph 2020:303) For Smitheram and Joseph, the material, its environment and the belief-system of the locality are also collaborators in their material development process, leading to a deep sense of respect and responsibility for materials, place and local people equally. This is perhaps an extreme form of material proximity, beyond hands-on, yet echoes the sentiments of many designer-makers that experiencing materials provides an understanding of material affordances that is irreplaceable (Karana et al. 2015). Taking a step away from materials to the level of people and organisations, regional or local proximity is also seen as important for sustainable practices (Kuch 2017). In their study of stakeholders in circular lifecycle extension, Real, Earley & Goldsworthy (2019) observed the important ‘interdependence between practices, places and projects as practices are acting in places through potential projects, places support people’s practices and the development of projects, projects acting as activators for practice and place changes’ (2018:10). Regional proximity of actors enables activities seen as necessary for garment lifecycle extension to thrive. Proximity to systems The wider material innovation system currently operates beyond the confines of a local region and is geographically dispersed. For example, promising machinery,

On proximities to materials and systems in design research  51 novel technologies and the leading experts in a given field of research needed for transitioning systems could be located anywhere in the world. This brings with it obvious challenges for achieving proximity between people, knowledge and materials. Ron Boschma, an Economic Geographer, describes how Geographical Proximity has been a dominant concept in understanding organisational innovation where the prevailing stance is that ‘the more proximity there is between actors, the more they interact, the more they learn and innovate’ (Boschma 2005:62). Boschma argues that rather, proximity has a number of dimensions in addition to physical distance – cognitive, institutional, organisational and social – which work in combination to create positive and negative impacts on the ability of an organisation to innovate. Often these do not require geographical proximity, are dynamic, evolve, influence one another and change over time (Balland, Boschma & Frenken 2014). The implication is that by making efforts to improve other dimensions of proximity, such as understanding one another on a social or cognitive level, some of the limits imposed by geographical distance can be overcome. Mars et al. observe that this trend is largely enabled through enhanced communication technology: Such enhanced communicative capacities have fueled a growing trend in which diverse sets of organizations are engaging in system-wide design and planning at various levels and across expansive geographic distances. (Mars et al. 2012:274) Moreover, geographical closeness has been said to limit diversity and stifle innovation, creating ‘lock-in’ and ‘a lack of openness and flexibility’ which prevents knowledge exchange and learning. ‘To start from difference’ is seen as an important feature of multi-disciplinary collaboration which enables the ‘emergent learning’ necessary for innovation and indeed for change (Light & Boys 2017:158). I observed this effect in the Trash-2-Cash project when a specific cross-industry exchange between industrial designers, fashion designers and materials engineers resulted in innovative prototyping and the emergence of a new composite material which could address the circularity issues with the PVC laminates used for rainwear (Hornbuckle 2018b). Therefore, there is difference, there is geographically distributed expertise and knowledge and there are diverse worldviews and stakeholder experiences, which are siloed and distanced, but nevertheless all implicated in the material innovation system. Bringing these into proximity is important if we are to find ways to transform systems. Conversely, this isn’t always conducive to maintaining the proximity to physical materials that is important for designers to innovate meaning and experience and the regional proximity which is seen as important for sustainable and social innovation. There is value in incorporating each of these different scales of proximity to achieve the ‘ideal’ systemic materials innovation project eco-system: ‘extreme’ proximity to materials; proximity to regional material flows and actors; and proximity to wider system actors (which may be distant), as illustrated in Figure 3.1. Approaches to increasing proximities to different system scales will be explored in Part II. In summary, proximity is a complex phenomenon, sometimes paradoxical, increasingly shifting (with advances in communication technology) and dynamic (one dimension may increase while another decreases). Extreme proximity to materials brings with it a responsibility and respect, while regional proximity can overcome some of the barriers to achieving sustainable actions and systems for clothing production,

52  Rosie Hornbuckle

Figure 3.1 ‘Ideal’ project eco-system for systemic material innovation incorporates three scales of proximity to materials and system actors.

repair and recycling. However, diversification of expertise and proximity to ‘difference’ are important features of innovation and change and are often geographically dispersed. In addition to physical distance, there are other proximities at work: while ‘proximity to difference’ is important for innovation, there also needs to be coordination and emergent learning where expertise comes together and ‘cognitive’ distance is reduced. Social proximity is an important aspect to work on in support of the wider collaborative effort, as discussed by Earley & Hornbuckle (2019). While geographical distance can be overcome using communication technologies, it can also take the designer away from the material, following the fate of the majority of industrial design (Manzini 1986). The purpose of considering proximities to materials and systems in this context is to better understand what we are trying to achieve when we choose design methods and approaches in materials development projects and to help in answering the question: what can we do to support designers and other actors in these complex scenarios of practice? Hands-on or hands-off? Contemporary systems theory conceptualises systems as ‘socio-material’ comprising interconnected human and non-human actors (Nold n.d.). Materials, and their natural and human entanglements, are not only considered to be a part of the system but also potential collaborators, and this can be further expanded to include non-human actors such as the environment of the raw material and local culture (Smitheram &

On proximities to materials and systems in design research  53 Joseph 2020). Within materials innovation literature, a particular emphasis is placed on the role of materials in the design process, so much so, that they could be considered a ‘keystone’ actor in the materials design and development ‘eco-system’ (Mars, Bronstein & Lusch 2012). The centrality of the material to the system is discussed by Professor Kay Politowicz. Here, she shares an insight from a materials innovation project where she worked with fibre scientists: The best thing I could think to do, because it was so unfamiliar to all of us – us and to them – was to present a material swatch as a brief […] at each stage, we effectively referred back to that event as the holy grail of what we were trying to get to. (Politowicz 2020:24) Within the literature, the attention to hands-on materials methods tends to focus on finding new approaches to enabling materials understanding through touching, sensing and ‘tinkering’ (Karana et al. 2015). Conversely, very little of the literature relating to materials design and development considers the wider system of actors and stakeholders and those that do aim for a greater diversity of actors tend to be in the field of Circular Textile Design. As previously discussed, wider change or transition requires engagement with system actors, a range of stakeholders, including experts, citizens, organisations, policy-makers and workers, as well as potentially territories, environments and natural eco-systems. Therefore, methods and approaches to increasing proximity to these actors, to enable engagement and collaboration, are also important to identify and characterise; these are conceptualised as hands-off approaches because they tend not to be in proximity in materials innovation, in terms of geographical, cognitive, institutional, organisational or social distance. When? A further consideration in the type of approach used to increase proximity is at which stage of the ‘project’ design interacts with the materials development process. The literature suggests that the smallest hands-on collaborations tend to be oriented towards the experimental stage of materials development (TRL3 1–2), although anecdotally small collaborations between designers and materials development stakeholders can occur at all stages of material development, particularly in industry and knowledge exchange contexts. This implies that hands-on design methods add value throughout the materials development process. However, larger system-oriented collaborations where hands-off approaches are most valuable, appear to be mainly pursued (and funded) when materials are further developed in line with scenarios of use, towards making them ‘market-ready’ and scalable (TRL 3–6). This is perhaps due to feasibility; stakeholder engagement and collaboration is time and resource intensive, meaning that there needs to be a clear value for the funding body and for the stakeholders. The important point here is that system proximity does not currently appear to be prioritised early in materials development at the concept stage. It has been argued that a primary function of design research in the pursuit of change is to ‘reframe’ the problem, meaning that design research should be involved when the brief is ‘open’ (Lee et al. 2018); therefore, there is the possibility of extending the type of design research involved in the very early stages of materials development from experimental and materials - driven to also involving system-scoping, mapping and

54  Rosie Hornbuckle definition as a tangential but complimentary line of enquiry, which can help to scope the systems impact of a material innovation, as well as the barriers and opportunities for transition.4 This review will consider how different design methods might relate over the timeframe of materials development from raw material to end-use, to gather the material and system-level perspectives, to bring them to bear on material innovation and shape transition pathways.

Part II: approaches to design research for systemic materials development This section presents a review of the literature relating to materials design and development, to identify and compare the approaches taken in different contexts and to understand the role of hands-on and hands-off methods for achieving proximity to materials and systems, respectively. Five categories have been identified to define the methods and are discussed in the subsequent sections. Each method is briefly outlined in Table 3.1, identifying the characterisation, the key benefits, whether they are primarily hands-on or hands-off, the typical TRL stage in the materials development ‘project’, and the typical scale of collaboration or engagement. These are now briefly discussed in relation to the literature. Figure 3.2 sketches the different methods along a scale from hands-on to hands-off. Although ‘remote workshops’ are not included as a separate category, these emerged as a crucial method in the HEREWEAR project during the development of this chapter (immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic). Research about the value of remote workshops for materials development (following the COVID-19 pandemic) is no doubt forthcoming; however, it is not sufficient at the current time to include as a separate category in the literature review.

Figure 3.2 A Proximity Methods Framework for design research: methods for improving proximity to materials (or other ‘things’) and systems, ranging from hands-on to hands-off.

A design researcher (often a doctoral student) spends 1–2 weeks within the work environment of another discipline (typically a science lab) or vice-versa

Hands-on (mediation may be needed in between residencies)

Hands-on or hands-off? 1–2

References

Smitheram & Joseph (2020) Visiting a fabric mill Between 2 and 10 Real, Earley & to see the finishes collaborators Goldsworthy (2019) that can be applied Tubito et al. (2019) or seeing the machinery used to transform cellulose dope into new fibres (Continued)

1:1/1:2

Scale of collaboration

Ribul, Goldsworthy & Collet (2021); Kuusk, Tajadura-Jiménez & Väljamäe (2020); Henchoz et al. (2019); Paine, Goldsworthy & Baurley, (2017) Smitheram & Joseph (2020:303) Between 3 Hornbuckle (2021); ‘Tinkering’ with and 35 Groth et al. (2020); materials, dialogue collaborators Lee et al. (2018) around materials Camere & Karana (2018) properties and Goldsworthy, Earley & characteristics, Politowicz (2019) framing and selecting materials within scenarios Hands-on experimentation with the raw/ semi-raw material or material transformation technologies

Stage Examples (TRL)

1–6 Hands-on In-person Collaborators, often (mediation is with different workshops (WS) needed in the expertise and WS and might perspectives, be needed in come together to between WSs) experience materials in a neutral space and co-create knowledge or understanding 1–6 Hands-on and/ Site visits Collaborators briefly or hands-off visit a key facility, depends on such as a material how much can production site, a be touched/ science lab, a design seen/heard, etc. workshop or a maker space.

Residencies

Characterisation

Table 3.1 Outline of five categories of design method for improving proximities to materials and systems during materials design and development for change

On proximities to materials and systems in design research  55

Hands-on or hands-off?

Direct, remote exchange

Hands-off In the process (hands-on is of materials enabled when development samples are established sent/received) collaborators exchange materials prototypes and information directly but remotely, assisted by digital communication and collaboration platforms. Mediation & A mediator (facilitator/ In new/large collaborations Infrastructuring liaison/translator/ interpreter) or team of mediators address gaps in communication between collaborators by creating processes and tools to set-up materials dialogue, with the aim of supporting the mobilisation of different types of materials knowledge and preferred ways of knowing.

Characterisation 3–6

References

Earley & Paine (2020) Haug (2019) Henchoz et al. (2019) Hornbuckle (2018; 2021) Tubito et al. (2019) Real, Earley & Goldsworthy (2019)

Tubito et al. (2019) 1:1 or a small group of 3–4 Earley & Paine (2020) collaborators Goldsworthy, Earley & Politowicz (2019)

Scale of collaboration

Between 2 A mediator sets-up and 40 collaborative collaborators terminology, translate materials properties in design benefits or vice versa. They may set up a project materials collection or systematise samples through collaborative documentation, processes and methods.

Using collaborative documentation to demonstrate thinking; WhatsApp or Slack to send images of prototypes, sending fabric samples to experiment with finishes

Stage Examples (TRL)

56  Rosie Hornbuckle

On proximities to materials and systems in design research  57 Residencies Residencies are perhaps most commonly associated with fine art where an ‘artist in residence’ is invited into a space, such as an institution or scientific establishment where they can respond to the work or culture of that place. However, in the last 10 years, Residencies as a form of intense physical immersion in an unfamiliar culture has been adopted in materials design and development, with designers spending time in science labs (Ribul, Goldsworthy & Collet 2021), in raw material environments (Smitheram & Joseph 2020) and in engineering workshops (Paine, Goldsworthy & Baurley 2017), where their access to raw or prototype materials, transformation technologies and expert knowledge becomes less restricted and they are able to more easily develop ways of working and communicating that allow for interesting discoveries and emergent practices. There is also an ethnographic dimension to residencies in the context of design research which builds understanding through experience and observation which is also carefully documented. For example, Kuusk, TajaduraJiménez  & Väljamäe (2020) explained that the residencies in their collaboration between human-computer interaction (HCI), neuroscience and smart textile design allowed ‘a generous period for getting to know one another, to gain a mutual understanding and find a common language’ (Ibid:324) and involved ‘introducing relevant work from each other’s respective disciplines’ where ‘new ideas and practical considerations came into play, shaping a common space for sharing experiential knowledge’ (Ibid:317). One of the great potentials of residencies is to provide deeper areas of collaboration and mutual understanding in specific parts of a project, for example when the brief is still very open and design exploration can help to frame the opportunities for innovations that could be meaningful and change-making (Ribul, Goldsworthy & Collet 2021; Lee et al. 2018). As Paine, Goldsworthy & Baurley (2017) suggested, residencies provide access to equipment and methodologies that are traditionally inaccessible to designers such as ‘testing facilities and insights that will expand the reach of the work beyond the craft-design field’ allowing the researcher to ‘validate functional opportunities first gauged through experimental material investigation’ (Ibid:np). This in turn makes the design research outcomes transferable between disciplinary and academic-industry boundaries. Residencies, therefore, allow a focused response to a specific problem at the material and technology level involving a small collaboration with a few people and usually only two or three organisations. A common problem is that ‘often lab-scale equipment is insufficient to produce prototype-ready materials for designers to use in their work’ (Hornbuckle 2017:2). Moreover, the small scale of the collaboration means that for the researchers to be responsive to the material system, there needs to be scope for the residency to be connected to the framework of a larger collaboration or community of stakeholders. Residencies are time and resource intensive for the researchers involved, which makes them ideal for doctoral students who can then develop the area and feed the knowledge and understanding back into their respective fields. Ribul, Goldsworthy & Collet (2021) observe: A designer can mimic scientific processes, but tools or materials may not be available, leading to speculative outcomes. Embedding the design practice into a materials science laboratory is recommended even if in the form of short visits and

58  Rosie Hornbuckle testing, whilst complementing the research with studio practice to anchor the new processes and results in the design disciplinary domain. The challenges here can lie in designers establishing collaborations with materials scientists, access, time, and costs in order to develop new material design processes. (Ribul, Goldsworthy & Collet 2021:14) In-person workshops Workshops are a central method in collaborative design and can be used to bring multiple perspectives to focus insights, experiences and expertise on a range of topics: ‘workshops can act as catalysers for stakeholders to understand and relate with each other’s perspectives and needs’ (Akoglu & Dankl 2019:14). The great opportunity of the workshop is the versatility it offers in ways of working with materials and the numbers of participants than can be involved; between 2 and 35 participants is a realistic scope for a manageable co-design workshop and this can be in research projects, with industry partners or in education (Parisi, Rognoli & Sonneveld 2017). In materials design and development, access to materials samples is often limited and so workshops may be the only place for all participants to experience key materials firsthand (Tubito et al. 2019). Once the materials have been ‘experienced’, the memory of that material encounter can enrich the in-between remote work with experiential knowledge far richer than data, images and text (Hornbuckle 2021). The workshop design, the methods and tools used, depends on the aims and the intended outcome of the interaction. For example, in the Trash-2-Cash project, the focus was very much on using materials samples to support the cross-disciplinary discussion: Workshops represent a key asset to set up and developing the interdisciplinary dialogue among the different competencies involved into the project. Each workshop is experimental and exploratory, and is set up as a “platform of discussion” referring to design culture and tools. (Tubito et al. 2019:6) The role of materials samples in this context is further elaborated in Hornbuckle (2021), observing that: when framed within a codesign workshop setting, it becomes clear that materials samples mobilise different forms of knowledge making them available to a range of participants, not only to designers. Materials samples embody scientific knowledge – the ‘know-why’ and ‘know-what’ – but also knowledge about the collaboration and the roles of other participants within the group – the ‘know-who’. (Hornbuckle 2021:16) Meanwhile, designers working in materials development have argued for a more playful and experiential focus for materials in workshops (Camere & Karana 2018; Wilkes et al. 2016) where playing and tinkering with materials can enable a shared understanding of what is possible (Parisi, Rognoli & Sonneveld 2017). These types of experiential workshops can provide an opportunity to kick-start

On proximities to materials and systems in design research  59 collaborative communication and social proximity through the dialogue that arises from a light-hearted exchange where the outcome is open-ended, as if we were children at the kitchen table with Play-Doh. It can enable collaborators to see the materials through other peoples’ eyes and position themselves as a point of difference in mindsets and approaches (Hornbuckle 2021; Kuusk, Tajadura-Jiménez & Väljamäe 2020; Light & Boys 2017). Just as with residences, these types of socially oriented shared experiences are particularly useful at the beginning of a collaboration and early on in the TRL of a material, or even before a material has been identified, when the brief is open and can be shaped. In-person workshops are one of the most flexible and valuable formats for hands-on methods and can be used at any stage of material development, but they take a lot of planning, scheduling, travel, time and energy from a large number of participants. A final point can made about workshop expectations: different disciplines and cultures use workshops for different purposes and so the aims and outcomes need to be very carefully communicated to all participants (Tubito et al. 2019). Site visits A site visit to a manufacturing facility, a lab or a technical workshop enables collaborators to have a first-hand experience of how a material is made or transformed and challenges their assumptions of what happens in a collaborator’s work. This allows an insight into what is involved in the process, which opens the technology up as something that is tangible and accessible. Seeing a collaborator’s workspace may also build the social proximity of the collaboration: seeing how another works, opens a window on their day-to-day. Participants in the Trash-2-Cash project asked for more opportunities to visit facilities and welcomed them when they were organised, as this participant comments: Visiting the laboratory was very useful to clearly understand the processing technology and the effort beyond its implementation and the production of base materials. (Tubito et al. 2019:154) Particularly for designers, seeing equipment and processes first-hand enables understanding that can help them to see opportunities and provide inspiration for creative work. This can also be an opportunity for experiencing artefacts and materials at scales not possible in sampling, making this a method with the potential for handsoff / hands-on experiences in equal measure. However, visiting sites of design work can be equally valuable and enable a shift in understanding which can evolve into collaborative language and knowledge sharing. Kuusk, Tajadura-Jiménez & Väljamäe explained that a visit to the design studio led a scientist to reveal some aspects of her work that became key to the mutual understanding and framing of the project: the lead scientist explained her work in neuroscience and proposed several keywords to provide focus for the project: ‘self-esteem’, ‘body appearance’, ‘physical strength’, ‘body flexibility’ and ‘body agility’. (Kuusk, Tajadura-Jiménez & Väljamäe 2020:317)

60  Rosie Hornbuckle Although not as immersive as workshops or residencies, site visits offer the opportunity for ad-hoc interpretation (mediation) and experiential learning side by side, as well as a provocation. However, as with workshops, site visits can involve considerable travel and resources unless they coincide with other in-person meetings but can be hugely beneficial in place of longer residencies (Ribul, Goldsworthy & Collet 2021). Direct, remote exchange This category relates to formats of information, or modes of delivery and communication which enable an exchange directly between collaborators while remaining remote from one another. This can involve emails, video conferencing, databases and file sharing, documentation, phone calls, WhatsApp, MIRO5 and samples posted between locations. This is perhaps more commonplace for designers in industry when working with suppliers, where there are established lines of communication, practices and relationships. However, in all walks of life, activity in this area can be seen to have increased enormously since the COVID-19 post-pandemic era, greatly increasing the capacity to work effectively at distance. In research projects, when relationships are new, and mutual understanding, ways of working and trust are yet to be established, it can take time to reach the point of direct remote exchange, especially in materials development where prototypes may be irreplaceable. Many of collaborations reported in the literature referred to some form of direct, remote exchange. For example, Kuusk, Tajadura-Jiménez & Väljamäe (2020) talk about the value of a ‘daily log of activities, including notes and photographs’, they say that they ‘periodically wrote blog entries with updates on the project, which helped [them] to maintain focus and continue to progress’ (Ibid:324). During Trash-2-Cash, there was a moment of serendipitous exchange between a textile designer, composite engineer and polymer scientist, using email and posting samples in a materials-prototyping-triangle, resulting in collaboration which was tangential to the central research methodology. The COVID-19 pandemic has radically changed our acceptance and use of remote ways of working, there have been even more material sample exchanges of this type in the Herewear project, where partners only met in-person for the first time after 18 months working remotely; anecdotally, it feels as if collaborators are more generous and less cautious about engaging in experimental remote methods when in-person collaboration isn’t possible. As we move forward, the imperative to reduce air travel will undoubtedly mean that remote methods will remain an important part of collaboration, albeit in careful balance with in-person encounters. Mediation and infrastructuring Much work is needed to establish trust and generosity of spirit in just a few months at the start of a new collaborative project, which takes years of collaboration in normal circumstances. Groth et al. (2020) comment: Our respondents’ experiences show how mutual understanding and the prerequisites for experiential knowledge transfer need to be built consciously, over a long period, by engaging in hands-on practices and cognitive activities that go

On proximities to materials and systems in design research  61 beyond all the collaborators’ individual comfort zones, while the common goals and research questions are motivating for all. (Ibid:340) A period of mediation, before direct relationships are established, can help to ‘set-up’ the collaboration, communicate mutual benefits and values and support the development of a shared understanding and a collaborative language: The approach is one which relies on the ability of intermediaries to ‘translate’ design ideas, the potential of the material and characteristics between disciplines in a boundary-spanning role. (Hornbuckle 2018b:3) This requires someone who is tasked with facilitating the collaboration; these multi-lingual people have been described as Boundary Spanners (Rieple, Haberberg & Gander 2005), Translators (Hornbuckle 2013), Liaisons (Tubito et al. 2019), Interpreters (Haug 2019), Mediators (Henchoz et al. 2019; Real, Earley & Goldsworthy 2019) and Intermediaries (Groth et al. 2020). Often their role can be to create the space for collaboration to occur, ‘infrastructuring’ using tools and boundary objects to capture and locate diverse knowledge (Simeone 2019). Yet, Barati, Karana & Hekkert warn that mediation can become a substitute for experiential methods: designers might be expected to understand new (and possibly yet-underdeveloped) materials and their potentials and conceptualize applications, while their access to the new materials is kept indirect and mediated. (Barati, Karana & Hekkert 2019:106) With a mediated approach, the aim should be to support collaborators in reaching the point where direct exchange comes more easily and without hesitance, enabling the flow of knowledge, information, materials and time, taking care not to keep collaborators at arm’s length. Mediation is the final piece in the jigsaw puzzle; yet, as Karana suggests, mediation is not the end goal. The ultimate aim should always be to support the processes of the collaborators, working with their methods not imposing on them. With experiential design therefore, supporting an atmosphere where hands-on methods can take precedence is the aim of mediation. Design researchers can move into these roles through their experiences in interdisciplinary collaboration, for example through residencies as reflected through Helen Paine’s experience: ‘Moving between the art-school and the scientific lab was embedded with this project – and surprisingly to me, had become my comfortable space’ (Earley & Paine 2020:np). However, engineers and people with a scientific background who have cross-disciplinary experience have also been observed transitioning into this role (Hornbuckle 2013, 2018; Niinimäki, Tanttu & Kohtala 2017).

Hands-on/hands-off: a combined approach The list of methods described is not exhaustive, there are more ways of enabling multi-disciplinary systemic collaboration than I have explored here, and within each

62  Rosie Hornbuckle there are numerous detailed methods and tools for conducting the work. Proximity is not the only consideration, but it is an important pre-requisite for design research. What I have tried to show through the literature is the range of methods which allow proximity to materials and to systems; the hands-on approach is well-suited to having a close experiential understanding of material and place whereas a hands-off approach enables numerous diverse system actors to work more closely together, overcoming cultural, cognitive or epistemological differences. However, this review has revealed that it is not clear-cut; direct remote work can spring up as a side-project of larger mediated consortium work, and small residencies which thrive on the close and direct hands-on methods can be helped along by mediators (Henchoz et al. 2019). Social proximity is strengthened through the experiential methods which may also involve facilitation, such as in-person workshops and site visits, where a mediated level of immersion is mixed with expert-led interpretation creating a valuable experience for multiple collaborators. Remote working afforded through communication technology can overcome geographical distances, yet residencies can increase cognitive as well as geographical proximity. The dynamic nature of proximities reported by Boschma (2005) is therefore demonstrated very well by the dilemma of systemic materials innovation. It is the combination of these approaches which results in a strong methodology for complex collaborative design in systemic materials innovation. By embedding these methods at the ‘right time’ in a project, proximity to materials and systems can be enabled for all actors. Kuusk, Tajadura-Jiménez & Väljamäe (2020) reported that even in their small collaboration of three partners, each of the methods described were  used  both to connect to one another and to connect to the wider project community: we actively communicated mainly via email and videoconferencing. At the beginning of the project we met in person for a 2-day workshop in Tallinn University, Estonia, and then again during two 2-week residencies in Carlos III University of Madrid, Spain. […] The scientists also visited the artist’s studio to get a better understanding of her work as an e-textile designer. […] This meeting coincided with a two-day workshop organised by the team members, which brought together around 20 people of multidisciplinary backgrounds with a common interest in the project area. (Kuusk, Tajadura-Jiménez & Väljamäe 2020:317) To illustrate this point, I have made a speculative sketch, shown in Figure 3.3, of how these methods could fit together within one material development timeline. This is entirely dependent on the characteristics of the project/s but what I hope to show is that understanding these different approaches and what they aim to achieve (proximity to materials and/or systems) can help design researchers to communicate with potential collaborators about the best project scenario for design research to effectively innovate and support change at material and systems levels. It is worth noting, that these different approaches might involve a variety of design researchers with different competencies and research practices, for example systems and service designers

Figure 3. 3 A combined hand-on / hands-off approach: a speculative sketch of how hands-on and hands-off design methods might be applied to different points in a systemic materials innovation process. Ideally, proximit y to materials begins from the outset and is maintained throughout. System-scoping from the star t (or even before materials development begins) allows for ‘proximit y to the system’ to build as the project progresses allowing the collaboration to grow to include system actors and stakeholders.

On proximities to materials and systems in design research  63

64  Rosie Hornbuckle as well as materials designers to create an adaptable and responsive design research team. Real, Earley and Goldsworthy write: Systems designers act as observers, facilitators, and mediators, looking from the inside. They discuss ideas with designers, making visuals throughout the project. The role of such systems designers is as the intermediaries of innovation and the communication experts. (Real, Earley & Goldsworthy 2019) A final note can be made about materials collections. In materials development, we have found that the emerging, ever-changing learning resource – the project materials collection – is central to enabling different types of proximity to materials and to the knowledge of other actors in the system. This is an important topic that deserves to be more fully explored in relation to the existing literature (see Hornbuckle 2021 and the references therein) and is the focus of ongoing research.

Towards a transferable proximities model in design research for change Multi-stakeholder collaborations which seek local and systemic change are emerging in many areas of design research, involving a variety of design research competencies such as Service Design in healthcare in the Pharma Factory project (see Hornbuckle, Grimaldi & Prendiville 2020) and Social, Urban & Planning Design in crime prevention (see Davey & Whotton 2016), for example in the Cutting Crime Impacts project. Both projects can be seen to be using the tactics described in this chapter to increase proximity to the system – both with the internal project partners and the wider stakeholder community. Signori writes of a DesignLab workshop on the Cutting Crime Impacts project: Imagine the opportunity the CCI (Cutting Crime Impacts) project and particularly the DesignLabs gave to LEAs (Law Enforcement Agency] partners: a dedicated space to clear your mind, a multi-disciplinary team, the support of expert designers, funding, and time. (Signori 2020) The tactics used by design researchers to achieve proximity between system actors to some extent have universal characteristics. In projects where materials development is not the central focus then the hands-on element of the proposed framework is a different kind of ‘thing’ than a material. Nimkulrat et al. (2020) comment that the different forms of knowledge are generated when designers have close encounters or ‘experiences’ with artefacts, places or people, and where ‘people’ are the focus, then the ethnographic dimension is perhaps even stronger as a methodology and approach that can be located to different degrees within residencies, site visits and workshops. The challenge in large systemic projects is gaining access to experience the context first-hand in order to acquire or create experiential knowledge. There are ethical considerations here as well – to flip the question: do we really need proximity to ‘x’? What might be the negative impacts of our presence here? When direct access is not appropriate (practically or ethically) there are tactics that project developers and

On proximities to materials and systems in design research  65 designers can use to increase that proximity, such as those discussed in this chapter: ‘these definitions all suggest that proximity to the experience in question has potential to create different ways of knowing’ (Nimkulrat et al. 2020:270). It might be a police toolkit (Signori 2020) or an urban area in the case of Cutting Crime Impacts, a plant bioreactor that will be used to transform the way that drugs are produced, a patient journey or a regulatory process in the case of Pharma Factory. Designers can ‘experience’ these things using tactics for closer proximity, and through this proximity, they can reveal, translate and innovate new meanings and values for other groups of people, stakeholders and communities. Concurrently, designers can help translate this understanding into scenarios of change. When embarking on new research collaborations. Design researchers should try to understand what they need in their hands, what they need proximity to, and the tactics they can use to achieve that proximity. Niedderer and Reilly write: ‘many researchers in art and design and related fields perceive experiential knowledge or tacit knowledge as an integral part of their practice. It seems therefore that research, in order to be successful in these areas, has to recognise this and consider relevant approaches to organised inquiry accordingly’ (Niedderer & Reilly 2020:1). It is hoped that this conceptual framework can help design research for change to be strategic, systemic and its methods more communicable to potential partners in complex collaborations. This can also give rise to new approaches and methods that support close proximities.

Acknowledgements I’d like to thank my colleagues at the Centre for Circular Design and Service Futures Lab at UAL for discussions that continue to inspire me and whose work contributes to the thinking presented here. Thank you also to the partners and participants in the Trash-2-Cash, Pharma Factory and HereWear projects whose work and collaboration have influenced my reflections and research. This research received funding from the European Commission Horizon 2020 programmes: Trash-2-Cash (grant no. 646226), Pharma Factory (grant no. 774078) and HereWear (grant no. 101000632).

Notes 1 Funded by the European Commission H2020 Grant no. 646226. 2 Funded by the European Commission H2020 Grant no. 101000632. 3 TRL = Technology Readiness Level, the original definition is provided here: https://www. nasa.gov/directorates/heo/scan/engineering/technology/technology_readiness_level. 4 As a practical example, we ran a workshop on this topic at the Design Research Society conference 2022 in Bilbao, Spain: Hornbuckle, Earley, Real & Hall (2022) ‘Designing the Circular Design Team’. BBK Kuna, Bilbao. 5 An online collaborative whiteboard platform.

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68  Rosie Hornbuckle Nold, C. (n.d.) Working Paper 2: Towards a Sociomaterial Framework for Systems in Design. Social Design Institute, University of the Arts, London. Available from: arts.ac.uk/__ data/assets/pdf_file/0034/286369/SDI_Working.Paper_2_Towards_a-Socio-material_ Framework_Nold_tagged.pdf (accessed 16/03/22) Paine, H., Goldsworthy, K. & Baurley, S. (2017) Evolutionary approach of a textile designer through cross-disciplinary research practice: A case study in the field of advanced methods for joining textiles. Loughborough University. Available from: https://www.lboro.ac.uk/ departments/aed/staff-research/intersections/ (accessed 17/01/23) Parisi, S., Rognoli, V. & Sonneveld, M. (2017) Material tinkering. An inspirational approach for experiential learning and envisioning in product design education. The Design Journal, 20(sup1), S1167–S1184. DOI: 10.1080/14606925.2017.1353059 Politowicz, K. (2020) Prototypes for collaboration: Practice research, textile design, sustainability, making. In E. Earley (ed.) Research Circles. UAL Centre for Circular Design. ISBN: 978-1-906908-67-6 Real, M., Earley, R. & Goldsworthy, K. (2019) Practices, Places, Projects; Enrolling Stakeholders for Circular Fashion, Conference proceedings, ‘What’s Going On?’, Global Fashion Conference, 31 Oct - 1 Nov 2018, London, www.gfc-conference.eu. ISBN 978-989-54263-0-0 Ribul, M., Goldsworthy, K. & Collet, C. (2021) Material-Driven Textile Design (MDTD): A methodology for designing circular material-driven fabrication and finishing processes in the materials science laboratory. Sustainability, 13, 1268. DOI: 10.3390/su13031268 Rieple, A., Haberberg, A. & Gander, J. (2005) Hybrid organisations as a strategy for supporting new product development. Design Management Review, 16(1), 48–55. Signori, R. (2020) The CCI DesignLabs—the LEA perspective. Blog post for Cutting Crime Impacts project. Available from: https://www.cuttingcrimeimpact.eu/news-events/news/ the-cci-designlabs-e2-80-94-the-lea-perspective/ (accessed 02/03/20) Simeone, L. (2019) Incompleteness and redundancy: Organisational components of a design-enabled infrastructure to support coordinated action of multiple stakeholders, CoDesign, 15(4), 361–376. DOI: 10.1080/15710882.2018.1546320 Smitheram, M. & Joseph, F. (2020) Material-aesthetic collaborations: Making-with the ecosystem, CoDesign, 16(4), 293–310. DOI:10.1080/15710882.2020.1841796 Tubito, C., Earley, R., Ellams, D., Goldsworthy, K., Hornbuckle, R., Niinimäki, K., Östmark, E., Sarbach, V. & Tanttu, M. (2019) APPLIED DDMI: A white paper on how DesignDriven Material Innovation methodology was applied in the Trash-2-Cash project. EU H2020 White Paper. Available from: https://www.trash2cashproject.eu/trash-2-cash-blogpage/2019/2/24/applied-ddmi-the-white-paper-now-available (accessed 17/01/23). Verganti, R. (2009) Design Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Press. Wilkes, S., Wongsriruksa, S., Howes, P., Gamester, R., Witchel, H., Conreen, M., Laughlin, Z. & Miodownik, M. (2016) Design tools for interdisciplinary translation of material experiences. Journal of Materials & Design, 90, 1228–1237.

4

Sensory prosthetics Materials-led and user-centred research for more inclusive prosthetic limbs Sarah Wilkes and Caitlin McMullan

Introduction Materials, and the skilled community that make them into objects, are a defining part of society, with far-reaching cultural, environmental and economic effects (Miodownik 2013). The materials that designers, engineers and materials scientists select and develop for products can have a profound impact on the experiences of the end user (Wilkes et al. 2016). Nowhere is this more true than in the materials selected for an incredibly intimate medical application: a prosthetic limb. The development and selection of materials for prosthetic limbs obviously has important implications for the wearer in terms of function and comfort. Developments in materials have enabled radical improvements in the performance of prosthetic limbs over the last 50 years, with laminate plastics dramatically improving the comfort and fit of sockets (Murphy 1984), carbon fibre enabling the lightweight loadbearing pylons and energy-storing blades seen on professional athletes (Gutfleisch 2003) and silicone elastomers and gels revolutionising cushioning and pressure-dissipating liners that sit next to the skin (Fergason & Smith 1999). In addition to the role they play in functionality, materials choices can also dramatically affect the look and feel of a prosthesis. Materials currently offered to amputees and people with limb difference are generally polarised between flesh-coloured silicone rubber cosmetic gloves that are designed to mimic an arm or leg, or ‘cyborg-like’ bare carbon fibre and titanium limbs, with few alternatives (Pullin 2009). Existing literature on the aesthetics of prosthetics assumes that the more lifelike in shape and colour a limb is, the more acceptable it is to amputees (Schultz et al. 2007). However, findings from preliminary research (Wilkes & Miodownik 2018) and trends observed by prosthetics providers (Pace Rehabilitation 2011) suggest that there is an increasing interest in a wider range of non-cosmetic and non-anthropomorphic limbs and materials amongst amputees. The changing materiality of prosthetics can be seen in the increasing number of private initiatives that have developed over the last decade to provide wearers with more materials and design choices (The Alternative Limb Project; Open Bionics; Alleles). Despite this, relatively little research has been done to systematically explore wearers’ changing materials preferences in prosthetics. Researchers such as Cairns et al. (2014) and Sansoni et al. (2015) have demonstrated that the appearance of a prosthesis can affect its acceptance, and improving aesthetic qualities can help to improve the body image and psychological wellbeing of the wearer. On the other hand, Hussain (2011) has shown that when technical and economic requirements are prioritised to the detriment of aesthetic and cultural

DOI: 10.4324/9781003260356-5

70  Sarah Wilkes and Caitlin McMullan factors, this can ‘result in devices that create or reinforce social barriers, creating negative impacts on users’ self-esteem and sense of well-being’ (p. 1427). The materials chosen for a prosthesis can also have far-reaching environmental and economic implications. The NHS currently supplies rehabilitation services for between 55,000 and 60,000 people in the UK living with an amputation or limb difference and spends approximately £60 million per year on these services (NHS England 2018). Although rejection rates can vary wildly depending on the group surveyed, the type of prosthetic used and the level of amputation (e.g. upper limb, lower limb), in an overview of available literature from the last 25 years Biddiss & Chau (2007a) estimated that rejection and non-use of upper limb prosthetics was observed in one in five wearers. The numerous reasons for rejection given included the prosthetic being too hot, wearing down clothing too quickly and having an unattractive appearance. Many of the modern, lightweight and strong materials used in prosthetics (e.g. fibre-reinforced composites like fibreglass and carbon fibre) are not easy to recycle, and despite the modularity of contemporary prosthetics components cannot be reused or repurposed in the UK as they are considered to be medical waste. When prosthetic limbs are rejected or reach the end of their life, they often end up in landfill, incineration, or are repurposed by recycling schemes and NGOs such as Limbcare and Limbs4Africa to be used in lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where there is no guarantee that they will fit the needs of end users (Dickinson et al. 2019). In a prosthetic limb, materials selection therefore has implications for the look, feel, function and comfort of the prosthesis, with knock-on effects for the physical and psychosocial wellbeing of its wearer, as well as far-reaching economic and environmental impacts. However, the scientists and engineers involved in selecting and designing new materials for prosthetics are often separated from the people who wear the prosthetics that they make, as well as the design researchers and social scientists who study their cultural and sensoaesthetic impacts (Wilkes et al. 2018). Despite the increasing popularity of ideas of ‘mutual participation’ in contemporary medical practice (Rapley 2008, p. 429), engineers often start from the newest and most exciting or the most available materials and technologies when making prosthetic limbs, rather than asking what the people wearing the limbs they are designing want. Biddiss & Chau (2007a) have described this as: ‘an eagerness to tackle the looming design challenges with a battalion of technology before the needs and desires of the end user are clearly defined and translated into specific engineering requirements’ (p. 237). Biomedical engineers such as Peerdeman et al. (2011) have also commented on the difficulty of involving wearers in the development of new assistive technologies because of ‘differences in terminology and methodology’ (p. 721). Walker et al. (2020) have noted that this distance between those designing assistive technologies and those using them can result in a degree of wastefulness, both in terms of money and resources spent on unacceptable and unused prosthetic limbs, and misdirected research and design processes. They comment that ‘erroneous assumptions about disability’ and the needs and preferences of amputees ‘may be informing design’ (p. 982). This has ethical implications, ‘since it indicates a failure to adequately respond to the needs of people with disability’ (p. 983). Materials selection for healthcare design without the user in mind risks reproducing designers’ and materials researchers’ own normative ideals of the body and what is ‘healthy’, producing technologies that exclude the very people that they are made for.

Sensory prosthetics  71 This translational gap between engineers and end users of prosthetics is perhaps not surprising, since engineers are not trained to research the complex lived experiences and sensory and aesthetic preferences of end users, just as social scientists are not trained to build complex robotic arms with fine motor control. This highlights the need for multi-disciplinary research teams that bring together people with lived experience of disability and wearing prosthetic limbs with social scientists who can research their needs and desires; materials and design researchers who can translate those needs into materials and design requirements; and engineers and prosthetists who can design and build prosthetic limbs. Our research team was composed of an independent researcher with a design background who has lived experience of disability and wearing a prosthetic limb, and a social scientist and materials librarian with a background in multidisciplinary materials research. We worked with amputees and people with limb difference to understand their lived experiences of materials in their current prosthetic limbs, as well as their broader material, aesthetic and sensory preferences. In order to effect change in the prosthetics industry, these materials and sensory preferences then needed to be translated into ‘engineering requirements’ that could be relayed back to engineers and prosthetists in a language that they could understand and use to try and improve the materials that they offer. This chapter details the method we used and examines the role that materials libraries and other physical collections of materials play in bridging this translational gap and encouraging change in the design of prosthetic limbs.

Methods A total of 32 participants took part in this study from 3 different areas of the UK (London, Liverpool and Glasgow), with an even gender balance, a range of levels of amputation and a range of age groups from 18 to 65+ (median age group 45–54). Participants were recruited through amputee support groups (Finding Your Feet, Limb Power, Amputation Foundation), disability arts organisations (Disability Arts Online, Shape Arts), word of mouth and social media. The study received ethical approval from the UCL Research Ethics Committee (Project ID No. 5698/003). This study employed a mix of methods and approaches drawn from disability studies, the social sciences, design research and materials research. Following calls by scholars such as Vivian Sobchack (2010) and Rosemary Garland-Thomson (2011) to return of discussion of ‘the prosthetic’ to the embodied, lived experience of amputees, we wanted to involve amputees and people with limb difference in an in-depth discussion about their sensory and aesthetic preferences and what they need from materials in their prosthetic limbs. The number of participants we recruited was sufficient to gain an in-depth understanding of individual prosthetics wearers’ lived experiences of materials, and a sense of the diversity of materials and sensory preferences amongst amputees of different ages, genders, types of prosthesis, lengths of time since amputation and geographical locations. In order for the study to speak to engineers, materials scientists and prosthetics manufacturers, we also wanted to survey amputees’ materials preferences in a systematic way that would allow us to translate these material and sensory experiences into ‘engineering requirements’ (Biddiss & Chau 2007a, p. 237) that could be fed back to engineers, prosthetists and manufacturers. Drawing on design research techniques (Karana, Hekkert & Kandachar 2010; Laughlin et al. 2011; Wilkes et al.

72  Sarah Wilkes and Caitlin McMullan 2016), we therefore developed a method that involved using the Institute of Making’s Materials Library and some specially made sets of objects as the focus for a written questionnaire and a more informal, semi-structured interview. This method allowed us to explore how participants’ subjective materials preferences relate to measurable material properties, whilst also allowing us to have more in-depth and open-ended conversations with amputees about how materials choices impact on their daily life and relationship with their limbs. This study was initially inspired by McMullan’s personal experience of phantom limb sensation (PLS) stimulated by referred sensation. In particular, McMullan’s PLS is stimulated by touching materials that ‘surprise’ or where there is some visual-tactile incongruence. Researchers like Giummarra et al. (2011) and Ramachandran et al. (1992) have shown that PLS can be triggered by referred sensations from the opposite limb or another part of the body, and several rubber hand illusion (RHI) studies have explored the impact of different kinds of sensory stimuli (e.g. soft and rough fabrics) on the occurrence of the illusion (Haans et al. 2008; Schütz-Bosbach et al. 2009). However, there’s a paucity of literature exploring whether different types of external sensory stimuli produce referred PLS. With this study, we wanted to explore whether other amputees experienced this kind of referred sensation from touching everyday materials and whether any specific material properties or surface textures triggered phantom phenomena. During preliminary discussions in the Materials Library, we also decided to broaden the study to ensure that it spoke to the interests of a wider group of amputees: exploring the wider materials and sensory preferences of all amputees and people with limb difference, rather than focusing on just those people experiencing phantom phenomena. We chose to do this in response to calls from disability studies scholars and activists to pay attention to the lived experiences of amputees and calls from prosthetics researchers for further work on methods to engage users in design processes for prosthetic limbs (Walker et al. 2020). We therefore developed a preliminary collection of nine sets of materials stimuli that drew on McMullan’s personal experiences of materials that stimulated phantom phenomena, but that also drew on a literature survey of amputees’ material and design properties in prosthetics (Biddiss, Beaton & Chau 2007; Cairns et al. 2014; Cagle et al. 2018). We then conducted a pilot session with a group of amputees and refined this initial selection of materials based on feedback from the session. The end result of this process was six specially made sets of 40mm cubes, developed with amputees, where each set varied along one material property, representing density, specular reflectance, thermal effusivity, coefficient of friction (sticky to slippery), shore hardness and surface waviness (Figure 4.1). In the pilot collection, the materials samples took multiple different forms (cubes, spheres, loose fibres, flat rectangular swatches), but for the final sets, we chose the form of 40mm cubes. We made a deliberate choice not to use a form that was recognisable as a prosthetic limb component (e.g. a socket, liner or pylon) and not to focus solely on materials already used in prosthetics, so as not to limit our participants comments to negative feedback on existing designs (Walker et al. 2020), or limit their imaginations in terms of materials that could be used in future prosthetics. We have used cubes of materials in previous research projects to explore the sensoaesthetic properties and emotional associations of materials (Laughlin 2010; Wilkes &

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Figure 4.1 T he final sets of materials stimuli. The density set was composed of silver-coloured metals (tungsten, titanium and aluminium) that were selected for their different densities using the Cambridge Engineering Selector (CES Edupack 2016). Equally the thermal effusivity set made use of the inherent thermal properties of polypropylene, jesmonite and aluminium, which were all coloured black. The specular reflectance set was made by coating beech cubes with gloss, semi-gloss and matte paints. The elasticity set was made by casting cubes from silicone rubbers of different shore hardnesses (Shore 10–30). The roughness set was instantiated using aluminium blocks milled with grooves of different widths (1 mm, 2 mm, 3 mm) with the same land width between them.

Miodownik 2018). As Laughlin (2010) has documented, the angularity and corners of the cubes allow for an understanding of the cubes’ ‘varying hardnesses’ and resistance to wear and damage as they ‘change over time under repeated handling’ (p. 279). At 40 mm, these samples are small enough to be held in the hand, and light enough to be pressed against other body parts to appreciate, for example, their thermal properties, but large enough to gain an appreciation of the varying densities of the different materials.

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Figure 4.2 Participant handling the elasticity cube sets.

The first part of our study used these cube sets with a self-report questionnaire designed to look for patterns in participants’ materials preferences. Participants were asked to handle the sets of cubes and respond to questions about what material or sensory property they noticed; how much they liked or disliked each cube on a Likert-type scale, and what they liked or disliked about each material (Figure 4.2). They were also asked which of the materials might be suitable for a prosthetic limb, and those participants who experienced PLS or pain were asked whether any of the materials in the sets elicited phantom phenomena. This questionnaire was followed by a semi-structured interview that was audio recorded and transcribed. Interviews focused on delving deeper into people’s response to the cubes, as well as a discussion about the rationale behind people’s preferences and the properties they thought were most important in prosthetics. The direction of the conversation was led in part by participants interests, and in keeping with our aim of doing emancipatory research, interviews were conducted by McMullan, who is herself an amputee. It was really important to us that these discussions were a twoway conversation between amputees and that the direction of the conversation was at least in part led by participants’ interests, challenging traditional power relations between researcher and researched (Barnes 1992; Kitchin 2002). These interviews were wide-ranging, but we kept discussion broadly focused on materials by structuring each conversation around the cube sets and another materials handling exercise: the ‘materials continuum’. For this final exercise, participants were given access to a wider, curated selection of materials to explore (Figure 4.3), some of which have been used historically in prosthetics, some of which are currently used, and others which have never been used in prosthetics but were representative of different materials families and sensory and aesthetic properties. Participants were asked to choose materials they liked and disliked for their prosthetics and arrange them in a continuum from one end of the table to the other, whilst explaining their rationale. This allowed us to discuss people’s materials priorities in a freeform but materials-led way, so that they could tell us about the material or sensory properties that were important to them in their own words.

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Figure 4.3 Curated but broad selection of materials for the ‘materials continuum’ exercise.

The questionnaire: quantifying materials experiences In order for this study to effectively feed into the development of future materials and designs for prosthetic limbs, we analysed the quantifiable aspects of the questionnaire data using basic descriptive statistics to give a sense of how people responded to materials in their current prosthesis and materials in the cube sets. First, we examined participants’ responses to questions about materials in their current prosthesis. Simple descriptive statistics were calculated to explore which materials people could identify in their current prosthesis, which they liked or disliked, and whether this varied by age, gender or length of time since amputation. This analysis showed that 32% of participants were not able to identify any of the materials used in their limbs. Of those participants that were able to identify materials, 43% of the responses were generic material categories such as plastic, metal and foam and 57% of responses focused on a specific material such as silicone rubber or titanium. Silicone rubber was the most commented on material with 41% of the total responses, and 65% of those comments were negative. Ranked reasons for negative comments included thermal properties, durability, moisture and discomfort, as well as the ‘strange feel’, stickiness and hygiene or cleanability of silicone rubber. The second most commented on material was carbon fibre, with 86% of the comments being positive in relation to aesthetics, the mobility it allows and its light weight, and 15% being negative in relation to hardness and stiffness. Next we looked at participants’ responses to individual cube within the sets. This analysis demonstrated that the most liked objects were the lightest cube in the density set and the medium cube in the coefficient of friction (sticky to slippery) set, followed by the matte and semi-gloss cubes in the specular reflectance set. The most disliked

76  Sarah Wilkes and Caitlin McMullan were the most dense metal and the most elastic silicone rubber, followed by the stickiest cube and the two roughest cubes. The most elastic silicone rubber, and in fact the silicone rubbers in general, was the most divisive material, with people being split between really liking and really disliking this material. Statistical analysis of people’s responses to the six sets as a whole showed that the most disliked sets were the elasticity set followed by the roughness set, and the most liked were the specular reflectance (matte to gloss) set followed by the thermal effusivity (cold to warm) set. Relationships between material preference and variables like age, gender and length of time since amputation showed that age and material preference showed a significant but weak negative correlation, demonstrating that older participants liked all of the sets less than younger participants. In particular, the density and coefficient of friction sets were significantly and most strongly negatively correlated with age, demonstrating that older participants disliked the heavier and more slippery materials more than younger amputees. This relationship between increasing age and generally liking all the materials less was also true of the individual cubes, with the exception of the softest silicone rubber and the medium rough cube, which older participants liked more than younger amputees. There was a negative relationship between length of time since amputation and material preference, showing that how much participants liked the materials in the cube sets decreased with the length of time since amputation. We also explored the link between gender and material preference, which showed that female amputees liked the density and friction sets more than male participants, and the gloss and elasticity sets less.

The interviews: contextualising material preferences Eighteen participants also took part in in-depth individual interviews, and the rest of the participants took part in small group interviews. The semi-structured nature of the interviews allowed us to dig deeper into the people’s individual preferences and lived experiences. This qualitative data allowed us to better understand and contextualise the questionnaire responses we received. The qualitative data also demonstrated the variety of material and sensory properties that were important to the people that took part in our study, beyond those usually discussed in the prosthetics literature, and the – sometimes unexpected – reasons why they were important. Participants’ questionnaire responses to silicone rubber in both their current prosthesis and in the cube sets showed it to be a problematic material that, whilst heavily used in contemporary prosthetics, strongly divided the opinions of amputees and people with limb difference. More than half (63%) of participants disliked the softest silicone rubber: a material comparable to the gels and softer silicones used in prosthetic liners and socks, but older amputees liked it more than younger participants. This is where qualitative data from the in-depth interviews and materials-led discussion can give us a better idea of the reasons why people might have such mixed feelings about this material. For example, in discussion with some of the older amputees, it became apparent that they had negative experiences of materials used next to the skin in sockets and liners before silicone rubber was introduced, including leather, nylon, wool and cotton. They appreciated the improved comfort, fit and skin health that came with silicone rubber: ‘when [silicone socks] came in … I noticed immediately that I had less blisters: it was an enormous difference’ (Edward). Other positive comments focused on it being ‘supple and yielding’, able to ‘mould to the source of pressure’ and feeling

Sensory prosthetics  77 ‘good to handle’. Some of the younger amputees, on the other hand, commented that they disliked it as a medicalised material: ‘it’s the material used for all medical objects’ (Joshua). They commented that ‘silicone is my nemesis’ (Beck): it makes you sweat but is cold in the morning when you put it on, sticks to your clothes and ‘sometimes even the dust’ and feels uncanny and skin-like when you pick it up: ‘it’s the squidginess of it? Like, ugh, its creepy!’ (Ryan). When we presented these quantitative and qualitative findings at Prosthetics and Orthotics conferences, clinicians and engineers were particularly surprised by the negative response to silicone rubber and the proportion of amputees who disliked the softest silicone rubber, as it is very widely used in the current prosthetics service offering. Questionnaire responses showed that weight was the most commented on material property in current prostheses (22% of responses), with the lightweight material in the density cube set being viewed more positively than the heavier material. This was in keeping with existing literature arguing that the weight of prosthetic limbs is a priority for wearers and a factor in dissatisfaction or abandonment of a limb (Biddiss & Chau 2007b). As a result, recent materials and design developments have focused on making lighter-weight prosthetics. However, data from the interviews showed that finding the right density for a prosthetic can be more complex and demonstrated the importance of ‘appropriate weight’ and the material not being too light, as well as too heavy: Mainly what I said about most of these was the weight, but even though I like the lightness of some, if they are too light then it doesn’t feel stable. (Ian) Similarly, heat is considered an important factor in device dissatisfaction and rejection (Biddiss & Chau 2007b), with materials development work focusing on heat dissipation in liners, for example (Williams et al. 2017). By contrast, a number of our participants touched on the importance of materials not being too thermally conductive or cold to the touch, especially on other parts of the body, or to other people: One thing that really stands out is that it is cold. It’s a lot colder than an actual living thing. My prosthetic tends to be cold to the touch. (Ben) Ian talked about warming up his silicone liner on the towel rail in the morning before putting it on, Erin talked about how the coldness of her titanium leg pole when she picks it up with her hands in the morning can make her feel really detached or alienated from it, and Harri’s phantom limb pain was stimulated by touching cold materials. These interviews also brought to the fore material properties that are not commonly talked about in the existing prosthetics literature, like the sound of the materials. Ryan’s least favourite part of his prosthetic was the ‘cheap hollow sound’ of the plastic casing of his hydraulic knee, and Maria’s materials choices for future prosthetics started with materials she would like the sound and feel of when she touched them whilst dancing. The findings from these interviews demonstrate the importance of going beyond survey and questionnaire data to better understand users’ individual, diverse and in-depth lived experiences of materials in their prosthetics. Research that delves into the subtleties and intricacies of how material properties can impact on wearers daily lives is needed to ensure that materials and designs developed for prosthetic limbs actually take into account the needs of the people who wear them.

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Materials, relationship building and identity Another important theme that came out of the qualitative data was the importance of material and sensory properties in allowing you to build a relationship with your prosthetic. Harri, Erin and Duncan talked about a material being friendly, unthreatening or warm, and the way it patinates, as factors that can help you to build a relationship with your limb. It’s rough, sharp, harsh and for want of a better word it doesn’t feel very friendly… It’s a very personal thing, I mean you’re putting it at the end of your body. It’s supposed to be your arm or your leg. You want to be able to have a relationship with your prosthetic. (Harri) Because a prosthetic is an object, it’s nice to feel that connection with it as well, so if you do find materials particularly comforting and friendly that’s really important – that you also feel that, to get a better connection to your prosthetic, so that when you pick it up you do find that comfort within it as well. (Erin) Wood is a very unthreatening material. As it ages it sometimes even gets even more … sense of being you. So there’s a real sense that this is part of me if you like. There’s a warmth in wood: I think any time you touch wood you never shiver or anything like you would when you touch metal. (Duncan) The qualitative aspects of this study showed the role that emotional and cultural associations of materials play in determining whether wearers feel that materials offered fit with their needs, identity or body image. In particular, some of the wearers we spoke to rejected both the camouflaged and normalised body associated with fleshcoloured silicone rubber, and the idea of the superhuman amputee associated with carbon fibre. Both Calum and Adele spoke about their decisions not to use ‘cosmetic’ silicone rubber covers on their legs: Somebody will only look at your prosthetic leg once if they know it’s a prosthetic leg. If you try and hide it, as in a synthetic cover, they’ll look and they’ll keep looking and they can’t quite make out whether it’s a leg or not and they’ll keep staring at it. I like people to know instantly that’s what it is. Why put a cover on it? (Calum) I like the reaction of people when I’m wearing my interesting legs, rather than the ‘pretend I’ve got legs’ kind of ones. I like that perhaps people think you’re interesting and there’s a cool aspect to these prosthetics as opposed to the sympathy angle, and the apology. (Adele) In particular, female and gender non-conforming amputees who took part in the study commented on the impact that materials in their prosthetics have on their

Sensory prosthetics  79 gender identity. Joshua, who identifies as non-binary, talked about how they felt they had ‘gone as far as they could’ with their carbon fibre and titanium leg and would like to see future prosthetics that allowed them to experiment with their body and style more, allowing them to wear high heels, for example. Erin and Beck discussed how their uncovered titanium and carbon fibre legs were seen by many people, including their prosthetists, as a masculine choice. For non-disabled observers, these materials are associated with a cyborg aesthetic and come with assumptions and rhetoric about ‘being superhuman’ or ‘an inspiration’ that they do not identify with. This speaks to the work of researchers like Anna Hickey-Moody (2015) who describes carbon fibre as a ‘masculinised technology’, gendered as a result of its development in the context of the competitive sports industry and used in prosthetics in the aftermath of the Iraq war. Equally, Anne Balsamo (2000) talks about how notions of the cyborg can reinforce traditional gender stereotypes, rather than subverting gender binaries. Whilst the female and non-binary amputees that we spoke to did feel limited by the materials choices available to them, many still chose to wear and show their carbon fibre and titanium prosthetics. Erin, Adele and Beck talked about being drawn towards these non-anthropomorphic and non-cosmetic limbs in relation to ‘letting go of’ or simply not being interested in replicating ‘their biological legs or legs from before’ (Adele). They talked about how they had physically modified or otherwise appropriated them into their personal style, with Adele aiming to make them: ‘not gushingly girly, feminine, not ladylike and delicate, but not masculine either’. By exploring the lived experiences of individual amputees, we can see how they are appropriating traditionally masculinised materials in order to perform and embody gender identities in their own way, upsetting binary notions of masculinity and femininity. Despite the evident impact that materials can have on identity-building and developing a relationship with your limb, questionnaire data showed that 32% of participants did not know what materials were used in their current prosthetics, and many could only identify a generic material family (e.g. metal or plastic). Some participants explicitly stated that they were not interested in ‘aesthetics’, with Harri asserting that she didn’t ‘give a monkeys what it looks like’, for example. However, the materials continuum exercise gave participants an opportunity to engage with a curated selection of samples from our Materials Library in a hands-on way and to think about what they would like from future prosthetic limbs. This exercise demonstrated that whilst Harri was not interested in a cosmetic cover that mimics skins, for example, she did have very strong opinions about the look, feel and psychosocial impact of materials in future prosthetics: To me it doesn’t look neat, you know, it just doesn’t look pleasant so already, psychologically, you are looking at it and going, NO! (Harri) As can be seen in Figure 4.4, even within the relatively limited palette of materials that we presented to our participants, preferences often came down to very fine-grained differences between one leather and another, or one surface texture on stainless steel versus another. This kind of subtlety is missed when we ask generalised questions about the relative importance of aesthetics or functionality, highlighting the difficulty of talking to wearers about sensory, aesthetic and material preferences in the abstract, and demonstrating the importance of a materials-led, qualitative approach.

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Figure 4.4 One participant’s most liked and disliked materials, chosen as part of the materials continuum exercise.

This exercise also stimulated discussions about choice in prosthetics and its impact on feelings of self-confidence and ownership of a limb. In her interview, for example, Beck spoke about being told that her leg ‘belonged to the NHS’ and she could not make any changes to it. For example, every time she got sand in it at the beach she had to go all the way to the limb-fitting centre to have her foot shell removed and cleaned. She commented that being involved in the design process a little bit, or even seeing the materials before they became a prosthetic, might help her to feel more ownership over her own legs and could have a ‘positive impact on recovery from amputation, like, if you want to wear it then you are going to recover a lot faster’. Equally, Harri commented that being able to choose a material she particularly liked could bring functional benefits in terms of comfort and cushioning but could also have a positive effect on her phantom limb pain: You see the other thing is that psychologically it would help. Because already I’m thinking, God yeah if that was on the bottom of my stump that would feel really good! And that helps it, ‘cos it’s all attached’. (Harri) These conversations demonstrate the difference that having an element of choice or control over the make-up of your own limb can have: something that many of our participants felt they did not currently have. In the context of increasing financial pressures on the NHS, and recent internal reviews aimed at improving the efficiency of the prosthetics service, there is a vital role to be played by designers and design

Sensory prosthetics  81 researchers in exploring how an element of materials choice could be offered as part of the prosthetics design service in an inclusive but affordable way: for example through the adoption of digital manufacturing techniques that allow for low-cost customisation and personalisation (Eley 2017; Oldfrey et al. 2020).

Conclusion The gap between those designing assistive technologies and those using them can not only be environmentally and economically wasteful in terms of money and resources spent on unacceptable and unused prosthetic limbs, but also risks reproducing designers’ and materials researchers’ own normative ideals of the body and what is ‘healthy’. This chapter has shown that some amputees, and in particular female and gender non-conforming amputees, feel that the current provision of materials in prosthetic limbs doesn’t fit with their needs, identity or body image. As prosthetists and engineers themselves have noted, the problem-solving focus of existing research shines an important light on functional issues with current materials and designs, but there has been much less research exploring amputees’ needs and desires and, in the words of Erin, the ‘ways you can find comfort within’ materials of your prosthetic limb. This study demonstrates that a prosthetic limb is much more than a ‘medical device’ and that the sensoaesthetic and cultural associations of materials chosen for a prosthetic can affect the body image and psychological wellbeing of its wearer, with implications for its acceptance and emotional durability. As disability studies scholars and activists have argued, we need to better understand the lived experiences and preferences of amputees and people with limb difference in order to ensure that materials and design developments for prosthetics actually benefit users. In response to calls for further work on methods to engage users in design processes for prosthetic limbs (Walker et al. 2020), this chapter explores how multi-disciplinary, participatory and materials-led research can be used to explore the link between materials, affect and identity; encourage more user-centred selection and development of materials for prosthetics; and challenge wastefulness in the prosthetics industry. As we have discussed here, this translational gap between engineers and end users of prosthetics is understandable, since engineers are not trained to research the complex lived experiences and sensory and aesthetic preferences of end users, just as social scientists are not trained to build complex robotic arms with fine motor control. This chapter therefore advocates for the use of quantitative methods as a way of grabbing the attention of those involving in making and selecting materials for prosthetics and relaying wearers’ materials preferences in a language they can understand and use to make changes to their designs. For example, we presented this study to engineers, materials scientists and clinicians, who took on board our findings that a proportion of amputees disliked widely used materials like silicone rubber. As this chapter demonstrates, however, the qualitative data we gathered played a crucial role in contextualising and explaining those materials preferences, as well as highlighting material properties like acoustics that are not currently on the radar of those developing materials and components for prosthetic limbs. This points to the need for more mixed-methods research that brings together multi-disciplinary research teams composed of people with lived experience of disability; social scientists and design researchers who can research qualitative materials experiences and translate them into materials and design requirements; and engineers and prosthetists who can design and build prosthetic limbs.

82  Sarah Wilkes and Caitlin McMullan The needs and desires of wearers cannot always easily be conveyed in conventional engineering ‘materials information’, however. The qualitative elements of this study allow us to explore the emotional and cultural associations of materials and the role they can play in creating and defining the identity and particularly the gender identity of the wearer. The materials continuums that participants put together were quite different from each other and were incredibly personal to each individual. The in-depth interviews also showed the potential that offering materials choice and involvement in the design process could have in terms of giving wearers a sense of ownership of their prosthetic limb. This is where designers and design researchers could play a crucial role in reimagining a prosthetics design service that gives an element of materials choice and involves wearers in the design process, whilst still being affordable. Finally, this chapter demonstrates the pivotal role that a physical collection of materials plays in enabling this kind of materials- and user-led research. Our specially curated ‘materials continuum’ collection served as a provocation that allowed us to explore the materials and sensory experiences and subtle and fine-grained preferences of individual amputees in a way that would have been impossible through verbal communication alone. The Materials Library therefore allowed us to go beyond abstract discussions of ‘aesthetics’ or ‘functionality’ usually prompted by questionnaires to delve into the impact that different materials choices can have on body image, gender identity, feelings of ownership of your limb and phantom phenomena. Prosthetics researchers have commented on the difficulty of directly involving end users in the design of prostheses because of differences in terminology (Peerdeman et al. 2011). In the context of this study, the specially made sets of cubes enabled us to systematically explore amputees’ materials, aesthetic and sensory preferences in a way that could be translated into requirements for materials scientists, engineers and prosthetists. In this way, the Materials Library played a key role in bringing together and translating between different disciplines, communities and lived experiences. As a result, the findings of this study have the potential to inform the materials choices offered by prosthetics manufacturers and limb-fitting centres.

Acknowledgements This study is funded by a Wellcome Trust Humanities & Social Sciences Fellowship (200354/Z/15/Z) and received ethical approval from the UCL Research Ethics Committee: Project ID No. 5698/003. We would like to thank all the researchers and disability organisations who enthusiastically spread the word about this study and all the individuals who have been part of this project with us.

References Balsamo, A. (2000) Reading Cyborgs, Writing Feminism. In: Kirkup, G., Hovenden, F., Janes, L. and Woodward, K. (eds.) The Gendered Cyborg: A Reader. New York, Routledge, pp. 148–158. Barnes, C. (1992) Qualitative Research: Valuable or Irrelevant? Disability, Handicap & Society, 7(2), 115–124. Biddiss, E. A., & Chau, T. T. (2007a) Upper Limb Prosthesis Use and Abandonment: A Survey of the Last 25 Years. Prosthetics and Orthotics International, 31(3), 236–257.

Sensory prosthetics  83 Biddiss, E. A., & Chau, T. T. (2007b) Upper-Limb Prosthetics: Critical Factors in Device Abandonment. American Journal of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 86(12), 977–987. Biddiss, E. A., Beaton, D., & Chau, T. (2007) Consumer Design Priorities for Upper Limb Prosthetics. Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology, 2(6), 346–357. Cairns, N., Murray, K., Corney, J., & McFadyen, A. (2014) Satisfaction with Cosmesis and Priorities for Cosmesis Design Reported by Lower Limb Amputees in the United Kingdom: Instrument Development and Results. Prosthetics and Orthotics International, 38(6), 467–73. Cagle, J. C., Hafner, B. J., Taflin, N., & Sanders, J. E. (2018) Characterization of Prosthetic Liner Products for People with Transtibial Amputation. JPO: Journal of Prosthetics and Orthotics, 30(4), 187–199. Dickinson, A., Donovan-Hall, M., Kheng, S., Wiegand, S., Wills, G., Ostler, C., Srors, S., Tech, A., Granat, M., Kenney, L., & Pathak, P. (2019) Technologies to Enhance Quality and Access to Prosthetics & Orthotics: The Importance of a Multidisciplinary, User-Centred Approach. In: Layton, N. and Bord, J. (eds.), Global Perspectives on Assistive Technology: Proceedings of the GReAT Consultation 2019. Geneva, Switzerland, World Health Organization, Volume 2, pp. 54–70. Eley, K. A. (2017) Centralised 3D printing in the NHS: A Radiological Review. Clinical Radiology, 72(4), 269–275. Fergason, J., & Smith, D. G. (1999) Socket Considerations for the Patient with a Transtibial Amputation. Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, 361, 76–84. Garland-Thomson, R. (2011) Misfits: A Feminist Materialist Disability Concept. Hypatia, 26(3), 591–609. Giummarra, M. J., & Moseley, G. L. (2011) Phantom Limb Pain and Bodily Awareness: Current Concepts and Future Directions. Current Opinion in Anesthesiology, 24(5), 524–531. Gutfleisch, O. (2003) Peg Legs and Bionic Limbs: The Development of Lower Extremity Prosthetics. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 28(2), 139–148. Haans, A., IJsselsteijn, W. A., & de Kort, Y. A. (2008) The Effect of Similarities in Skin Texture and Hand Shape on Perceived Ownership of a Fake Limb. Body Image, 5(4), 389–394. Hickey-Moody, A. (2015) Carbon Fibre Masculinity: Disability and Surfaces of Homosociality. Angelaki, 20(1), 139–153. Hussain, S. (2011) Toes That Look Like Toes: Cambodian Children’s Perspectives on Prosthetic Legs. Qualitative Health Research, 21(10), 1427–1440. Karana, E., Hekkert, P., & Kandachar, P. (2008) Material Considerations in Product Design: A Survey on Crucial Material Aspects Used by Product Designers. Materials & Design, 29(6), 1081–1089. Kitchin, R. (2002) Morals and Ethics in Geographical Studies of Disability. In: Proctor, J. (ed.), Geography and Ethics: Journeys in a Moral Terrain. London, Routledge, pp. 239–252. Laughlin, Z. (2010) “Beyond the Swatch: How Can the Science of Materials Be Represented by the Materials Themselves in a Materials Library?” PhD Thesis, Kings College London, University of London. Laughlin, Z., Conreen, M., Witchel, H. J., & Miodownik, M. (2011) The Use of Standard Electrode Potentials to Predict the Taste of Solid Metals. Food, Quality and Preference 22 (7), 628–637. Miodownik, M. (2013) Stuff Matters: The Strange Stories of the Marvellous Materials that Shape Our Man-Made World. London: Penguin Books Murphy, E. F. (1984) Sockets, Linings, and Interfaces. Clinical Prosthetics & Orthotics, 8, 4–10. NHS England. (2018) Prosthetics Service Review. Available at: https://www.england.nhs.uk/ commissioning/spec-services/npc-crg/group-d/d01/prosthetics-review/. [Accessed 11th Jan 2021].

84  Sarah Wilkes and Caitlin McMullan Oldfrey, B., Tchorzewska, A., Jackson, R., Croysdale, M., Loureiro, R., Holloway, C., & Miodownik, M. (2020) Additive Manufacturing Techniques for Smart Prosthetic Liners. Medical Engineering & Physics, 87, 45–55. Pace Rehabilitation. (2011) Prosthetic Aesthetics. Available at: http://www.pacerehab.com/ prosthetic-aesthetics-november-2011/. [Accessed 11th Feb 2017]. Peerdeman, B., Boere, D., Witteveen, H., in ’t Veld, R. H., Hermens, H., Stramigioli, S., Reitman, H, Veltink, P., & Misra, S. (2011) Myoelectric Forearm Prostheses: State of the Art from a User-Centered Perspective. Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development, 48(6), 719–738. Pullin, G. (2009) Design Meets Disability. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. Ramachandran, V. S., Rogers-Ramachandran, D., Stewart, M., & Pons, T. P. (1992) Perceptual Correlates of Massive Cortical Reorganization. Science, 258 (5085), 1159–1160. Rapley, T. (2008) Distributed Decision Making: The Anatomy of Decisions-In-Action. Sociology of Health & Illness, 30(3), 429–444. Sansoni, S., Wodehouse, A., & Buis, A. (2015) A New Design System of Below-Limb Prostheses - The Role of a Visual Prosthetic Designer. In: DS 80–1 Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED 15), Vol. 1: Design for Life, Milan, Italy, pp. 351–360. Schultz, A. E., Baade, S. P., & Kuiken, T. A. (2007) Expert Opinions on Success Factors for Upper-Limb Prostheses. Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development, 44, 83–490. Schütz-Bosbach, S., Tausche, P., & Weiss, C. (2009) Roughness Perception During the Rubber Hand Illusion. Brain and Cognition, 70(1), 136–144. Sobchack, V. (2010) Living a ‘Phantom Limb’: On the Phenomenology of Bodily Integrity. Body & Society, 16(3), 51–67. Walker, M. J., Goddard, E., Stephens-Fripp, B., & Alici, G. (2020) Towards Including EndUsers in the Design of Prosthetic Hands: Ethical Analysis of a Survey of Australians with Upper-Limb Difference. Science and Engineering Ethics, 12, 1–27. Wilkes, S., Wongsriruksa, S., Howes, P., Gamester, R., Witchel, H., Conreen, M., Laughlin, Z., & Miodownik, M. (2016) Design Tools for Interdisciplinary Translation of Material Experiences. Materials & Design, 90, 1228–1237. Wilkes, S. E., & Miodownik, M. A. (2018) Materials Library Collections as Tools for Interdisciplinary Research. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 43(1), 3–23. Williams, R. J., Washington, E. D., Miodownik, M., & Holloway, C. (2018) The Effect of Liner Design and Materials Selection on Prosthesis Interface Heat Dissipation. Prosthetics and Orthotics International, 42(3), 275–279.

5

Decolonising materials The story of Govindgarh village Bhaavya Goenka

Introduction What we wear not only represents us, how we want to be seen, what we want to communicate with the world, our values but also the times and the systems we have found ourselves in. This chapter intends to explore the work of a decentralised system through the case study of IRO IRO and the social impact it has had and holds to have, while also exploring the robust solutions that indigenous knowledge has against the climate crisis. With this case study, I hope to demonstrate that through collaboration with different professionals and when put into a modern context, these solutions not only develop quality income opportunities in the villages but also create smaller replicable systems that allow local, organic development. Growing up in Jaipur, the proximity to the region geographically and culturally allowed me to design sensitive systemic interventions, the proximity to the raw material of waste as a resource also permitted me to respond to the immediate social situation and implement strategies to assist the community. To establish a narrative that is unheard and unseen in normative textile and fashion conversations, the research methodology focused on a series of conversations with artisans, supplemented with Indian and east-Asian literature and a period of reflection on my experiences of working in the Indian craft-fashion ecosystem, using an auto-ethnographical approach. I built a systemic lens for this research by expanding the reading list to papers written by authors from a background in activism. This chapter explores the question ‘how can ‘decolonising’ materials contribute to positive social impacts within the context of decentralised Indian textile design?’ by reflecting on how my primary interest in reviving lost materials and crafts led to unexpected social value and agency. This journey allowed me to propose a new approach for regional textile production.

A beginning… I grew up in a garment factory in Jaipur, North-West India. In 2012, to support their ongoing business of exporting garments, my parents established a small garment factory called Shivam Overseas (now known as Shivam International). They had started by trading products made from upcycled saris, they would go to different production units to have quality products, such as bags, pouches and simpler garments like kaftans, made from these saris. My father, Mr. Atul Goenka, trained as a textile engineer and worked in export houses in Delhi before this, while my late mother, DOI: 10.4324/9781003260356-6

86  Bhaavya Goenka Mrs. Sangita Goenka, was a lecturer of child psychology in Delhi University and child development advisor in various schools. They decided to move to Jaipur (a considerably smaller city than Delhi) in pursuit of more opportunities and with the desire to have more agency in their lives, and there they started a business of their own. As I grew, their work grew. During my childhood, I was always exposed to the wastefulness of the fashion industry and the exploitation that is perpetuated by a system designed to share its losses and not its profits with many of its stakeholders. The modern-day development of the ‘civilised’ world has been enabled by privilege and agency. This agency – or lack of agency – has perhaps in most cases been acquired through either ancestral colonialism or oppression. After the Second World War, change transpired through industrialisation, democratisation and capitalism in the so-called ‘first-world’ countries. Class hierarchies that drove development previously dissipated, and a common person could become more economically mobile which reinforced the capitalist system. War introduced concepts like ready-to-eat food like ramen and ready-to-wear for soldiers: During the war of 1812, the US government began mass producing military uniforms, making them one of the first ready- to-wear garments in history. (Arote, 2021:n.p.) Capitalism further adopted these concepts and the world found itself in the modern-day fashion industry. …fashion has been highly successful at erasing the importance of all other systems of clothing that are not integrated in the global fashion system. They are negated by language, for example: the term ‘craft’ situates indigenous dress systems a grade below fashionable dress. (Niessen quoted in Minney, 2017:n.p.) However, as the demand grew, the developed world found it more and more difficult to find labour complicit to cheap work and atrocious working conditions if they were not blackmailed into doing so. The companies in hunt for profit, found this cheap labour in the colonies. Here, they dismantled robust systems of local craft production, depleted them of their indigenous skills, extracted endless resources and broke a confidence creating a crisis of identity. Labour here was desperate to work, governance here was desperate to provide this work and capitalism here was desperate to find opportunities for economic profits. This desperation is a legacy of colonialism amongst other exploitative systems. While the developed world exported their jobs to India, they forgot to export their newfound ethics; rather, the only reason they could export their jobs was because they did not have to export their ethics. …(the British colonisers) took the raw materials from India and shipping back manufactured cloth flooding the world’s markets with what became the products of the mills of the Victoria in England. That meant that the weavers in India became beggars and India went from being a world famous exporter of finished cloth into an importer when from having 27% of the world trade to less than 2%. (Tharoor, 2015:n.p.)

Decolonising materials: the story of Govindgarh village  87 Workers of historically exploited and pillaged countries, where now the coloniser’s culture had become the aspiration, abandoned skills and knowledge rooted to the land they had found themselves in and adopted the western system of production. This model of working made some cities the centres for income opportunities in India as opposed to the decentralised way of working in traditional Indian craft culture. Large cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai (then known as Madras) became the centres for labour, leading to a mass migration of workers from isolated villages, smaller towns and settlements all over India, in search of employment that would help them sustain themselves and their families. This had a huge impact on indigenous fibre, yarn and textiles knowledge, as Banerjee (2017) describes: The tumultuous reversal of fortune suffered by Indian cotton cultivators and handloom weavers must surely rank as one of the cruellest sagas of modern economic history. The subcontinent has been the cradle of the cotton fabric since the dawn of the Indus Valley civilisation, with the Mohenjo-daro ruins bearing evidence of fragments of woven cotton. The classical Western world, too, was aware and awed by India’s centrality in the manufacture of cotton. The advent of the British decimated India’s supremacy in cotton production. The Industrial Revolution in England in the second half of the 18th century, with its attendant machines like Arkwright’s ‘Spinning Jenny’ marked the death knell of India’s biodiversity in short-stapled cotton. (Banerjee, 2017:n.p.) As someone young, naive and newly entering the design industry, I would often wake up, and still do, with anxiety around the environment, its sustenance and the role our garment factory has had in its exploitation and in financing the person I have become. I believed I would either have to renounce everything I have ever known or utilise the agency I do have to voice what is important to me or perhaps build change from within a system. With this intention, I started to weave factory textile waste in the lab in the design school where I was studying, at the Indian Institute of Crafts and Design (IICD), Jaipur. On a personal level, this process helped me deal with my own anxiety, made me feel like I have some control and a voice to communicate what is important to me the only way I knew how – through what I made and designed. However, as I explored and developed the materials, I observed an appreciation around me for the aesthetic value of the textiles I was weaving. Throughout my four years education at IICD, we were encouraged to visit many villages in and outside the state of Rajasthan that function as craft and weaving clusters. It was to these villages that I took my practice, the start of the story of IRO IRO and my enduring relationship with one such village: Govindgarh.

The practice of Indian crafts is an act of decolonisation Khadi, a fabric that is handspun and handwoven, demonstrates the entanglement of material and social impacts and the fight for agency, proliferated through an unjust system. On the one hand, Khadi propagated the message of Indian independence from household to household in an era (1858–1947) where the British were forcing Indian farmers to grow western style cotton (that would not be a nurturing crop for the Indian soil) to spin and weave it into fabric back in Manchester, England. The idea

88  Bhaavya Goenka of khadi became the symbol of self-reliance and hope in a population desperate for a sense of agency in the world. This kind of handspun–handwoven fabric has the unique property of keeping the wearer warm in winter and cool in summer (Figures 5.1 and 5.2). It has a coarse texture and gets easily crumpled and, therefore, is starched to keep it firm and stiff. On washing, it is more enhanced; the more you wash it, the better it looks. Khadi is also being made from silk fibre. However, the way I see Khadi, it is not just a fabric that is handspun and handwoven but rather a value, a hope, a sense of agency, woven into a tangible fabric. .… writers from that period (pre-independence, before 1947) had celebrated the breadth of India’s diverse textile heritage…Chattopadhyay and Jayakar encouraged interventions across the full range of fabrics, including fine textiles with printed, painted, embroidered, woven and stitched patterns. Uniting these interests in popular traditions and patterned textiles, folk embroidery drew particular attention in this era, with Chattopadhyay helping to launch a rash of new publications on women’s embroidery, including kantha quilts from Bengal, phulkaris from the Punjab, rumals from Chamba in Himachal Pradesh and torans from Kathiawar in Gujarat, documenting styles and laying out development possibilities. (McGowan, 2021:286) The textiles crafts of India did not only narrate the social and economic tale of the geography they originated and evolved in but also lent them to be a tool for creative

Figures 5.1 and 5.2 Hari Narayan Bunkar spinning and weaving a new fabric from textile waste for IRO IRO. This fabric is bhinkiji, a rendition of the age-old craft of rag rug weaving by IRO IRO.

Decolonising materials: the story of Govindgarh village  89 expression for an individual as well as for the community and machine that drives innovation. The tapestry of Indian textile crafts is so rich that the technique changes every two kilometres. I often ask, ‘why should we preserve the craft of the hand in a mechanised world?’ I feel there is responsibility to those who came before me, to tell new tales through these techniques and as well drive social and environmental change through my interventions. I am mindful that the resources we had as a people was informed by our history, but also the reality of the poverty we found ourselves in after colonialism. Therefore, waste became a natural choice we turned to as a resource to develop a craft-based textile design practice. This is often observed in craft practices born out of frugality; take for example the Japanese Boro (rags), a practice of patching rags together to form a larger piece of fabric and eventually a garment, born out of desperate necessity in Honshu, Aomori, home to dirt-poor farmers in Japan during the Edo period (1600–1868). This practice and the aesthetic it lends has time and time again seen a resurgence in fashion trends all over the world. The motif of utilising waste as a new material for making was, for me, also about reclaiming a space so dominated by an overwhelming politics (Figures 5.1 and 5.2). While Khadi had symbolised freedom, self-reliance and hope during India’s freedom struggle movement against British colonialism, now khadi has become something that is centralised by the government of India and has become more of a marketing scheme for the ruling party. Of the Khadi textile woven in India, 70% is currently made from BT cotton (Bacillus thuringiensis is genetically modified cotton). Newly introduced ‘Poly Khadi’ is mill-made polyester yarn, distributed in villages to be handwoven into a polyester fabric, that earns its makers 17 INR a metre, which equates to 105 INR a day, far below the minimum wage of 289 INR a day for unskilled labour set by the Rajasthan government.

Research approach The garment factory system we found ourselves in left the people at its heart excluded, their lives exploited, and their minds exhausted while also exploiting the environment. IRO IRO was created as an agent of change for this system. To act as a parasite for the waste it was creating but also to encompass the larger system in the values of wellbeing of the person and wellness of the environment. The research presented here explores systemic change and its values, the social impact that a material-focused, indigenous practice, driven by a focus on social benefits and circular approaches, can have on a larger systemic concerns. IRO IRO is presented as a case study for understanding the key characteristics of a decolonised, decentralised system of textile production. For this chapter, I interviewed all artisan collaborators IRO IRO has worked with (n = 17). Table 5.1 details the interview dates and profiles, with the given consent of the participants. This research process allowed a space for reflecting on the work that we have been able to do during the last four years as well as my own role in the process. This part of the research has been enlightening and has allowed our collective to see ourselves on a macro and a micro level. During this reflective practice, we mapped the work that we already had done, articulating the intended and unintended impacts our design practice rooted in circularity has had and wants to have. Extensive reading of

90  Bhaavya Goenka Table 5.1 Profiles of the artisans who collaborated with IRO IRO Name of artisan

Dates of interview

Age

Profile and Experience

Hari Narayan

20/12/2021 7/01/2022 26/01/2022 15/02/2022 25/02/2022 6/02/2022 20/02/2022 20/12/2021 7/01/2022 6/02/2022 20/02/2022 20/12/2021 7/01/2022 26/01/2022 6/02/2022 20/02/2022 20/12/2021 7/01/2022 26/01/2022 15/02/2022 25/02/2022 6/02/2022 20/02/2022 20/12/2021 7/01/2022 26/01/2022 25/02/2022 6/02/2022 20/02/2022 20/12/2021 7/01/2022 26/01/2022 6/02/2022 20/02/2022 20/12/2021 7/01/2022 26/01/2022 15/02/2022 25/02/2022 6/02/2022 20/02/2022 20/12/2021 7/01/2022 6/02/2022 20/02/2022 25/02/2022 6/02/2022 20/02/2022 25/02/2022 6/02/2022 20/02/2022

61

Started as an apprentice, worked for KVIC, left weaving in 1990 due to the economic slump, wove on the weekends for family, took up weaving again professionally for IRO IRO in 2018

61

Started as an apprentice, wove bandage, shifted to working for IRO IRO professionally in 2017

40

Started as apprentice, wove for ten years for KVIC, shifted to work with IRO IRO in 2018

35

Learned weaving with IRO IRO for four years, now works professionally and earns an income through weaving, used to work as a construction labourer in Jaipur before this

43

Trained with Weavers Service Centre in weaving and dyeing, has been working with IRO IRO for the past four years

40

Learned weaving from father and uncles, wife and son weave with him from his home

55

Learned weaving from father and uncles, husband and son weave with him from his home

56

Learned weaving from father and uncles, has been weaving for the past 20 years, rests at home if there is no specialised work Training with Weavers Service Centre in weaving and dyeing

Banwari Lal

Banwari Lal

Kailash Bunkar

Rajendra Bunkar

Nand Kishore

RuchalBunkar

Babu Lal Bunkar

Dinesh Kumar Ankit Kumar

21 21

Training with Weavers Service Centre in weaving and dyeing

Decolonising materials: the story of Govindgarh village  91 Achi Devi

Meera Devi

Jai Prakash Kabra

Sarita devi

Ganga devi

Jyoti Verma

Suman Verma

20/12/2021 7/01/2022 26/01/2022 15/02/2022 25/02/2022 20/12/2021 7/01/2022 6/02/2022 20/02/2022 20/12/2021 7/01/2022 26/01/2022 20/02/2022 20/12/2021 7/01/2022 15/02/2022 25/02/2022 6/02/2022 20/02/2022 20/12/2021 7/01/2022 26/01/2022 15/02/2022 20/02/2022 20/12/2021 7/01/2022 26/01/2022 15/02/2022 25/02/2022 6/02/2022 20/02/2022 20/12/2021 7/01/2022 26/01/2022 15/02/2022 25/02/2022 6/02/2022 20/02/2022

40

Has been working with IRO IRO to segregate waste and convert it into linear form for the past three years

61

Has been working with IRO IRO to segregate waste and convert it into linear form for the past three years Trained with Weavers Service Centre in weaving and dyeing, has been working with IRO IRO for the past four years Has been working with IRO IRO to segregate waste and convert it into linear form for the past three years, and drafts the warp yarn

45

40

35

Has been working with IRO IRO to segregate waste and convert it into linear form for the past four years

43

Has been working with IRO IRO to segregate waste and convert it into linear form for the past three years, and drafts the warp yarn

40

Has been working with IRO IRO to segregate waste and convert it into linear form for the past four years, and drafts the warp yarn

craft practitioners based in India, interviews with artisans attached with IRO IRO (the circular design practice) and artisans from other parts of India have woven the tapestry on which this chapter stands. There are certain political issues inter-woven with the textiles and textile culture of India that I hope to explore further in future writings.

The IRO IRO system …industrially advanced societies are striving to recover their own craft heritage as a source of creativity indispensable to contemporary need. New approaches

92  Bhaavya Goenka in the understanding of development also suggest the incredible value of India’s craft advantage. (Ashoke Chatterjee, 2016:1) IRO IRO is a circular design collective based in Jaipur. We define circular design as a practice driven with empathy, empathy towards all beings, towards the planet and towards ourselves and empathy keeping materials in the value chain. For us, the best way to execute such a practice is to work with waste, indigenous practices, people and the planet (Figure 5.3). With the aim to push innovation in upcycling, every year we create a collection to tell a unique story about the unseen and under-appreciated part of the anthropogenic. We create elevated clothing and textiles from waste and, in the process of upcycling, utilise crafts and knowledge indigenous to India that are highly functional, designed to last with a durable aesthetic for our customers. We practice zero-waste pattern-making technique, developed in Ancient India and still in practice in various parts of the country. Specialising in the Indian way of pattern cutting within this context allows us to document these indigenous techniques of the past and makes them relevant for today and sustainable for the future.

Figure 5.3 The decentralised supply chain of IRO IRO.

Decolonising materials: the story of Govindgarh village  93 With every collection, our objective is not to achieve scale but to attain prosperity throughout the value chain. The success of our approach has allowed our artisans to dictate their wage instead of accepting a barely minimum wage given to them and creates quality income opportunities in the village. Taking developmental opportunities to artisans prevents forced migration and ensures a good quality in not just the products we create but also in the lives of the people who make these products. We design multifunctional products to provide the best opportunity for a valuable and sustainable relationship between customer and garment. The holistic philosophy of IRO IRO meets with a customer who seeks a garment which genuinely has positive social and environmental impacts throughout the production system.

The IRO IRO journey in Govindgarh It started with a question: why does something as celebrated and personal as clothing have to be so polluting and so tragically cruel to its creators. I began researching the apparel manufacturing system in my fourth year of design school at IICD in a module called systems design, where I found out that waste is dealt with at the end of the supply chain with the mentality to just get rid of it and send it to the landfill, to ‘down-cycle’ it or burn it, meaning that a systems intervention was needed. It also became imperative for me to find a way to communicate that zero waste is inherently Indian. I formulated a business around this idea at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad in a course called ‘Creative and Cultural Business Program’ where IRO IRO won the best project award. Here, I learned to treasure my personal values and inculcated a thirst to keep refining them. The journey started with materials but by this point, the material and social stories have become intertwined and come together in the IRO IRO approach. This was the case in the village we started working with: Govindgarh, Chomu district. As narrated by JP. KABRA a master artisan skilled in handloom weaving: हम ग्राम - मल िकपु र त. - चौमू ल ििरा - ियपु र रराि. के मु ि ल िवरास ी है तथरा हमराररा मु ख य कराय्य कपड़रा बु ि राई है िो क ी हण्डिम ै ू मश ीि से कपड़े क ी बु ि राई करते आ रहे ह।ै एवं अपिे पर रवरार करा परािि पोषण करते आ रहे ह।ै तथरा यह बु ि राई करा कराय्य हम प ीढ़ ी दर प ीढ़ ी अथरा्य त पुश तै ि ी रूप से करते आ रहे ल िसमे समय के बदिराव अिु स रार कराफ ी उतरार - चढ़राव आये है परनतु फ फर भ ी हम बु ि राई करा कराय्य करके िसे ै तै से अपिे पर रवरार करा परािि पोषण कर रहे ह।ै तथरा बु ि राई के अल तर रक्त हमरारे परास रोिगरार करा अनय कोई सराधि िह ीं ह।ै यह क ी गरराम ् - मिल कपरु त. - चौम ू क े ह ी परास आिराद ी क े कछ ु समय बराद ररािसथ् राि वल करास मण्ड् ि गोवल िद् गढ़ - मिल कपरु त. - चौम ू क ी ि ीव ं ्डरािकर उसम े खराद ी करा कपड़रा ब िराई ु करवराइ। िल सम े हमरार े परविो ू ् ं ि े एव ं आस परास एव ं दरू दरू क े कराफ ी ब िकरो ु ं िे खराद ी कपड़ े करा ब िराई ु करा कराम कल यरा तथरा इस ी पर आतमिल ् रभर ् रह ।े परत ं ु ध ीर े ध ीर े समय बदितरा गयरा एव ं खराद ी म े ं ब िरा ु ई कम होत ी गई तथरा समय क े अि स ु रार बढ़ ी ह ईु महग ं राई क े अि सरार ु ब िकरो ु ं को ब िराई ु क ी मिदरू ी िह ी ं मल िि े क े करारण अधल कराश ं ब िकरो ु ं ि े ब िराई ु करा कराम छोड़ कर अिय् मिदरू ी करारय् करि े िग गए। परित् ु इसक े बराद ब िकरो ु ं ि े अपिरा समह ू सोसरायट ी बिकर ह ै्ड ं िम ू ्ड व े िपम टें करारप् ो क े दव् राररा धरागरा ि क े र कपड़रा ब िरा ु ई करा करारय् कल यरा एव ं इस ी पर आतम ् िल रभ ् र होि े िग ।े परित् ु सोसरायटल यो ं क े म ख ु य् िोगो ं दव् राररा ब िु करो ं क े सराथ मिमरािल यरा ं करि े क े करारण ब िु करो ं को वरासतव ् ल क ब िरा ु ई मिदरू ी िह ी ं द ी िराि े क े करारण ब िकरो ु ं ि े ब िराई ु करा करारय् छो्ड दल यरा एव ं अिय् करारय् करि े िग

94  Bhaavya Goenka गए। परित् ु इसक े बराद वरम ् रा ह ै्ड ं िम ू गोवल िद् गढ़ म े िगभग २-३ वरषो ् तक ब िरा ु ई करा करारय् कल यरा परित् ु अब हमि े ब िु करो ं करा मोहििरा ् वरार्ड् ि. ९ म े ं ररािशर् ी ह ै्ड ं िम ू बिराकर पि ं ीकत ृ करवराकर उसम े शल वम इटर ं िश े िि ियपरु दव् राररा धरागरा ि क े र कपं ि ी स े चराह े अि स ु रार ्डल िराइि स म े प् ि कपड़रा, ब ्ड ै श ीट, टरावि, दर ी आदल करा ब िराई ु करा करारय् कर रह े ह ।ै िो क ी िगभग ४ वरष् परव ू ् स े वरतमराि ् समय तक कर रह े ह ।ै English translation: We are weavers from Malikpur village in Chomu tehsil, Jaipur. Our main occupation since generations has been to weave cloth using a handloom, and to support the livelihood of our families. While we are continuing the legacy of weaving started out by our forefathers, there have been many ups and downs over the course of time. Despite these hardships, we are continuing to weave cloth and trying to look after our families. Apart from our weaving skill, there is little else we can do to sustain and earn our livelihood. A few years after independence, the Rajasthan Vikas Mandal Govindgarh laid the foundation for the weaving of khadi in the village of Malikpur. As a result our forefathers and weavers from near and far started khadi weaving and became self-reliant. With the passage of time, the number of khadi weavers started to dwindle and costs began to increase and the weavers were paid less for their effort and skill. Hence many weavers gave up weaving and took up other manual jobs to earn a daily wage. As a consequence, many weavers formed a cooperative society and sourced their thread from the Handloom Development Corporation. We carried on weaving independently to eventually become self-reliant. Unfortunately due to the demands of the management of the societies, the weavers did not get equivalent remuneration for their work and shifted to alternate jobs. Following this we wove cloth in Varma Handlooms, Govindgarh for 2–3 years. We have now registered the weavers of the community ward No. 9 as Rajshree Handlooms. We collect waste and work in collaboration with IRO IRO Jaipur and weave various products like textiles, towels and dhurries according to the designs provided by the company. We have been continuing this practice for the last 4 years till present day. Through this research, four themes have emerged that are central to the IRO IRO approach: 1 Circular practices that are inherently Indian, such as weaving with waste and zero waste 2 Decentralising textile and garment production, keeping people in their ancestral homes 3 Social stories and entanglements, that arise from a close consideration of culture and family 4 Decolonising materials, responding to the local knowledge and resources to build house-hold value chains These are expanded in the following sections before finally reflecting on the general characteristics of the IRO IRO approach that we can use to enable us to work with other villages.

Decolonising materials: the story of Govindgarh village  95 Circular practices that are inherently Indian The IRO IRO system involves sourcing textile waste from various clusters and industries: waste silk yarns from Banaras, a major hand-weaving cluster; block printed offcuts from Bagru, a village near Jaipur; hemp offcuts from hemp fabric lab; and the screen-printed azo-free machine-dyed offcuts. All these offcuts are cut into tiny scraps and painstakingly sewn back together to form a liner yarn. This liner yarn is then handwoven into our fabric. This process is time-consuming and difficult, but it is as beautifully unique as it is kind to the planet. We have collaborated with a luxury heritage hotel, design houses based in Japan and Singapore, a kids wear brand based in America and a very celebrated furniture design studio from Jaipur. All these collaborations not only allowed us to use our offcuts but also allowed us to use the waste other businesses were producing and help them to adopt circular models. It gave our artisans an opportunity to practice and keep defining what a refined fabric is when it is made from waste. So far, we have upcycled about 10,000 kg of waste off-cuts into handcrafted fabrics (80% sold), saving approximately 36,000 kg of CO2 from entering the atmosphere over the past three years (Vats and Rissanen, 2016) and generating work for 20 artisans based in a Govindgarh. Govindgarh is a village in the Chomu municipality of Rajasthan. Chomu was originally a princely state, founded in the 16th century by Rao Gopalji, the fourth son of Maharaj Prithviraj Singh I of Jaipur. Today, Govindgarh is a village comprising agrarian tracts, ruined medieval archways and a strong, historically rooted community of weavers. This community had once found royal patronage in the Royal House of Chomu, but their patronage shifted with the dissolution of the Princely States post-independence. The First and Second Five Year Plans of the newly independent Indian Government reorganised this weaving community significantly. They were given handlooms at 12 rupees a loom post-independence. They had always been weaving khadi, therefore, could develop their skills and pass them on but the craft could never develop a character of its own. At the onset of 2008, they had not been receiving enough work and, therefore, had to move to alternative jobs. However, weaving remained something that they could do from their homes without having to move to metro cities where their quality of life vastly depleted. IRO IRO grew from three weavers in 2017 to a family of 26 weavers by the end of 2018. Introduction of textile waste as a raw material also meant replacing yarns that the cluster had been using to weaving fabrics that they could sell to the government. This would be handspun khadi yarn and surprisingly a majority of it was polyester yarns – for the government had introduced ‘poly khadi’. In this spirit perhaps what I was exploring and what we are still exploring as IRO IRO is an expression of khadi for ourselves, and decolonising material and materiality further (Figures 5.1 and 5.2). We are also perhaps questioning and pushing the boundaries of what does ‘decolonising materials’ actually mean. For us, it is an act of reclaiming our heritage, indigenous practices but in a context that justifies these actions to the environment and brings prosperity throughout the value chain. Decentralised textile and garment production systems Taking income opportunities to rural India, instead of having artisans move to urban space, was one of the main reasons IRO IRO was established. Migrating to Indian urban

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spaces often depletes the quality of life for an artisan, who might have a home, land, family and often alternative ways of generating income like farming in their village. An urban lifestyle while affording them INR 1,000 a day (most of which they would need to send back to their village and spend to sustain themselves) would deprive them of the comforts of their homes and as well as force them to live in slums, in densely populated rooms, or with meagre resources. They would need to leave behind the practice of their craft which might have lived in their village for centuries and would need to learn to work as construction labourers putting their lives at risk every day. As I realised these impacts about the centralisation of development, the biggest question that loomed over me was why we are not taking income and development opportunities to the villages instead of having the workers move to urban cities. Handicraft has long been central to rural economies in India and this is the way in which it will also return and revive villages such as Govindgarh, as McGowan explains: … by one 1955 estimate, the value of total output across all crafts was at least Rs100 crore (Rs1 billion), representing massive employment across the length and breadth of India. As Chattopadhyay and others argued repeatedly, helping to improve productivity and find new markets for crafts could relieve poverty, better harness underutilized labour, increase output and earn foreign exchange. Both women also insisted that crafts mattered in cultural terms as both heritage and popular expression. Jayakar, for instance, argued in 1953 that crafts in India were ‘not merely a form of livelihood: in this country it has been the main channel through which the creative impulses of its people have found expression’. Similarly, Chattopadhyay argued that India had always been ‘a land of Crafts and Craftsmen’, which meant that ‘to understand Indian life is to understand Indian handicrafts, or vice versa to understand Indian handicrafts is to understand Indian life’. At a time of transition, as India was trying to establish its own cultural identity after two centuries of colonial rule, Chattopadhyay and Jayakar offered crafts as a way to access the past, building on historic traditions while still contributing to the economic and cultural future. (McGowan, 2021:7) The fact that Handicrafts in India is the second biggest employer after agriculture should be enough for us to think and employ meaningful interventions to support, sustain and revive it in rural communities. It is a sector that touches most people, in the most isolated villages where even electricity could not reach I have seen women spinning yarn and selling to the local tradesmen. Handicrafts then made it very visible that employment generation can be widespread and decentralised and offer income opportunities and a dignity of life. According to the Ministry of Textiles, the handicraft industry has shown a steady growth rate of 20 percent every year. The sector is expected to employ nearly 68.86 lakh.1 (Shah, 2022:n.p.) With such an opportunity and an education in design and management, I took it upon myself to drive this intervention, that lets me weave my own thread in the tapestry in Indian textiles.

Decolonising materials: the story of Govindgarh village  97 Social stories, entanglements and impacts Many of the weavers we work with in Govindgarh are women who were not allowed to work outside of their homes decided to learn to weave and now maintain an independent income. There still persists deep-rooted sexism in the form if the pardah system in this village, which demands the women of the village to hide their faces behind the fabric of their saris, limited access to the world around them and access to anywhere outside of home with a family male in company, is completely prohibited. Our focus as IRO IRO was also to develop opportunities of income for women of the village. The process of sorting the textile waste in terms of its size, colour and weight and then converting it into linear from ready to be used as weft is carried out by these women. At first, we needed this process to be simpler and we wanted to find people in the village that could carry out this process. Women from households that otherwise are engaged with agriculture volunteered as agriculture only let them work for a few months and earn an income accordingly. This work allowed them to work from home, not go through a skill training workshop, and generate an income for themselves independent of the household income. What transpired was something we could not have imagined. Women started to meet in the afternoons to do this work together. Eventually, we found a place for them to work out of in the village with the panchayat (local governance permission) and forbade men to enter this space. The space allowed the women to have conversations that they couldn’t have otherwise in the presence of men and build a feeling of community and a space for themselves. Ganga Devi, who is highly skilled at creatively segregating textile waste, said I have saved all the money I earn from this activity. I have had my daughter admitted to the Rajasthan University for her higher education. She is the first in my family to receive this opportunity. I have told her that for her, marriage is a choice, she need not marry if she doesn’t want to. This was one of the most gratifying and heartening exchanges of the practice I have had. A completely unintentional impact made me realise when leaving the power with people, they have the choice to empower themselves from within and then pass that empowerment to someone over whom they have influence. After the segregation of waste and its conversion into linear strips, this waste is taken on the looms to be woven into a new fabric. We have introduced techniques like embroidery, knitting and crochet in the region for women to practice at home and develop finished products, as well as textiles. The rural arts of India are the arts of the settled villages and countryside, of people with lives tuned to the rhythm of nature and its laws of cyclical change, an art with a central concern with the earth and with harvesting…The rural arts of India are the visual expression and technological processes that had remained static for over two thousand years…Rural arts are also the arts of people living in forests and mountains, the ancient inheritors of this land, who claim to be the first-born of the earth….. (Jayakar, 1989 quoted in Chatterjee, 2016)

98  Bhaavya Goenka In our practice, we tried to centralise the work to certain work points in the village. We built a shed and placed the looms there, for the weavers to come and to work from. However, with time we realised that the commute itself was problematic for certain weavers, who would only travel on foot due to the unavailability of public transport. On foot travel would require some of them to walk for 20–30 minutes one way every day in place that might not be conducive for walking (due to lack of pavements or footpaths). As the pandemic hit, we went back to working from home; weavers who already had looms at their homes started work from home and we found our production of fabric to be more efficient and of higher quality. We realised the smaller systems we make that can be replicated create higher prosperity for the person engaging with the work. When artisans work from home, while they weave textiles, they are also more present to their children and are able to take active role in their children’s lives. They would also teach their children weaving, who just by the virtue of seeing/assisting their parents in their work develop a deeper relationship with them and seeing a steady income generated by their shared practice makes the indigenous practice living their communities for years an inspirational profession. The danger to rural India lies in accepting the values and norms of technological culture and of a consumer-oriented society, and in doing so, losing communion with nature and its inexhaustible resources of energy. The danger is of losing the sense of mysterious sacredness of the earth that ‘life-giving, tranquil, fragrant, auspicious Mother’ invoked in the Atharva Veda. (Jayakar, 1989 quoted in Chatterjee, 2016) Decolonising and decentralising materials, by proposing a household value chain It was a chance conversation with these women weavers that brought aakh to the forefront. During a usual work day of spinning cotton yarn on a charkha (spinning wheel), the grandmother of IRO IRO’s operational manager, described how she used to work with a different fibre, derived from the plants that still grow in her backyard, and indeed, in the backyards of all her neighbours. Speaking Marwari, she referred to this fibre as ‘aakh’ and told us how in her day (some 30–50 years ago), she and her family, and many others like them, would collect the pods of the plant, to sell to traders. These traders would then sell these pods at a marked-up price in the local markets. The main buyers of these pods were devotees of God Shiva; the aakh pods, with their narcotic and toxic properties, are a popular offering to this deity of destruction in the Hindu pantheon (Figure 5.4). Aside from the religious significance, the weavers stipulated that aakh had also played a significant role in their main trade – weaving. The same pods that were offered to Shiva, when allowed to bloom, would produce a cotton-like, silkenfibre, which could be worked with to produce textiles, and sometimes, finished products like carpets and quilts. The weaving cluster at Govindgarh had once done just this under the patronage of the royal house, approximately a century ago. Further research and investigation, aided by Kanupriya Bunkar – a botanist who also happens to be the daughter of our Operations’ Manager – confirmed that this plant was a milkweed of sorts, scientifically known as Calotropis gigantea, one that flourished with different regional nicknames across the Indian subcontinent.

Decolonising materials: the story of Govindgarh village  99

Figure 5.4 T his image is of Aakh, the indigenous fibre we have been researching for the past few years. This fibre represents the hope for a flourishing future through decolonising and reviving the practice of indigenous knowledge within the modern context.

Our initial exploration revealed: •

•

•

Aakh grows in abundance and without the need for any human intervention. It takes over substantial areas of wasteland, and non-cultivable land in Govindgarh. This means that seasonally, there is a significant amount of aakh pods in bloom, and the residents of Govindgarh, both weaver and otherwise, are acquainted with the weed and its potential financial benefits. Because of the plant’s abundant availability, there seems to have been some innovation in terms of its function already. Anecdotal evidence suggests that aakh was indeed harnessed – it was spun and delivered tangible results in the form of yarn. Even though there is no ‘native’ literature – no written documentation, that we know of yet – to support these anecdotal accounts, the anecdotal accounts by themselves are surprisingly descriptive. While the generation that regularly spun aakh no longer exists, there is a potential treasure trove of information embedded in the memories of the current generation of weavers to provide us with a basic picture of the process that is required to create yarn from the fibre.

These facts led IRO IRO to contemplate the option of setting up an experimental household value chainround aakh. The idea is to collect the fibre from individual homes, thereby introducing a new local, decentralised means to generate an income.

100  Bhaavya Goenka In winter 2018, IRO IRO ran a pilot programme to test this value-chain system with just one household – that of IRO IRO’s Operational Manager, Mr. Rajendra. The pilot encouraged this spinner – household to reproduce the process of aakh yarn creation in accordance with the accounts of Mr. Rajendra’s grandmother, the lady who had initially directed our attention to aakh. At the outset, the tentative idea was to attempt to document the oral accounts around the plant and then to reproduce – not invent – the aakh yarn, in collaboration with its current cultural custodians – the residents of Govindgarh. IRO IRO plans to establish a system of a household value chain incorporating all interested partner households in Govindgarh, and eventually in four more villages in Rajasthan. The system extends to both weaver and non-weaver families and arms them with the skills and ability to collect and process aakh, in return for monetary reimbursement. The chain begins with collection, where households are trained in the procedures to collect the aakh fibres in the summer months. The training encompasses reiterating the plant’s toxic attributes – its sap can cause mild skin irritation and, when brought in contact with the eyes, can cause temporary vision impairment. These effects are easily avoidable with the use of basic protective gear, which IRO IRO shall provide to partner collectors. The second stage entails the processing of the collected fibre, into usable yarn. Initially, it will be the ‘spinner households’ – the weaver clusters of Govindgarh who are encouraged to turn aakh into fabric or yarn according to a collaborative design process. This would ensure work for these households all year round and encourage the ‘only collector’ households to learn spinning or weaving to generate income accordingly. To facilitate this, IRO IRO would take on the responsibility of organising skill development workshops for the interested people. The third stage will focus on developing a handloom weaving cluster. IRO IRO’s own experiences have shown that while artisans undoubtedly have the skill, they do not always have a sensitivity towards quality. This is something that is greatly improved under our collaborative design approach, where weavers are encouraged to think like designers and designers are encouraged to think like weavers. This process successfully ‘closes’ this chain – where the final product is a symbiotic result of a weaver–designer collaboration, and not the sole creation of one or the other.

An approach to decolonised and decentralised materials innovation Our aspiration remains to be able to weave waste into textiles, re-introduce the indigenous practices that thrived in the region and build smaller and robust systems that might be co-dependent but independent of a larger, central organisation. With the story illustrated through this case study, we can come up with a scalable framework for sensitive and meaningful design intervention in a village in India. I find an enthusiasm for listening, learning and responsiveness to the context almost like a research practice, is essential to meaningful intervention. Intervention that is symbiotic in nature. This framework relies on: 1 Understanding the culture of making: Instead of focusing on skill development, we have been focused on skill identification, what skills and resources already exist in any given region, with a respect for a dignified life and not exploitative of humans or nature.

Decolonising materials: the story of Govindgarh village  101

Seeking collaborations with local businesses allowed us to build an ecosystem of co-creation, to advocate transparency and camaraderie in the Fashion industry, to get ourselves to a future where we can create space for solutions, spotlight harmful practices and hold space for diversity instead of homogeneity. The next step for IRO IRO will be to continue with these practices but also, when an opportunity presents, and with sensitivity, to take this framework to other villages and share the benefits of this approach beyond Govindgarh.

Note 1 Lakh is an Indian unit. A lakh in English is one hundred thousand.

References Arote, A. B. (2021) Study on Fashion Design and Latest Trends. [online] Available at: https:// ctmcacademy.com/study-on-fashion-designing-latest-trends [Accessed 12 July 2022]. Banerjee, S. (2017). Review of A Frayed History: The Journey of Cotton in India Review: Thread of Misery. [online] The Hindu. Available at: https://www.thehindu.com/books/ books-reviews/a-frayed-history-the-journey-of-cotton-in-india-review-thread-of-misery/ article21296597.ece [Accessed 11 November 2021]. Chatterjee, A. (2016). Can Our Future be Handmade? Journal of Heritage Management, 1(1), pp. 1–11. Jayakar, P. (1989). The Earth Mother. New Delhi: Penguin Books (India). McGowan, A. (2021). Mothers and Godmothers of Crafts: Female Leadership and the Imagination of India as a Crafts Nation, 1947–67. Journal of South Asian Studies, 44(2), 1–16. Minney, S. (2017). Why Racism in Fashion Goes Deeper Than You Think: An Interview with Sandra Niessen by SafiaMinney. Fashion Act Now. E-zine article available from https://www.fashionactnow.org/post/why-racism-in-fashion-goes-deeper-than-you-think [Accessed 12 July 2022]. Shah, M. (2021). 5 Reasons Why the Indian Handicrafts Sector Will Get Its Due in 2023–24 Globally. [online] Indian Retailer. Available at: https://www.indianretailer.com/article/ whats-hot/retail-trends/5-reasons-why-the-indian-handicrafts-sector-will-get-its-due-in2023-24-globally.a7312/ [Accessed 12 July 2022]. Tharoor, S. (2015). Britain Does Owe Reparations. Oxford Union Society Address. Recording available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4 [Accessed 12 July 2022]. Vats, S. and Rissanen, M. (2016). Parameters Affecting the Upcycling of Waste Cotton and PES/CO Textiles. Recycling, 1(1), pp. 166–177. https://doi.org/10.3390/recycling1010166

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NTU X Emmanuel House Developing a responsible design practice with fashion students and service users Katherine Townsend, Emma Prince, Alison Escott and Gill Barker

Introduction The impact of the fashion and textile industry on the global climate crisis is leading designers to shift their priorities to be more environmentally and politically focused, enhancing the social fabric of society through artistic interventions and activism (Checinska & Watson, 2016; von Busch, 2022). The new landscapes of design present possibilities for creative practitioners to be introduced to reuse and recycling and to overturn the established system, by working with what they already have access to (Payne, 2021; Solanki, 2018). NTU X Emmanuel House is an ongoing responsible fashion enquiry responding to the need for empirical research into circular design, education and business models which acknowledge the vital participatory role that consumers and local communities can play (Niinimaki, 2018; Palomo-Lovinski & Faerm, 2020). The project was devised in 2019 by academics from the Nottingham School of Art and Design, Nottingham Trent University (NTU) and staff at Emmanuel House, a local charity supporting homeless and vulnerable people. A project brief was devised around developing solutions to the problems created by the abundance of post- consumer clothing waste being donated to the charity, much of which was unsuitable for their service users to wear, or for resale to raise funds. Initially delivered as a live industry project, Level 4 Fashion Design students address environmental and socio-economic issues, caused by the ‘growth model’ (Fletcher & Tham, 2019) by sourcing and upcycling unwanted textiles and by considering the clothing requirements of service users to inform the design of outerwear garments. This chapter discusses the multiple methods encompassed within the NTU X Emmanuel House circular economy model (Figure 6.2) with each activity supporting the students to undertake an individual research project from an environmentcentred perspective (Sznel, 2020). The methodology is informed by ‘participatory research through clothing design’ (Townsend & Sadkowska, 2020) and the application of ‘material methods’ to negotiate entanglements between people and things (Woodward, 2019). A requirement of the students’ material sourcing involves volunteering at Emmanuel House to sort donations for reuse, resale or rag. The process is framed through references to practitioners using upcycling strategies, including Martin Margiela, whose deconstruction practice has inspired a new generation to reprise the role of rag picker. The collaborative learning experience was established in 2018/2019, followed by subsequent developments of the project, including designing remotely to create digital

DOI: 10.4324/9781003260356-7

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Figure 6.1 Students setting off from Nottingham Trent University to model outerwear garments with service users in the NTU X Emmanuel House @ Creative Quarter showcase event on 6 October 2021. Photo by Tasha Pike, copyright Nottingham Trent University, 2021.

artefacts during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019/2020 and the application of hybrid learning practices in 2021. Project outcomes include two community fashion events, a short documentary film and over 200 adaptable outerwear garments, many of which have been donated to the charity’s service users. Dissemination of the sustainable initiative has led to industry support from high profile brands in the form of preconsumer waste, to augment the charity’s donations. The project demonstrates how creative activism through material repurposing is an essential part of the designers’ toolkit (von Bush, 2022); facilitating significant learning about the impact of the fashion system by addressing: how charities are dealing with consumer waste and clothing poverty; invisible fashion demographics; and the creative and economic potential of adopting circular approaches with and for the local community.

Project partners Emmanuel House The Emmanuel House Support Centre was founded in 1976 as an independent charity supporting homeless, vulnerable and isolated adults in Nottingham, providing ‘a range of diverse and accessible services that meet people’s basic needs, including with mental health, substance abuse, domestic violence or offending histories’ (Emmanuel House Support Centre, 2021). The charity relies on a core staff team of

104  Katherine Townsend et al. 22 and 70 volunteers, welcomes over 2,000 visitors a month and is funded by the National Lottery and European Social Fund.1 In December 2019, Nottingham had almost 1,000 recorded rough sleepers, drastically reduced in 2020 by the Everyone In scheme during the first COVID-19 lockdown, which increased again in 20212 (Crisis cited in Fitzpatrick et al., 2020). Emmanuel House has a charity shop which is integral to the centre’s work and staffed by volunteers, providing work experience and good quality second-hand clothing for service users. Sorting and merchandising donations involves categorising items into three collections: (1) for service users’ functional needs; (2) for resale in the shop re seasonal trends; and (3) to sell as rag. Poor-quality clothing makes up 80% of donations reflecting that the low value of fast fashion garments makes ‘it more economically rewarding for consumers to dispose of them after a short use phase’ (Strebinger & Derwanz, 2019: 2). People in the UK buy more clothes per person than any other country in Europe, exacerbating the glut of second-hand clothing and depressing prices for used textiles (UK Parliament, 2019). Consequently, many charity shops have been turned into recycling hubs, requiring the commitment of additional resources, sometimes for less reward. BA fashion design, NTU On BA (Hons) Fashion Design students are encouraged to question how fundamental aspects of practice and theory can be used as research tools, to develop creative solutions and identities through the craft of fashion and its articulation (Lahti & Fernstroöm, 2021). In the first year, the Curiosity (120 credit) programme enables students to explore, develop and apply the principles of fashion design. Students strengthen their knowledge and skills by working in multidisciplinary groups with a set of toolkits including ‘future thinking’. The toolkit invites students to join Fashion Fictions (2022) led by Dr Amy Twigger-Holroyd, to focus on projecting sideways to a parallel present with different practices and cultures, to design preferable systems, not just ‘better’ products, in alignment with the Earth Logic Fashion Action Research Plan3 (Fletcher & Tham, 2019). Lectures and seminars hosted by the course and Fashion and Textile Research ­Centre4 build staff and student awareness of core issues relating to design responsibility and ethics, as presented by Timo Rissanen, Kate Fletcher, Mathilda Tham and Alice Payne between 2018 and 2021. Students are motivated to gain the ‘Sustainability in Practice’ award from the university’s Green Academy and join Fashion Revolution NTU.5 The course is recognised for its strong links with industry and visiting lecturers including Christopher Raeburn, Nigel Cabourn and Shingo Sato, whose relative practices involve the repurposing of vintage fabrics for outerwear and ‘transformational reconstruction’.6

Research model and context The connected issues of clothing waste and clothing poverty informed a research model involving collaboration with Emmanuel House to source available materials through rag picking, and participation with service users to inform upcycled designs for practical use or resale. The principles of a circular economy are reflected by the

NTU X Emmanuel House  105 research model, illustrated in Figure 6.2, based on the principles of environmentcentred design: Environment-centred design (ECD) is an approach to product or service development that aims to make products or services environmentally, socially and economically sustainable by focusing on the needs, limitations and preferences of target human audience and non-human strategic stakeholders. It involves knowledge of design techniques developed at the intersection of human-centred design, usability, ecology, and sustainability science. (Sznel, 2020: np) The responsible fashion design model encourages students to consider interactions between ‘nature and culture’, ‘power and society’, as discussed at What’s Going On? A discourse on fashion, design and sustainability 7 (Global Fashion Conference, 2018). Papers explored issues arising from fast fashion production and clothing waste, ‘the crucial leadership role of fashion design education’, and the need for ‘social business models’ (Rissanen, 2018). A workshop event informed a manifesto by the Union of Concerned Researchers in Fashion8, who called on researchers to unite in disrupting and accelerating the uptake of ‘other ways’ in the sector.

Figure 6.2 NTU X Emmanuel House, Circular, responsible fashion design and education model. Illustration by A. Escott 2021.

106  Katherine Townsend et al. Alternative  design  strategies  were also proposed at Everything and Everybody as Material, which questioned the materials and practices of fashion and who the resulting products might be for? (Thornquist & Bigolin, 2017). In Worn Again undertaken by the Centre for Circular Design (CCD)9 the researchers defined their ‘design for upcycling’ approach; the creative outcomes not only conserving raw materials but also embodying new economic, intellectual and emotional values resulting from the application of new knowledge in the course of their recirculation (Earley, 2011: 3). Insights into the values and practices of garment use and experience have been revealed through comprehensive wardrobe studies and resulting methods (Fletcher & Klepp, 2017). ‘Extending and intensifying use, reusing the same object in a new context, and innovative reuse are some of the ways that shift use to the centre of circular thinking’ (Niinimäki, 2018: 18). Encouraging greater understanding of how garments are made and worn by designers and wearers has informed zero waste, user-modifiable garments, conceptualising wearers as active users rather than passive purchasers (McQuillan & Rissanen, 2022: 163). Theoretical research into the affordances of used accessories (Sherlock, Joannides & Jagiello, 2022) and discarded knitted garments (Landahl & Malmgren de Oliveira, 2022) are recent examples of how garment-based learning is impacting sustainable fashion design pedagogy. These action research directions underpin the urgency to develop post-growth, holistic systems (Fletcher & Tham, 2019; Whitty, 2021). The NTU X Emmanuel House methodology requires education and industry to alter perceptions of the role of the future designer, by engaging with human and non-human actors to recycle and create with what is already there (Khamisani, 2021; Payne, 2021).

Collaboration The NTU X Emmanuel House collaboration grew out of an enquiry by Katherine Townsend in April 2018, on behalf of the Clothing Sustainability Research Group10 into extending product lifetimes and to explore the charity’s position on clothing poverty, as also tackled by Sharewear.11 Meetings with Gill Barker, Marketing and Fundraising Assistant at Emmanuel House instigated the idea for a student-led collaboration to support the charity by extending the value of its donations through fashion design and marketing strategies. Planning sessions involving Emma Prince, Course Leader for BA Fashion Design, enabled the live industry project to be devised and trialled as part of a 60-credit module for Level 4 undergraduate students in 2018/2019. The first iteration involved first-year Fashion Design students on a mandatory basis, first and third-year Fashion Communication & Promotion and Photography students voluntarily. A small funding application was submitted to the university’s Sustainable Futures call in November 2018. Although the bid was unsuccessful, the stated research aims and objectives formed the basis of the project, which was realised through donations, voluntary support from students, an independent filmmaker, staff from Emmanuel House and the School of Art and Design.12 Developing the brief with service users During the months leading up to the project, staff from Emmanuel House set aside clothing donations for the students to use. A clothing/textile bank was set up in the

NTU X Emmanuel House  107 School of Art and Design, to encourage staff and students to donate items and volunteer at the charity, to pick out items for the shop by building on the three existing sorting pathways: 1 Warm, waterproof, comfortable garments suitable for outdoor conditions. 2 Good quality, fashionable and desirable items selected for resale in the charity shop. 3 Clothing suitable for its textile waste set aside for upcycling with worn out, unfashionable, soiled items collated to be collected by the rag man. In preparation for the project launch in February 2019, Barker coordinated a group discussion with Emmanuel House service users who had experience of sleeping rough. When asked about their specific ‘clothing needs and preferences’ they expressed them as:A onesie sleeping bag with fur inside of it/thermal in one colour e.g. red, blue, black A sleeping bag that you can walk in with pockets; A panic button/alarm; A light in the hood Inside pockets A specific logo – to be decided A long zip – to be able to go to the toilet! Packable / Washable Can be turned inside out Aims and objectives NTU X Emmanuel House built on the team’s experience of pedagogic, industry and research practice, by connecting staff and students from higher education with members of a charitable, business organisation. The project was devised in line with NTU’s strategic research aims and themes of Sustainable Futures and Creative Community, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of: (1) no poverty; (8) decent work and economic growth; (9) repurposing old material; (11) sustainable cities and communities; (12) responsible consumption and production; and (13) educate young people – climate action. At the briefing, clothing concepts based on an ethos of reuse were used to illustrate the goals, e.g. Goal 12: Atelier and Repair and Christopher Raeburn’s RÆMADE (Townsend et al., 2019). The aims of the sustainable design and education enquiry were to: • • • • •

raise awareness of clothing waste and clothing poverty reveal what happens to garments donated to charity explore methods for upcycling clothing to extend material/ product lifetimes use fashion design interventions to support Emmanuel House and its service users employ fashion design, marketing and communication strategies to promote the charity shop and project through a public event

These aims were echoed by a set of objectives, explained at the project briefing whereby  the students were tasked to practically explore: how the longevity of second-hand clothing could be extended by applying and sharing their knowledge and

108  Katherine Townsend et al. skills of (re-)design and upcycling; through customisation and repair, and digital media platforms for merchandising and in-store promotion. Participatory engagement There are various successful examples of projects where fashion and textile researchers have engaged at grass roots level to develop sustainable design solutions (Earley, 2011; Fletcher & Klepp, 2017; Niinimäki, Durrani & Khotala, 2021). However, until recently, there have been limited guidelines for how to go about this, as explored through Stitching Together which highlighted the following ethical dimensions: …the challenge of inclusivity; second, the vulnerabilities that arise when space is made for shared learning; third, the issue of communication between facilitators, participants and partners in collaborative projects; and fourth, the ways in which projects and participants are (re)presented in research findings. (Shercliffe & Twigger-Holroyd, 2020: 3) These principles are reiterated in the ‘participatory research through clothing design model’ developed by Townsend and Sadkowska (2020) for Stitching Together and explicitly underpinned the engagement between students and service users in NTU X Emmanuel House. The model encompasses three stages of co-creation (input, participation, output) derived from the analysis of ‘ladders of participation’ developed to address uneven power structures in society (Townsend & Sadkowska, 2020: 15). Opportunities for the ‘sharing and co-ownership’ of information and outcomes enabled the participants, researchers and tools of research to contribute equally ­ (Woodward, 2019). In addressing the needs of the charity and its community, students were encouraged to adopt a ‘person-centred’, relational approach to designing a garment system that was fit for purpose and facilitated personalisation (Kettley, Kettley & Lucas, 2016). Working through the inclusive design brief was supported with opportunities for reflective learning by encouraging students to question and express their ideas through writing and visualisations, using their findings from ethnographic fieldwork (at the centre) to make sense of the social effects of materials (Rose, 2016).

Reprising Margiela’s methodology (2018/2019) The rationale for reprising the role of the Victorian ragpicker in a sustainable fashion context built on Martin Margiela’s ‘deconstruction fashion’ methodology enacted through the transformation of, and references to, used clothing (Gill, 1998). Margiela’s upcycling of vintage denim, raincoats, readymades, and his remaking of ‘relics’ and exploration of patina as an aesthetic device (Debo, 2008 in Townsend, 2011) constitute a design philosophy the students were interested to adopt. The upcycling of selected and found items involved ‘deconstruction/reconstruction’ techniques; the un-making of existing products selected from a living archive to ‘remake and remodel’ new, wearable fashion (Townsend, Kettley & Walker, 2020: 95). The deconstruction of readymade items provided free materials while teaching them

NTU X Emmanuel House  109 about garment construction through reverse engineering and a process of ‘analytical creation’ (Martin & Koda, 1993 cited in Gill, 1998). Students explored textile processes to support the deconstructed approach by carefully unpicking, cutting-up and re-assembling using hand and machine stitching, applying patchwork and repair techniques such as darning and mending. Briefing The collaborative team coordinated and managed the project throughout the 15-week module, (February–May 2019). The fashion course involved 75 Level 4 students and 7 tutors working across 2D/3D design and product development. Prince acted as module leader and Senior Lecturer, Alison Escott, utilised recent industry experience to contribute to the brief and advise the students on their research and design concepts. All the authors contributed to briefings, volunteering and the public fashion event, coordinated by Barker. Prince and Escott contextualised the responsible design context through examples of upcycled/adaptive wear and social entrepreneurship by artists/designers/ researchers including NTU alumni. Barker introduced the work of Emmanuel House and Townsend presented ‘Fashion as a Social, Sustainable Practice’, emphasising the shifting categories of materials, perceptions of ‘newness’ and the body that makes or performs fashion (Kirkum cited in Thornquist & Bigolin, 2017). Following reflection on the personal requirements of service users, Prince identified nine statements to communicate the critical nature of the brief: • • • • • • • • •

Be comfortable Be detachable Be dry Be functional Be protected Be secure Be transformable Be warm Be visible

Each statement was illustrated by images and keywords, for example: ‘Be protected’, referenced: defence, shelter, preservation, safeguarding, sanctuary, refuge, visualised via Lucy Orta’s Refuge Wear, Massimo Osti’s poncho for CP Company and the Kevlar ‘stab-proof’ vest. To help the students contextualise their ideas, the cohort met with a panel of service users at Emmanuel House, who explained how changing circumstances led to destitution and the kind of outer garments they would like to own. Some individuals disclosed their interests, hobbies and vulnerabilities – touching on the practical, emotional and social motives of clothing (Ellen MacArther Foundation, 2017: 73). One ex-service user and volunteer mentioned how he had been a hairdresser and continued to cut hair (when homeless and housed) to raise his own self-esteem and that of the people he met. He suggested the inclusion of discreet, lined pockets inside a jacket would be useful to carry (and hide) his scissors.

110  Katherine Townsend et al. Significant learning Taking two statements as a starting point, students were asked to design a range of six garments in response to their research. They were to develop, pattern cut and manufacture an outerwear piece based on one of their ideas and produce a final portfolio showcasing the project journey, demonstrating an understanding of CAD to address learning outcomes. The act of creating these materials via a live project was based on the curriculum’s focus on active, ‘significant learning’ something more likely to occur when students are engaged experientially, supported by reflective dialogue, doing something besides listening (Fink, 2013). The use of unwanted textiles as fabric sources required careful framing, the focus on reusing second-hand clothing challenging the culture and consumption of fashion, which is both ‘material and materialistic’ (Woodward, 2019). The project coincided with The Community Live in Nottingham (Bonington Gallery, 2019) where Tenant of Culture, a ‘rag-picker of mass-media or media-industrial production’13 invited the students and service users to a three-day workshop where they created speculative art/ fashion objects from discarded garments and plastic waste. The three-tier sorting process performed by the students at Emmanuel House provided insights into how to redeem the highest functional, fashionable and material value. Rag picking acted as a way of connecting with the charity, an alternate DIY design practice (Niinimäki, Durrani & Khotala, 2021) and learning method; the presence of material objects assisting an investigation of (un)sustainable material culture (Strebinger & Derwanz, 2019) as vocalised by one student: ‘what to say other than I’m a bit p***ed off at people that use charity donation as a means of getting rid of “trash”’. Staff and students were surprised by how many donations were classified as ‘rag’ to be sold to ‘the ragman’ by the kilo. The charity sorts two categories of (good and bad) rag and to avoid getting the lowest price (for shredding), items have to be wearable as they are sold to be shipped abroad. The western practice of exporting unwanted clothing to other countries presents an unethical approach to recycling based on a linear model of ‘take, make and waste’ (UK Parliament, 2019; Whitty, 2021). Experiencing these consequences first-hand influenced the students’ perception of the industry, how they might design better quality, more long-lasting products. Design for use In tutorial groups of 6–8, students and tutors were asked to bring in ‘a favourite item of clothing that they were connected to and explain why?’ This encouraged participants to think about their wardrobes in relation to ‘practices of use’ (Fletcher & Klepp, 2017) and how textiles impact garment longevity (Townsend & Sadkowska, 2018). The show-and-tell sessions prompted interesting conversations around different perceptions of second-hand garments highlighting that in some cultures ‘reuse’ and ‘recycle’ do not exist, as in the English-speaking world, but that other sustainable material approaches are ingrained in everyday life (Solanki, 2019). Some students were a little confused about taking garments apart while others were reluctant to donate final designs to the charity but the small group tutorial format provided a perfect opportunity for them to air their concerns, ask specific questions,

NTU X Emmanuel House  111 review and compare their developing ideas with peers (Race, 2010). They were also encouraged to broaden their primary investigations through secondary research via exhibitions, army surplus stores, sustainable brands, modular products and organic forms. Un-making fashion A core aim of the brief was to use ‘upcycling’ to create products that were of higher quality and use/value than the original. The group was quick to capitalise on denim which was plentiful, collating un/worn fragments in similar/contrasting shades and treatments, to re-assemble later with other identified textile groups and constituent elements (Townsend et al., 2019: 8). The process of ‘un-making’ provided: …the information both material and systemic that is embedded in the details of the way clothing is constructed and how this might be used towards alternative modes of knowing and doing fashion. (Hoette in Fletcher & Klepp, 2017: 151). The concept of ‘working in reverse’ using product deconstruction to source fabrics and ‘garment displacement’ to model silhouettes challenged the students to push their pattern cutting and manufacturing skills, by adopting a zero-waste approach when a selected material was finite and by mimicking technology applications to achieve a cohesive, professional finish. Designing durable garments for varying scenarios and weather conditions, required getting into the mindset of the potential wearer (Palomo-Lovinski & Faerm, 2019) including research into refuge wear14 which can be worn repeatedly ‘becoming a space of everyday inhabitance, dwelling and configuration’ (Gill, 1998: 41). Selected outerwear designs The following outerwear garments (2019/2020) encapsulate the ‘design for use’ approach adopted by the students. Be Transformable by Liberty Green: Inspired by the concept of ‘Abode’, Liberty researched how animals make and use shelter to create portable habitats. The design provided the wearer with comfort and protection from the elements, day and night, when sleeping outdoors by transforming into a shelter. Upcycled materials: boat canvas, gazebo tent, backpack components and an old jacket. Be Visible by Nicole Kozlov: Constructed from waterproof and hi-vis textiles, the coat was designed as ‘a garment to treasure’ inspired by the service users who discussed their need ‘to look presentable, have good self-esteem and ultimately feel more positive while facing homelessness’. Nicole’s aim was to create an outerwear garment that was practical, eye catching and stylish. Upcycled materials: three damaged coats, scrap fabrics of fleece and reflective trims.

112  Katherine Townsend et al. Be Secure by Kirsty Lenihan: The hooded jacket is influenced by British council estates: the behaviours and attitudes of the youth; the ‘spirit’ of community and sense of belonging. Integrated with secure pockets for keeping personal belongings safe, the garment offered lightweight durability, is easy to fold, carry and transport. Upcycled materials: discarded tarpaulin, a fleece top, hi-vis and waterproof jacket, gym bag. Designing for an identified end user required critical thinking and analytical skills to derive suitable outcomes in functional, personalised technological and environmental terms (Kettley, 2015). Requests by some service users for garments to incorporate logos, encouraged the designers to consider aesthetics alongside practical issues; implementing the role of fashion to clothe the body and constitute personal identity (Entwistle & Townsend, 2020). One student explored the notion of luxury as an egalitarian material (Thornquist & Bigolin, 2017) by 3D-printing initialised badges. This sophisticated branding of upcycled materials turned the clothing into a form of ‘justice machine’ by making the issue of homelessness tangible (von Busch, 2020:  xix). Over 70 final garments were submitted for assessment, a selection of which were featured in Wearing Justice (Townsend et al., 2020). Community fashion event Students and service users came together on 30 May 2019 to present the final garments in a salon style fashion show at Emmanuel House support centre (Figure 6.3). Over 150 community guests attended: including shop customers, members of the Creative Quarter, friends and colleagues from NTU. In total, 34 different looks were modelled by 17 students, volunteers and service users. The garments were selected from 70 finished pieces (the remainder of which were present) encompassing responses to nine BE WORDS collated as: hi-vis, denim, craft, comfort and function. The pieces demonstrated thoughtful work integrating multiple textile processes, with strong, flexible silhouettes. A common thread was the ‘completeness’ of the concepts which not only related to the designer’s vision and the reuse of cloth but also prioritised the wearer (McQuillan & Rissanen, 2020: 149). The event was well received and after the show the audience met the models and students, complementing them on their performances and designs. Following assessment key pieces were archived by NTU, but most wearable items were donated to the shop. During the project FCP students gave the shop a makeover and the window was redesigned by a Graphic Design student. Post event, the shop’s takings more than doubled. The showcase was equally significant for the Emmanuel House service users, giving them a voice and sense of being valued. As vulnerable people they often feel marginalised but throughout the collaboration their design preferences had been acknowledged and contributions recognised. One female participant struggling with anxiety and depression became involved and modelled two outfits, confirming later that the whole experience enhanced her self-esteem and confidence. The event presented a notable contrast to high profile, fashion industry catwalks, by focusing on ‘sharing’ what had been made through cooperation between different socio-cultural groups, as documented in a short film made by Turbine Creative (2019).

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Figure 6.3 Students, service users and volunteers modelling at the Emmanuel House X NTU Fashion Event. Photo by Ian Cutmore, 2019.

From physical to digital outcomes (2019/2020) The second iteration of NTU X Emmanuel House was launched in February 2020 to a cohort of 110 students, with updated lectures providing tangible strategies for ‘making durability more attractive and increasing clothing utilisation further’ (Ellen MacArther Foundation, 2017: 73). A visit to the charity and meeting with service users, included Koomz, who had been given one of the outerwear pieces in the winter, described by its maker Phoebe Sinnassamy as: ‘a heavily quilted coat constructed from existing garments and scrap waste, with an integrated zip-on section that transformed it into a sleeping bag’. Koomz had delivered a handwritten note to NTU in December 2019 addressed to Phoebe which read: Thank you for the coat/sleeping bag It’s a life saver you’re a[n] angel Koomz x Koomz expanded upon the difference the warm, adaptable garment had made to him, providing the new cohort with insights into the extremes of rough sleeping and the benefits of suitable clothing.

114  Katherine Townsend et al. A female service user and single parent, shared her experiences of having no fixed abode, touching on the conditions her family encountered. There are a growing number of homeless women, many hidden within the data, which suggests the number of ‘men living on the street outnumber women at a ratio of six to one’ (ONS cited in The Big Issue, 2021). Garment displacement and clothing longevity workshops In early March 2020, students undertook a 2D to 3D ‘garment displacement and shape-making’ workshop using donations, by working on full-size mannequins in the studios and atrium of the School. The utilisation of a social space enabled them to perform the ‘deconstruction/reconstruction’ process in public, showing how different qualities/objects (e.g. shower curtain or sportswear) inspired contrasting architectural and sculptural forms. The activity revealed the craft skills, labour and conceptual design challenge of material recovery and use (Niinimaki, 2018). In a Clothing Longevity Workshop, developed from the ‘favourite garment’ session in 2019, students self-reflected on the different ‘practical, emotional and social motives informing the purchasing and wearing of clothing’ (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2017: 73). The workshop provided participants with qualitative ‘material histories’ to analyse, reinforcing their own clothing preferences and the meanings attached to them (Woodward, 2019: 23) compared with those expressed by the service users. Lockdown: adapting the design process On 24 March 2020, the School of Art and Design closed, moving to online teaching.15 This impacted on all students, especially those studying creative/practical subjects with studio-based events needing to be redesigned by staff and delivered online. All students were supplied with laptops and prerequisite software licenses by NTU, but ultimately they would not be able to make, manufacture and donate their final garments to Emmanuel House. With the waste sorting sessions cancelled, the cohort had to be resourceful, utilising their wardrobes for reference points e.g. documenting fastenings/details to aid design development, building on the garment displacement experiments by draping their own clothes to originate new silhouettes. Change to outcomes While the module learning outcomes remained the same, the shift to online learning and teaching necessitated a change to the final design expectations, which were to: • •

Produce a final (physical) garment fabricated using 80% upcycled and 20% new materials, e.g. fabric, trims and hardware. A sketchbook documenting all research, design development, 2D and 3D processes, to include deconstruction/reconstruction, waste sourcing and visualisations.

Staff considered what could replace the ‘garment’ as a significant learning outcome and resolved that an industry standard ‘tech pack’ would offer an equivalent.16 The tech pack evidenced the pattern-cutting, manufacture and construction knowledge students had acquired during their technical workshops supplemented with samples crafted from waste materials.

NTU X Emmanuel House  115 While lockdown prevented students’ manufacturing physical garments, this digital design format represented a sustainable fashion strategy, becoming an option for final year students since 2021. The need to ‘dematerialise design’ (TED 9)17 by exploring clothing as memorable, temporal forms of engagement with the body, is increasingly being explored digitally as a form of ‘post productivist fashion practice’ (Torres, 2020: 19).

Figure 6.4 Poster for NTU X Emmanuel House @ Creative Quarter showcase, featuring students modelling outerwear garments designed and constructed using preand post-consumer textile waste. Artwork by Fabienne Burnett, copyright Nottingham Trent University, 2021.

116  Katherine Townsend et al. The reconfigured focus on 2D outcomes using CAD to produce a final digital portfolio facilitated more time for the students to develop product branding for their fictional garments, including bespoke swing tickets identifying the end use, textile waste source and product functionality. At the end of the module, the outcomes were shared via the NTU Fashion Design Instagram alongside updates about Emmanuel House to maintain project momentum.

Feedback on materials and making experiences Feedback mechanisms for the project have been developed since 2019/2020, when reflections were mainly captured through photographs and a documentary film (Turbine Creative, 2019). In 2020/2021, student feedback was collated via a pebble pad to illicit reflections on the impact of material and participatory engagement on the learning journey. In 2021/2022, following the donation and of student garments at the Creative Quarter showcase (Figure 6.4), Emmanuel House staff provided commentary on the ongoing benefits of the project and the NTU staff team considered the impacts on the curriculum. Student feedback 2020/2021 Sustainability Student A developed their relationship with sustainability, ‘moving beyond simply using recycled materials by starting to consider zero and low waste practices in pattern cutting and creating print, colour and pattern using natural dyes and waste textiles’. Student B ‘gained a greater understanding of design responsibility and sustainability as by having to use waste materials, it helped them realise the importance of minimising waste’. Student C became conscious of what materials they used and tried to be as sustainable as possible and was inspired by the project ‘to look at designers such as Christopher Raeburn and Zero Waste Daniel’. Person-centred design Student A ‘enjoyed the person-centred design element of the Colour Project and opportunity to consider the experience of the wearer to effectively meet their needs’. Student C found it ‘a challenge to understand the individual needs and design features that my garment needed to have in order to benefit and help the service users’. Because my garment was transformable and unisex, I had to take into consideration so many different reversible elements …making the pattern big enough for a man to fit in comfortably but add[ing] styling features to make sure a woman would also be happy wearing it. Material use Student D ‘learned a lot within this project about the nature of different fabrics and how they work together’, developing skills working with ‘new and non-conventional materials including tents, strapping, second-hand textiles, stretch nylon and jersey’.

NTU X Emmanuel House  117 Student E gained a better understanding of sustainable practice and how to be more resourceful: by using old materials for my garment e.g. an old sleeping bag which I created a mens’ coat out of, a groundsheet which I cut pockets from and fabric from the scrap bin at university which I made a hood from. Emmanuel House reflections A support worker provided the following examples of how three service users benefitted from the garment donations, through conversation with Gill Barker in March 2022. Service User 1: A female who could not afford a winter coat and was worrying about how she was going to get one, was really happy with the one she chose; that she could feel warm and attend appointments. Service User 2: A Big Issue vendor also chose a coat and was pleased that he would be warmer while selling his magazines. Service User 3: Was recently discharged from hospital after suffering a stroke and as a result had limited speech and mobility. He needed a warm coat as it took him longer to walk anywhere so he felt the cold more acutely. Other beneficiaries praised the way some garments were constructed from padded materials, large enough sleep in, with pockets to accommodate food in and bottles of drink. The only negative feedback was that some items were too heavy to be carried around all day which was off - putting for some. However, overall most service users were really impressed with the how the outerwear pieces had been manufactured from deconstructed, found and waste materials. Benefits to the charity The project has raised the profile of the charity and awareness of homelessness and associated issues. The charity has benefitted from the students’ volunteering in the clothing store in groups of six during the project: The student groups have been doing such great work clearing out all the old donations that have been lying around for so long in there. Now we can see the great stock that is ready to go down to the charity shop to sell. (EH staff, March 2022) The clear out inspired a ‘donation drive’ and advertising campaign to elicit higher-quality stock. And ‘a significant increase in charity shop sales (up to 100% some weeks) were recorded between September-December when the NTU garments were on sale’ (Centre Manager, January 2022). In 2022/2023, the charity will use a special code on the till to accurately account for revenue from NTU garments. The NTU X Emmanuel House showcase with the Creative Quarter on 6 October 2021 (Figure 6.4) raised awareness of the charity’s role within the city, as reported in the media, evidencing the capacity for provocative material methods to effect social interactions and new ‘forms of sociability’ within the community (Gaver et al.,

118  Katherine Townsend et al. 1999 cited in Woodward 2019: 56). At the event, the Managing Director referenced the positive impacts on service users and volunteers, how mention of the project leads to an upbeat atmosphere and fond recollections by participants. Impact on the fashion design curriculum The project has encouraged collaborative learning and teaching within and beyond the university. Staff with theoretical research skills now teach on the Level 4 (120 credit) Curiosity module who until 2020 delivered the parallel Design, Context and Culture dissertation (40 credit) module. Their involvement in collaborative design tutorials supports students to make stronger connections with sustainability, craft and material activism (e.g. Fletcher & Tham, 2019; Payne, 2021; Townsend et al., 2020; von Busch). Emphasis on action research and workshops supports significant learning (Fink, 2013) through hands-on interactions with re-fashioned materials, discussion, play and experimental making between students and tutors. The Rag Picking, Favourite Clothing, Garment Longevity, Deconstruction and Garment Displacement activities are good examples of the crucial role to ‘un-making fashion’ now plays within the curriculum. In 2022/2023, a zero-waste pattern-cutting task will be included the curriculum, to reinforce the students’ knowledge of working with finite materials, a responsible designer. In October 2021, the first-year Fashion Design students were invited to join/ model in the Emmanuel House showcase at the Creative Quarter and parade through the city (Figure 6.5) to gain understanding of the material outcomes of the previous cohort’s research. The opportunity was extended to students from the entire school, enabling them to be actively involved in ‘sharing outcomes’ as ‘an essential part of the making experience [of] producing something tangible’ (von Busch, 2022: xxii). Students’ personal experiences linked to wellbeing and mental health during the pandemic fostered greater empathy with the challenging situations and needs of the service users, as referenced in Student D’s observation that ‘there are many more definitions of homelessness than just living on the streets’. By interviewing rough sleepers, they found out that some service users made themselves homeless to escape an abusive partner or a challenging domestic situation, as well as for economic reasons. The modification of the curriculum to incorporate ‘localised action research’ has resulted in ‘the producers and wearers of the clothes [becoming] both participants and collaborators in creating the place in which they live’ (Fetcher & Tham, 2019: 50). Addressing sustainable and social innovation issues through upcycling has led to external interest and sponsorship from Intelligent Label Solutions (ILP)18 Pentland Brands19; the Suffolk based outerwear company Lavenham 20 and ­independent Javelin. 21 The interest of such leading brands demonstrates investment in the responsible, fashion education methodology (Figure 6.2) at the heart of the initiative.

Conclusion: evolving responsible fashion education On implementing the project for a fourth time in 2021/2022 we reflected on what the module can offer and how it has impacted our role as educators and enablers.

NTU X Emmanuel House  119 As  practitioners the authors have experience of working in different clothing and participatory making contexts at bespoke, commercial and independent scale. Our tacit knowledge of textile design, garment construction, material and local culture has enabled us to support the students in adopting a holistic approach to fashion design that prioritises human and cultural capital, as well as financial reward (Whitty, 2021). The wider fashion teams’ hand and digital design/crafting skills have been particularly effective in communicating and informing the students’ developing methodologies and outcomes (Lahti & Fernstroöm, 2021; Townsend, Kettley & Walker, 2020). The ongoing collaboration has altered perceptions of what constitutes a fashionable garment and who its wearers might be? (Thornquist & Bigolin, 2017). The resulting ‘circular, responsible design’ model (Figure 6.2) represents a relevant way for using upcycling to evolve fashion education for a future where we can live within planetary boundaries (Khamisani, 2021). As our understanding of fashion and sustainability has broadened beyond quantified accounts of supply chains and material use, the fashion system requires an expanded, holistic understanding of how we clothe the body and through it the mind, and how design might contribute to this. (McQuillian & Rissanen, 2020: 149). There is growing evidence of the impact of the project on students who engaged with the Emmanuel House brief in 2019 and then went on to develop responsibly designed final collections. Reflecting on the original aims of enquiry student outcomes demonstrates knowledge and understanding of how: • • • • •

the gap between over consumption and unmet material needs creates problematic waste streams for local and global communities to solve deconstructing clothing to reveal design, quality/make and use, advances fashion education and practice upcycling extends the value and lifetime of textiles/clothing while engendering creative skill development homeless and vulnerable people with limited wardrobes require functional and aesthetic garments to support practical needs and self-esteem disrupting the fashion system at the community scale supports sustainable, social and economic innovation

In 2021, Millie Hoole’s interest in ethical design was articulated through her dissertation, ‘Salving Conscience: How Authentic Are Sustainable Habits?’ and major project exploring textile waste: denim, ecclesiastical fabric remnants, non-gendered clothing and longevity. She also acted as social secretary for the NTU Fashion Revolution team and partnered up with the UOcean 22 clean-up project. Phoebe Sinnassamy’s Emmanuel House project work began with her patchworking textile waste to create the outerwear piece gifted to Koomz informing her final year project, fabricated from shirting and suiting donated by family members during the pandemic. She also made use of the end-of-roll fabric donated to the university by Burberry as part of The Student Fabric Initiative launched by The British Fashion Council in April 2021. Phoebe showcased her work at Graduate Fashion Week and hopes to pursue a career as an environmental researcher.

120  Katherine Townsend et al.

Figure 6.5 N TU X Emmanuel House garment parade in Nottingham Old Market Square, featuring students and service users wearing outerwear garments created from unwanted textiles. Photo by Debojyoti Saha, copyright Nottingham Trent University, 2021.

The NTU X Emmanuel House fashion education model will continue to evolve, by working with fluctuating waste streams, collaborating with and empowering some of the local community’s most vulnerable citizens and by using empathy as a design tool to show how ‘material repurposing can twist and displace hierarchical arrangements that cement what we consider just or unjust’ (von Busch, 2022: xx).

Notes

NTU X Emmanuel House  121

122  Katherine Townsend et al. Gill, A. (1998) Deconstruction Fashion: The Making of Unfinished, Decomposing and ­Re-Assembled Clothes, Fashion Theory, 2:1, pp. 25–49. Kettley, S., Kettley, R. & Lucas, R. (2016) From Human Centred to Person-Centred Design. In: I. Kuksa & T. Fisher, eds., Design for Personalization. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 170–191. Khamisani, N. (2021) Exploring Upcycling as a Design Process through Fashion Education. In: K. Sung, J. Singh & B. Bridgens, eds., State-of-the-Art Upcycling Research and Practice. Lecture Notes in Production Engineering, Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3030-72640-9_17. [Accessed 10 May 2022]. Lahti, H. & Fernstroöm, P. (2021) Crafticulation as a Method of Knowledge Creation. Craft Research, 12:2, pp. 183–204. Landahl, K. & Malmgren de Oliveira, S. (2022) Re-Design for Pre-Design: Discarded Garments as a Tool for Garment-Based Learning in Fashion Knitwear Design Education. In: Proceedings of IFFTI Conference 2022: Fashion Reimagined, 5–8 April. Nottingham: Nottingham Trent University. McQuillan, H. & Rissanen, T. (2020) Mind-Body-Garment-Cloth. In: K. Townsend, R. Solomon & A. Briggs-Goode, eds., Crafting Anatomies: Archives, Dialogues, Fabrications, London: Bloomsbury, pp. 149–170. Niinimäki, K. (2018) Sustainable Fashion in a Circular Economy. In: K. Niinimäki, ed. Sustainable Fashion in a Circular Economy, Helsinki: Aalto ARTS Books, pp. 12–41. Niinimäki, K., Drrani, M. & Khotala, C. (2021) Engaging DIY Activities to Enable WellBeing and Connected Societies. Craft Research, 11:2, pp. 9–21. Palomo-Lovinski, N. & Faerm, S. (2020) Changing the Rules of the Game: Sustainable Product Service Systems and Manufacturing in the Fashion Industry. In: Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios de Diseño y Comunicación, August 2020, pp. 213–225. https://doi.org/10.18682/ cdc.vi78.3672. [Accessed 11 March 2021]. Payne, A. (2021) Designing Fashion’s Future: Present Practice and Tactics for Sustainable Change, London & New York: Bloomsbury. Race, P. (2010) Making Learning Happen (second ed.), London: Sage. Rissanen, T. (2018) Fashion Design Education as Leadership Development, Global Fashion Conference 2018: What’s Going On?, CFSF, London College of Fashion, UAL, 31 October–1 November, 2018, University of the Arts, London. Rose, G. (2016) Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials, Los Angeles, CA: Sage. Shercliffe, E. & Twigger Holroyd, A. (2020) Stitching together: Ethical dimensions and innovative approaches to participatory textile making, Stitching Together SI (2), Journal of Arts and Communities, 11:1, pp. 3–11. Sherlock, A., Joannides, T., & Jagiello, P. (2022) The Affordances of Affordance Theory for Sustainable Design Pedagogy In: Proceedings of IFFTI Conference 2022: Fashion Reimagined, 5–8 April, Nottingham Trent University. Solanki, S. (2018) Why Materials Matter: Responsible Design for a Better World, Munich, London, New York: Prestel Verlag. Strebinger, V. & Derwanz, H. (2019) 3rd Plate Conference, Berlin, 18–20, September. https://uol.de/f/3/inst/materiellekultur/Publikationen_von_Lehrenden/Heike_Derwanz_ Veroeffentlichungen/paperPLATE2019_Strebinger_Derwanz.pdf [Accessed 20 May, 2021]. Sznel, M. (2020) The Time for Environment-Centred Design Has Come, 5 May 2020, https:// uxdesign.cc/the-time-for-environment-centered-design-has-come-770123c8cc61 [Accessed 9 January 2022]. The Big Issue. (2021) Homelessness Facts and Statistics: The Numbers You Need To Know in 2021, 22 July 2021, Online: https://www.bigissue.com/latest/britains-homelessness-shamecold-hard-facts/ [Accessed 29 July 2021]. Thornquist, C. & Bigolin, R. (eds) (2017) Proceedings of the 2017 Conference Everything and Everybody as Material: Beyond Fashion Design Methods, School of Fashion & Textiles, RMIT University, Melbourne & Swedish School of Textiles and University of Borås, Sweden.

NTU X Emmanuel House  123 Townsend, K. (2011) The Denim Garment as Canvas: Exploring the Notion of Wear as a Fashion and Textile Narrative. Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture, 9:1, pp. 90–107. ISSN 1475–9756. Townsend, K., Kettley, S. & Walker, S. (2020) The Electric Corset and Other Future Histories. In: K. Townsend, R. Solomon & A. Briggs-Goode, eds., Crafting Anatomies: Archives, Dialogues, Fabrications. London; New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, pp. 89–110. ISBN 9781350075474. Townsend, K., Prince, E., Escott, A. & Barker, G. (2019) From Rag Picking to Riches: Fashion Education Meets Textile Waste. In Textile Intersections 2019, London, 12–14 September 2019. https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/conference_contribution/From_Rag_Picking_ to_Riches_Fashion_Education_meets_Textile_Waste/9724655 [Accessed 5 August 2021]. Townsend, K. & Sadkowska, A. (2018) Textiles as Material Gestalt: Cloth as a Catalyst in the Co-Designing Process. Journal of Textile Design Research and Practice, 5:2, pp. 1–24. Townsend, K. & Sadkowska, A. (2020). Re-making Fashion Experience: A Model for ‘Participatory Research Through Clothing Design’. Stitching Together SI (2), Journal of Arts and Communities, 11:1, pp. 13–33. Turbine Creative. (2019) Emmanuel House x NTU (6 mins) documentary, Online: https:// vimeo.com/548000051/a4fb3329d5 [Accessed 30 January 2022]. UK Parliament. (2019) Fixing Fashion: Clothing, Consumption and Sustainability, 19 February, 2019, Online: Fashionhttps://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/ cmenvaud/1952/report-summary.html [Accessed 22 July 2021]. von Busch, O. (2022) Making Trouble: Design and Material Activism, London; New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts. Whitty, J. (2021) Fashion Design for Holistic Systems. In: M. S. Gardetti, ed., Sustainable Design in Textiles and Fashion, Singapore: Springer-Nature Publications, pp. 1–22. Woodward, S. (2019) Material Methods: Researching and Thinking with Things, London: Sage.

7

Sewing Box for the Future Facilitating participatory fashion experiences to influence change Jen Ballie, Meredith More and Becca Clark

Introduction In this chapter, I reflect on the Sewing Box for the Future research project and exhibition which I delivered in partnership between University of Dundee, a Higher Education Institution, and V&A Dundee, a national design centre and museum in Scotland. This project emerged in collaboration, at the intersection of design research and curatorial practice to develop a participatory exhibition for an intergenerational public audience. Within our project team, we engaged with V&A Dundee’s Young People collective (aged 14–25) and learning team, a community-led organisation for young mothers, and worked with several contemporary designers at the forefront of circular design practice in fashion. To develop a participatory exhibition with a range of learning and educational resources for the public. This project addresses the systemic challenges of fashion waste and aims to raise public awareness and prompt them to respond to a call to action by offering a suite of practical resources. To address this aim, the following question drove this research project: There is a crisis of waste in the global fashion industry, but what can we, as individuals, do about it? By focusing on three themes: care, repair and customisation, Sewing Box for the Future aims to illustrate that by collectively making small changes, we can make a big difference – we have the power to effect change in the way we buy, care for and discard our clothes. This call to action aims to raise awareness, educate and inspire by showcasing contemporary designers who are interrogating the traditional fashion system to radically re-think how clothing might be designed, used and cared for in the future. This research critiques the effectiveness of participatory design in fashion, to identity strategies for prolonging the lifetime of everyday clothing. It argues for further research within the sphere of the ‘use phase’ of clothing. Through early consultation conversations with different stakeholders in the framing of this project, it became clear that people spent a lot of time and resources to invest in the clothing in their wardrobes, but they didn’t always have the time, resources or knowhow or, in some instances, the desire to adapt, maintain or repair it. The metaphor of a sewing box became a powerful mechanism to reflect on the tradition of home sewing and as the project resources evolved, they transformed into tools for facilitating conversations through participatory action research. This chapter discusses the conceptualisation

DOI: 10.4324/9781003260356-8

Sewing Box for the Future  125 of this project and focuses on participatory approaches to fashion to influence change through reflection upon the Stitch-School residency. This residency hosted a Supper Cloth table in the museum with digitally printed fabric, with a Mary Quant dress design and motif template stretched over a frame for visitors to stitch into. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was not possible to complete the collection. Therefore, the museums learning team supported a local community group titled ‘Kindred Clothing’, established to support young mothers and worked with them to facilitate workshops to co-design the final dress. This chapter reflects upon Sewing Box for the Future as a mechanism for mediating participatory experiences through fashion to explore how this might deepen fashion theory, knowledge and practical understanding of how we might encourage the public to re-think clothing care, repair and customisation in the future.

The context of this research project Every year in the UK, we buy around 1.1 million tonnes of clothing, but most of us only use around 30–40% of the clothes in our wardrobes (Laitala et al., 2015). Our consumption and use of clothes are at odds with each other with huge amounts of non-renewable resources being used to make short-life clothing. Applied to the fashion industry, the circular economy (CE) aims to reduce our impact on the planet by keeping clothing in circulation for as long as possible and out of landfill. This means exhausting every opportunity for re-wearing, re-using, re-making and re-purposing. Using the idea of the sewing box as a metaphor, this research raises awareness about diminishing sewing skills and explores what materials, skills and knowledge the public need to help them take proactive steps towards reducing their own fashion waste. This research aimed to raise awareness, to facilitate conversations and to highlight those small collective acts have the potential to inspire impactful change. The title of the project encourages participants to consider a world where knowledge of basic sewing skills, repair and re-use are not at odds with the wider fashion system. Billions of clothes are thrown away every year to make room for new ones, but 95% of this discarded clothing could have been recycled or upcycled (Gwilt and Rissanen, 2012). It is still not possible to recycle all clothing made from mixed fibres, but the CE provides a model for regenerative materials to emerge (Boiten, Chou Han and Tyler, 2017). As consumers, we are potentially making our clothing obsolete, with each new purchase. As a result, £140 million worth of clothing (350,000 tonnes) is landfilled in the UK each year (WRAP, 2017) thus it was imperative to outline the different timescales for fibres decomposing. The opening infographic for the pop-up exhibition was designed to depict how long different fibres take to decompose in landfill. The infographic in Figure 7.1 was used as an introduction to the project and it quickly became a powerful tool to prompt conversations around the CE by interrogating the material properties of our clothing. This graphic accompanied the introductory panel text for the pop-up exhibition with a handling collection for ‘care’ to allow visitors to make connections between this infographic. Through observing interactions, it quickly became apparent that visitors could not easily interpret the fibre composition by touching and handling clothing and they relied on the labelling to interpret this information. If consumers were educated about the textile fibres that make up their own clothing and how long they take to decompose in landfill, they could perhaps make more informed decisions around their own consumption.

126  Jen Ballie et al.

HOW LONG DO CLOTHES TAKE TO DECOMPOSE IN LANDFILL?

A wool jumper

Cotton socks

A silk tie

1 to 5 years

1 week to 5 months

1 to 5 years

A mixed fibre wool jumper (51% wool, 30% alpaca, 19% polyamide)

A viscose t-shirt

A synthetic gym top (90% polyester, 6% elastane, 4% polypropylene)

A wool suit with viscose lining

200+ years

1 to 6 weeks

200+ years

1 to 5 years

A denim jacket

A linen shirt

Ethylene vinyl trainers

Biker leather jacket

10 to 12 months

2 weeks

1000 years

25 to 40 years

Figure 7.1  Wardrobe to landfill graphic. Graphic Credit: Young 2019.

The materiality of this project was critical in offering tangible and tactile artefacts that could be found in an everyday wardrobe to allow visitors to make the connection between what they already owned and how their own interactions could make an impact. Thus, a collection of ‘hero objects’ were identified to showcase fashion and textile designers at the forefront of circular innovation by reworking basic wardrobe items – these included a jumper and pair of socks, a trench coat, denim jacket and a modular t-shirt. The educational resources were co-design by V&A Dundee’s Young People’s Collective (YPC) to produce a list of ten practical methods to inform the design a production of a deck of activity cards for extending the lifetime of clothing found in an everyday wardrobe.

Participatory approaches for fashion to influence change The Sewing Box for the Future project is interested in change-making by influencing more participatory approaches to fashion design. In recent years, there has been

Sewing Box for the Future  127 growing interest in participatory design research, especially in relation to fashion and textiles. Various practice-based initiatives focused on the role, value and use of fashion have demonstrated success in developing and applying participatory methods aimed at activating or facilitating creative outcomes while staying attuned to fostering the reciprocal exchange of knowledge to ensure participants’ gain something in return alongside sharing their feedback. The exploration of participatory approaches for fashion explored the work of Manzini (2014) and bottom-up social innovation where designers can become diverse social actors who apply their skills and ways of thinking into design activities to design for communities. In this mode, designers must look at specific typologies of collaborative service and, after observing their strengths and weaknesses, intervene in the context of the services to make them more favourable and develop solutions to increase their accessibility and effectiveness and therefore their replication. This shifts the remit of the designer towards conceptualising and developing solutions for specific collaborative services and other enabling artefacts. This was an important component to build into this project and to highlight the urgent need for new cultures of sustainable practice that challenge the growth model of fashion through the sharing of expert knowledge, skills and expertise. For most of human history, clothing has been handmade. Even today, while textile production is fully automated, garments are sewn and pieced together by human hands or sewing machines. The outsourcing of clothing production to global industrial supply chains has led to a population-wide loss of knowledge and skills for the process of making clothing (Milburn, 2016). Not too long ago, the skills required to care for, repair and customise clothes were commonplace, but today many people do not know how to mend a hole in their favourite jumper or how to adjust the size of a treasured garment that has become too small. By providing participants with knowledge and resources to enable them to upskill themselves and to become change makers by transforming from a consumer into an informed and engaged user. In Fashion, we know further research is required to consider how we might dematerialise fashion design practices and lessen our reliance on using new materials. It is also essential to question the dependence on convenient consumption, as von Busch and Palmas claim (2016) if we want to see changes in the consumption patterns of fashion or the attitudes among consumers, we will have to design systems which include them and take their role in the lifecycle of clothing seriously. The myth of the creative genius is waning, and we are progressing from an era of the star designer towards the era of participatory culture (Nussbaum, 2013). As a result, the role of the designer is becoming more inclusive with design practice by adopting a facilitatory role. Manzini (2009) argues that designers have the capacity to act as social innovators by becoming agents of change. This requires moving beyond their specialist expertise to ­catalyse positive social and environmental action. The work of Fletcher (2008) expands upon this further by positioning the designer as a streetlevel ­collaborative practical facilitator. This involves orchestrating new action spaces to support social change by creating the opportunity for people to work together collaboratively. This project explored how we break the cycle of passive consumption to create a more sustainable, durable connection with our clothes, but it’s important to highlight that making a garment last is very different from making a long-lasting garment. Fletcher (in Fletcher and Grose, 2012) defines the wearing and using of garments as ‘use practices’ and positions this as a central component to the practice of garment design. Fletcher’s exploration of the craft of use of clothing encourages designers to

128  Jen Ballie et al. learn from the ways in which users ‘mitigate… intensify, and adapt’, clothing to suit their lives (Fletcher, 2018). This creates stimulus for broadening our thinking, practice and presents opportunities to offer new fashion experiences in the future. This research project was conceived and designed to be a participatory exhibition, and a crucial element of the project was always to encourage visitors to take up what they had learned and apply it at home. The COVID-19 pandemic had an impact on this study due to the museum’s temporary closure (March–July 2020) and the ­participatory workstations needed to be removed ahead of re-opening (August 2020– December 2020). The project aimed to influence change by encouraging people to have a go at any activity by making it convenient and accessible. Within the museum there were initially a series of activity stations with all the resources and materials available to support participation. These stations could no longer be provided due to the social distancing measures imposed by the pandemic and the cards on their own were not enough. The materiality of this project was a vital part and it was important to provide an opportunity to explore the physical making activities, learn from them and prompt and facilitate conversations about wardrobe maintenance. The research team replaced this void of losing physical making spaces by offering a physical making kit – a resource to compliment the ten activity cards by providing a darning mushroom, sewing needle, threads, buttons and an A–Z on embroidery stitches by Stitch-School that was distributed from the museum and send out to local community groups.

Methodology This research tests out ways in which participatory approaches to fashion might be positioned within a public forum like a museum, to engage in design-related activities in locations far from fashion’s usual industry and education practices. The sewing box team The project team were transdisciplinary and comprised of: a design researcher, a curator, an assistant curator, a young people and family’s manager and producer and the museum’s YPC comprising of a group of 16–24 old and a youth organisation titled Front Lounge/Kindred Clothing. A residency with London-based Stitch-School also played a pivotal part. • • • • • • • • •

Design researcher – research lead, workshop facilitator and evaluator Curator – curatorial lead, workshop facilitator Assistant curator – curatorial support and workshop support Learning manager – workshop facilitation and support Young people and families producer – community engagement lead and coordinator, workshop facilitator Eight participants from V&A Dundee YPC – youth group aged 16–24 years who critiqued and tested the project themes, activities and instructions Eight participants from Front Lounge/Kindred Clothing – lead participants Two freelance textile designers Stitch-School – co-founded by Melanie Bowles and Aimee Betts who provided their Supper Cloth table, educational resources and designed a graphic print for three dress templates

Sewing Box for the Future  129 •

General public – museum visitors who contributed their time, feedback and expertise

Together the team brought together ideas, content and resources, they co-designed and facilitated a series of six workshops over 12 months to pilot and test core content throughout, they conducted interviews with visitors and participants and ­further responses were captured by distributing evaluation postcards and digital questionnaires.

Pop-up exhibition The pop-up exhibition was organised around three themes – care, repair and customise. There was also a station for distributing ten activity cards, providing free resources for visitors to take away to try on their wardrobe at home. Within the context of the CE, it was important to demonstrate ways in which textiles can be sustained in a circular system. The deck of ten recipe cards listed below includes some simple suggestions for how to do this. These were produced by the project team with three designer commissions to support the more advanced activities. 1 Washing 2 Wardrobe inventory 3 Mending a hole (darning) 4 Mending a hole (needle felting) 5 Replacing a zip 6 Stitching on a button

Figure 7.2  Sewing Box for the Future participatory spaces. Photo Tom Nolan 2019.

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Figure 7.3  Sewing Box for the Future artifacts. Photo Tom Nolan 2019.

Figure 7.4  Sewing Box for the Future visitors. Photo Tom Nolan 2019.

Sewing Box for the Future  131 7 8 9 10

Hemming by hand Make your own modular garment by Post Couture Collective (2019) Embroider an embellishment by Chloe Patience (2019) Make a face mask by hand by Trakke (2020)

Stitch-School residency This section expands upon participant feedback from the Stitch-School residency and physical toolkit to expand upon the impact of the curation, design and facilitation to nurture and support meaningful conversations oriented at doing something together; building on the work of Williams (2018) exploring what building blocks are required to create safe, inclusive and supportive spaces for new communities of practice to emerge (Williams, 2018). As the research moves forward, it is important to recognise and amplify the new learning and reflect this back inside the project and beyond into education and industry establishments. This expands upon the research aim of influencing change by making and creating a new consciousness towards the use of clothing by introducing a set of practices for using our clothing longer and maintaining it well. The residency with London-based Stitch-School co-founded in 2017 by Melanie Bowles and Aimee Betts was established to provide professional and inspirational guidance that helps people reconnect with the benefits of embroidery. This collaboration focused on a large communal table embroidery concept called ‘The Supper Cloth’. The approach was to create a Supper Cloth for Sewing Box for the Future using an open-source home sewing pattern for a Mary Quant dress previously designed for V&A by Alice and Co for the V&A Mary Quant exhibition (2019–2020). StitchSchool designed three digital textile print patterns for the dress and these were digitally printed onto an Irish linen fabric by Glasgow School of Art’s Centre for Advanced Textiles. The Supper Cloth table was initially available in the museum for visitors to drop-in and explore the benefits of collective making through connection, conversation and contemplative hand-sewing. The Stitch-School A–Z of embroidery stitches booklet was available for visitors to explore different stitch techniques and make their own mark with a needle and thread. Building a transient community of stitchers, and a conglomeration of stitches – many hands made the pattern on these dresses possible. The first two dresses were completed prior to the museum closing due to COVID19 global pandemic. The restrictions imposed on social distancing at that time made it impossible to reconvene and continue with the original proposal. However, an opportunity emerged from the V&A Dundee Learning team to co-produce the third dress in a participatory approach by working with a group of young mothers from a local community group – Kindred Clothing. This organisation is supported by a larger organisation called Front Lounge and aims to create brighter futures for young parents through fashion-related skills development and access to a qualification that provided a foundation curriculum focused on the fashion industry. There was also a childcare model integrated into the support offered by Front Lounge to provide an infrastructure for these mothers and their children to be equally supported, some of the older children also participated in the sewing activities. Over the course of six weeks, the group worked with Tracey Stewart (People and Young Families Producer) and were supported by wearable textile designers Kirstie

132  Jen Ballie et al.

Figure 7.5  Stitch-school and kindred clothing. Photo Tom Nolan 2019.

Figure 7.6 Stitch-school and X kindred clothing partnership. Image Credit: Julie Howden 2020.

Sewing Box for the Future  133 Campbell and Syrah Jay from V&A Dundee’s Learning team in museum-based ­workshops focused on developing their embroidery sewing skills. With an understanding of the application of a range of textile embellishment techniques inspired by the Sewing Box for the Future exhibition, the group disrupted and enhanced the original design to make it personal to them. Using fabric scraps, offcuts and a range of biodegradable sequins from The Sustainable Sequin Company, the final dress design reflects the themes of the Sewing Box for the Future: developing new and traditional hand sewing skills; reducing waste; and collaborating in a shared space to create, customise and effect change. This small collection of three co-produced dresses was exhibited within the Sewing Box for the Future exhibition in V&A Dundee from October to December 2020. Impact for those involved The learning team facilitating this session and built-in time to evaluate the outcomes through a documented ‘in conversation’ session with the founders of Kindred Clothing and the women who participated. The residency with Stitch-School and collaboration with Kindred Clothing catalysed bottom-up social innovation expanding upon the work of Manzini (2014) where designers apply their skills to design activities for communities. The Supper Cloth table and digitally printed Mary Quant Dress template provided a framework for non-designers to engage with and can be defined as an enabling artefact. The Sewing Box for the Future box provided a takeaway kit with free resources to facilitate speculative narratives through the co-production of critical artefacts, in this instance the Supper Cloth embroidery table and Mary Quant dresses, to encourage active participation, conversations and dialogue. The facilitated workshops provided a safe and supportive environment to nurture the creative confidence and sewing capabilities of the young women who committed their time, energy and creativity. The pre-designed dress provided a template and starting point, but it was important for the individuals to have the opportunity to make their own suggestions to pursue their own ideas and inspiration. The role of the everyday citizen is an essential component to the narrative of the CE, and it is important to understand what participatory fashion experiences mean from their perspectives. These enabling artefacts provided a stimulus for sparking new ideas and nurturing the confidence of each participant to build up sewing skills at a personal pace. In this regard, one workshop participant stated: Having the confidence, knowing that I’m not the best but just taking bits home and trying the little sewing box kit that was given out and reading through that. I was even watching YouTube videos and trying to figure out how to do things. It was nice coming here but also taking something away, sitting at night and taking time for myself which was something that I wasn’t necessarily doing for quite a while. It was nice having that experience, and that sewing box is great! The feedback demonstrated that engagement was strong – participants felt empowered and part of the project and throughout the entire process. They found it to be an incredible opportunity to learn how to make clothes, make friends and gain an insight into aspects of the fashion industry. There was no drop out from the group, and everyone attended each session. The founders pointed out that this was exceptional and

134  Jen Ballie et al. t­ estament to the value the group took away from each experience. The childcare support provided by Front Lounge enabled the parents to have some time for themselves, but the children were also encouraged to contribute and to also be involved. The young mothers were excited by their newfound sewing skills and inspired to customise clothing for their own children. The partner organisation Kindred Clothing fed back their ambition to provide their learners with opportunities to gain employment through acquiring sewing skills and stated: We hope to provide our learners with access to an even broader range of opportunities, from training and work experience to employment. By capturing and cultivating this fresh, young talent, right here on our doorstep, we can also provide a ready-made labour force to local designers, meeting their needs and contributing to the local economy. Two of these young women have since successfully secured employment for Isolated Hero’s a local small to medium enterprise based in Dundee.

Sewing box toolkit The Sewing Box for the Future kit was produced to provide a free and physical resources for visitors to equip them with everything they might need to practice the ten activity cards. The kits were free to take away from the pop-up exhibition, but they were also distributed within the local community to schools with the support of the museum’s learning department. It was important to capture feedback to evaluate the impact and explore how they might become educational resources to support workshops in schools, colleges and universities. The kits didn’t require facilitation and a welcome note was included to explain how they could be used. It is estimated that 2,000 kits went out into the local community and the impact of the broader research couldn’t be fully traced and tracked. A further opportunity emerged to distribute 60 kits of an event led by the local authority – Dundee City Council. They commissioned the kits for an European networking event to re-think the future of tourism. The kits were mailed out ahead of the event and the projects research lead did a demonstration on how to stitch on a button through working through the steps on the activity card via zoom. This session took five minutes but the feedback and reaction on screen was animated, fun and brought an interactive discussion around mending clothes. This small experiment demonstrated that small communities of practice can be convened in simple ways to make space for these encounters to happen. Thus, demonstrating evidence of the multiplier effect of hands-on materials as a tangible way of engaging people in change-orientation practices. Impact for those involved As the project progressed the learning department received several requests from guidance teachers from local high schools who feedback they found these resources to be of value for kids suffering from mental health challenges impacted by the pandemic. These supported insights captured pre-pandemic when several visitors ­re-­visited the museum on multiple occasions to spend time physically making, quietly

Sewing Box for the Future  135 by themselves. Participation from across multiple generations was favourable with one participant stating: I used the box with my kids. I found it amusing that they out mastered me. They were faster and just picked it up quicker. My daughter is 7! She has asked to spend her pocket money on a needle felter. We made some little monsters and fun ­additions to her hoody. She had great delight showing it off on zoom during one of the check-in sessions with her teaching while we were home schooling. With another parent highlighting that her six-year-old son asked to spend his pocket money on an embroidery hoop, he spoke about climate change, and they didn’t always relate it back to fashion, they really appreciated all the free resources and also visited on multiple occasions.

Conclusion This research focused on facilitating conversations around basic sewing skills through an exploration of how these skills might be applied to extend the life or revive unworn clothing in an existing wardrobe. Through practical implementation of these techniques to identify opportunities for using fashion as a participatory approach to influence change in the local community, the local economy and the daily lives of everyday people. The concept of participatory approaches in fashion to influence change is not a new construct. It has been championed by von Busch (2008; 2020), Earley (2017), Fletcher (2017), Mazzarella et al. (2019) and Williams (2018) to drive forward projects that cut through the systemic challenges of fashion and to re-think a future where people, place and planet are paramount. However, the adoption of participatory approaches to influence change for sustainable fashion is still in its early stages and there has been limited study into a systemic level of scaling up these interventions for sustainable fashion. Sustainability in fashion remains a paradox, the fashion industry is one of the largest polluters in the world and while awareness of the issue has grown significantly in the last decade, the question of how to integrate the concept of sustainability in fashion into the lives of everyday people still remains. The traditional fashion design process for ready-to-wear clothing is to churn out clothing that is convenient to access and purchase, it is styled to fit a current or emerging trend or look, and to be practical in use, without offering support for maintenance, care or repair. The obsolesce of clothing is perpetuated by the challenge that a repair service equates to a similar cost of a ‘fast fashion’ garment. This process does not reach out into the life of the end user or seek opportunities to enhance their wellbeing, their daily life or needs or consider re-use as a vital stage in supporting a regenerative fashion system. This research argues for a more human-centred approach to caring for our clothing to explore opportunities for extending their lifetime. The metaphor of the sewing box was framed in a future’s context to facilitate conversations around a future paradigm for fashion and textile design, involving participatory activity and encouraging action towards social change. The key message being small acts collectively combined have the potential to catalyse change. The materiality of the enabling artefacts was designed to encourage individuals to have conversations around basic sewing skills to interrogate their premise, purpose and usefulness in the past, present and future while actively exploring, experimenting and having

136  Jen Ballie et al. conversations around their clothing. The practice of a simple running stitch become a powerful driver to prompt questions around the time, resources, skill and labour that goes into each garment. It also prompted questions around the habits and rituals of assembling and maintaining an everyday wardrobe. In the museum this connected individuals from across multiple generations from age 3 to 92 years old, and those with more experience shared their knowledge and those trying out these techniques for the first team were eager to learn more. The findings highlight that the reciprocal values embedded within these enabling artefacts have the power to influence change by re-thinking fashion and clothing design from a citizen perspective. With this shift, the point of departure is not the things themselves but rather the strategies within which they are embedded (Hansen, 2004). There isn’t a quick fix or ‘catch all’ approach for driving forward systemic change in the fashion industry. Despite this, Sewing Box for the Future provides a series of small scale and practical steps for individuals to challenge their own status quo by providing practical activities for them to question, make and reflect. This also mediated intergenerational conversations with a broad audience, evoking a nostalgia around traditional sewing skills that were once commonplace in the home. Fashion and the clothing we wear is part of the social fabric of our daily lives, we can use it to tell stories, to educate and upskill and to inspire new possibilities. This project will continue to learn, grow and respond to how the enabling artefacts are being utilised and applied, to explore further re-use strategies for a regenerative fashion system, to advocate for change-making by influencing more participatory for nurturing the exchange of knowledge, skills and empowering individual.

Acknowledgements This exhibition has been realised by V&A Dundee in partnership with the University of Dundee’s Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design. Sewing Box of the Future is a live research project that is part of V&A Dundee’s Design for Business Programme, which is supported by Scottish Enterprise and the University of Dundee. Special thanks to Johnstons of Elgin for donating off-cuts. Thanks to Sophie McKinley, Head of Programme at V&A Dundee, for this opportunity and her support. Sincere thanks to project advisors: Professor Rebecca Earley, Edwina Ehrman and Dr Jo Norman.

References Alice and Co Mary Quant Dressmaking Patterns, 2020. https://www.vam.ac.uk/­articles/sewyour-own-mary-quant-georgie-dress; https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/sew-your-own-maryquant-style-minidress Boiten, V.J., Li-Chou Han, S. and Tyler, D., 2017. Circular economy stakeholder perspectives: Textile collection strategies to support material circularity. European Union’s: Brussels. Earley, R., 2017. Circular design futures. The Design Journal, 20(4), pp. 421–434. Fletcher, K., 2008. Sustainable fashion and textiles: Design journeys. London: Routledge. Fletcher, K., 2018. The fashion land ethic: Localism, clothing activity, and Macclesfield. Fashion Practice, 10(2), pp. 139–159. Fletcher, K. and Grose, L., 2012. Fashion & sustainability: Design for change. Hachette: Laurence King Publishing.

Sewing Box for the Future  137 Gwilt, A. and Rissanen, T. eds., 2012. Shaping sustainable fashion: Changing the way we make and use clothes. London: Routledge. Hansen, K. T., 2004. The world in dress: Anthropological perspectives on clothing, fashion, and culture. Annual Review of Anthropology, 33, pp. 369–392.Manzini, E., 2014. Making things happen: Social innovation and design. Design Issues, 30(1), pp. 57–66. Laitala, K.M., Boks, C. and Klepp, I.G., 2015. Making clothing last: A design approach for reducing the environmental impacts. International Journal of Design, 9(2), pp. 93–107. Manzini, E., 2009. New design knowledge. Design Studies, 30(1), pp. 4–12. Mazzarella, F., Storey, H. and Williams, D., 2019. Counter-narratives towards sustainability in fashion. Scoping an academic discourse on fashion activism through a case study on the centre for sustainable fashion. The Design Journal, 22(sup1), pp. 821–833. Milburn, J., 2016. Valuing old skills in a new world. Journal of the Home Economics Institute of Australia, 23(2), pp. 13–20. Patience, C., 2019. Snake Embellished Denim Jacket. http://www.chloepatience.com/ va-dundeePost Couture Collective., 2019. Modular T-Shirt. https://www.herenow.nl/ martijn-van-strien-the-post-couture-collective Sewing Box for the Future Downloadable Resources, 2020. https://www.vam.ac.uk/dundee/ info/sewing-box-for-the-future-resources. Trakke, 2020. https://trakke.co.uk. Accessed 18th January 2023. von Busch, O. and Palmas, K., 2016. Designing consent: Can design thinking manufacture democratic capitalism?. Organizational Aesthetics, 5(2), pp. 10–24. Williams, D., 2018. Fashion design as a means to recognize and build communities-in-place. She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, 4(1), pp. 75–90. WRAP, 2017. Valuing our Clothes: the cost of UK Fashion. WRAP: Banbury, UK. Von Busch, O., 2008. Fashion-able. Hacktivism and engaged fashion design. School of Design and Crafts; Högskolan för design och konsthantverk. Von Busch, O., 2020. The psychopolitics of fashion: conflict and courage under the current state of fashion. Bloomsbury Publishing.

8

Re-creation and recreation Playful sustainable fashion textile projects with school children Rebecca Earley

Introduction Textile designers and researchers have a unique and important role to play in the emerging circular economies. Their ability to make new materials, reuse old ones and explore novel contexts through physical means puts them in a key position to drive, support and enable change, at both product and systems level (Hornbuckle 2022). Textile design is also a field overtly populated by females, many of whom are mothers, or might become mothers. They work in industry, academia or elsewhere and are also working hard at home. At work the awareness around the effects of the industry on the planet is creating additional pressure to change practices; at home, many parents and carers are trying to raise the next generation of consumers in a more conscious fashion. Textile designers and researchers are increasingly making positive differences at work; as well as trying to instil strong values and habits in children and young adults. How might design researchers working with materials, align these tensions and challenges towards positive change? Researchers have been reviewing school curricula around sustainability and climate change issues; some argue that children as young as kindergarten or nursery should be introduced to the climate emergency (Davis & Elliott 2014). In this chapter, I will discuss a range of playful workshop approaches developed for both large international and interdisciplinary research consortia and for local school children. The latter form three small, highly personal, informal materials and making-based projects that were conducted with children in a primary school in London. I was a volunteer at the school, and my own kids took part in the projects. I used the school uniform as a vehicle to share ideas, towards the aim of trying to understand how young children learning about materials, textiles and fashion might give them some guidance when choosing their clothes later in life. The workshops are explored through the chapter in order to propose how current UK sustainability curriculum models in schools work but might be extended more specifically through ‘recreation’ – play – and ‘re-creation’ – to make again (in this case items of discarded school uniform). Chapter overview In the Background section of this chapter, I tell a personal story about working as a design researcher in industry whilst also being a mother to young children at

DOI: 10.4324/9781003260356-9

Re-creation and recreation  139 home and attempting to be a responsible consumer. The two seemingly opposing experiences brought me to consider my children’s constant need and desire for new clothes, and how schools are failing to steer and support the development of the next generation of fashion and textile consumers. I also briefly reflect on research conducted in a fast fashion company. The ubiquitous school uniform is then introduced as the vehicle to explore ideas that can link parents, teachers and researchers within a school setting. In the Climate, Education, Curriculum and Playful Research section, I draw on the report, ‘Reimagining Our Futures Together: A new social contract for education’ (International Commission on the Futures of Education 2021), to consider the current context of climate crisis, schools, universities and researchers. Taking damaged and lost uniform as the context for the practice research – the relationship between resilience and remaking is also introduced. In the next section, I bring together the various approaches taken for this research. The practice methods which oscillate between the role of making, to facilitating and back again, are briefly discussed. I position the materials and making projects in schools within an adapted Participatory Action Research (PAR) framework so that the range of outputs and resulting insights can be more clearly mapped and understood. In the first of the practice review sections of the chapter, I group the industry research into three themes: playful workshops; playful communications; and playful hat wearing. The published research reviewed in this section shows how different approaches were developed with project stakeholders to support knowledge exchange, trust and understanding. In the second practice section, three projects with school children are presented, with reference to current sustainable design curriculum which focuses on reclamation, resilience and regeneration (Hauk 2017). These projects span a five-year period, and all explored questions about how playful approaches could be used at school to educate and inspire children towards sustainable fashion choices. The projects asked, ‘Where was my uniform made? Who made my uniform? What is it made from? Where do materials come from?’; as well as ‘How can I remake my own clothes? How can remaking my own clothes give me a greater sense of identity and belonging?’ The final sections of the chapter propose a model that places an emphasis on re-creation and recreation; the creative reuse of materials through play, whilst also considering our own habits and how we might change as individuals within our communities.

Background Through large international research projects, I witnessed first-hand the stark reality of the scale of the impacts created by the fashion industry and sought to further enhance my understanding by reviewing the day-to-day work of employees in a large fast fashion brand. I then devised a ‘Sustainable Design Inspiration’ programme for them and delivered it by facilitating workshop activities.1 These were often playful in nature, using card games, and samples, as well as textile and clothing items produced by the brand. Meanwhile, at home, I was bringing up small children whilst trying to be a conscious consumer myself and aiming to set a good example. Dressing the kids and doing the laundry was a daily activity. Raising a family has meant that I am constantly faced

140  Rebecca Earley with new questions about fashion textiles. Whilst I can manage my own wardrobe behaviours to a large extent – like my decision to not buy new clothes for a year2 – as children develop physically so do their emotional needs and so does their relationship to clothes alongside their relationships with their peers. This is under-explored knowledge in sustainable fashion consumption research, and it wasn’t until I experienced the ‘intention-behaviour gap’ (Diddi et al. 2019) for myself that I really understood what families face when making better, more sustainable, choices. I decided to devise a project with the local primary school to coincide with the first Fashion Revolution Day (FRD) in April 2014.3

Climate, education, curriculum and playful research Whilst design researchers have long been working in primary educational contexts (Davis & Elliott 2014), few have considered how hands-on materials and making can lead to evolving more sustainable consumption habits (Hofverberg & Maivorsdotter 2018). At the same time, design researchers working with consumer behaviour studies have noted how difficult real change is to achieve – with so many of us falling foul of the intention-behaviour gap, as I noted above. Design researchers are increasingly finding that playfulness can lead to better engagement with all kinds of audiences (Feder & Gudiksen 2022). The climate crisis is presenting educators with the challenge of preparing the next generation of consumers to make appropriate decisions about their habits, purchases and behaviours. Curriculum change is urgently needed to prepare for future challenges, if we are to fully realise ‘the transformational potential of education as a route for sustainable collective futures’ (UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization 2021). HE Sahle-Work Zewde, Chair of the International Commission on the Futures of Education, President of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, highlights the change required to address the inequalities and the challenges of the future: We face a dual challenge of making good on the unfulfilled promise to ensure the right to quality education for every child, youth and adult and fully realizing the transformational potential of education as a route for sustainable collective futures. To do this, we need a new social contract for education that can repair injustices while transforming the future… Education is the key pathway to address these entrenched inequalities. Building on what we know, we need to transform education. Classrooms and schools are essential, but they will need to be constructed and experienced differently in the future. Education must build skills needed in 21st century workplaces, taking into account the changing nature of work and the different ways that economic security can be provisioned. (Ibid 2021:vii) The report covers critical thematic issues: sustainability knowledge and learning; teachers and teaching; work, skills and competencies; citizenship; democracy and social inclusion; public education; and higher education, research and innovation. It argues that despite the emergence of digital learning platforms, the school as a physical place is irreplaceable, as they ‘ensure that everyone has available to them the experiences, abilities, knowledge, ethics and values that will sustain our shared

Re-creation and recreation  141 futures’ (Ibid 2021:95). The report looks ahead to 2050, to argue that schools will need to redesign the space, curriculum and experience to ‘nurture an ethic of solidarity and reciprocity through intergenerational, intercultural and pluralistic encounters… Students should be exposed to ideas and experiences they would not ordinarily encounter at home or in their immediate communities’ (Ibid 2021:95). It should be the job of design researchers to work on these new spaces, experiences and qualities. The report proposes how the relationship between universities and teachers is key to ensuring that HE is ‘capable of challenging and shaping the mindsets and pedagogies of the next generation of educators. In turn, educators can help universities to transform themselves, renew their public mission and better understand the roles they play in broader educational ecosystems’ (Ibid 2021:88). The report concludes that how we work together – collaborating across academic structures, into industry and beyond – is critical if we are to effectively prepare for the changes that the climate crisis will bring. ‘Pedagogies of solidarity and collaboration are no less crucial in higher education than they are for children and adolescents – in fact, they take on even greater relevance for the emerging generations of professionals, leaders and researchers that universities aim to produce’ (Ibid 2021:89). The school curriculum and playful research Art was introduced into the UK’s school curriculum in 1988, following a 1982 report which highlighted five core needs: communicating the value of the arts in education; the need for a coherent vision for the arts in schools within an equal framework for all subjects; linking what is taught, and how it is taught, to the needs of a changing society; the need for new modes of assessment and accountability; and what we would now term addressing equity, diversity and inclusion. Forty years later we are far from having achieved this vision, despite the ‘growing body of international evidence asserting the value of the arts in the lives of children and young people across a range of metrics’.4 The fundamental 3Rs – reading, writing, ‘rithmatic’ – are still firmly in place in the UK school curriculum, albeit with many new methods for teaching and learning with them. Sustainability and concern for the environment are also not new, with recycling projects having been a common feature within schools for years. However, more recent, subject-specific, developments have commonly proposed the 7Rs as a way to frame projects and activities in schools: ‘reduce, reuse, recycle, research, repurpose, repair, rent’.5 Education research in the area has given us other models – e.g., ‘mitigation, adaption and transformation’ (Pelling 2009). For this chapter, the author has used Hauk’s 2017 work – ‘The new “Three Rs” in an Age of Climate Change: Reclamation, Resilience, and Regeneration as Possible Approaches for Climate-Responsive Environmental and Sustainability Education’ – as a way to categorise the projects discussed and to identify the new models that we might consider as we move ahead to more engaged and embedded scenarios. Design researchers are increasingly looking to play a valuable role as the rise of climate awareness demands that we improve engagement and also leads to increased climate anxiety. The ‘Understanding play – designing for emergence’ track at the 2022 Design Research Society conference in Bilbao, Spain, explored emergent themes around ‘play design research’. The track chairs argued that play has a key role for us

142  Rebecca Earley in times of crisis and that we should seek to ‘…bring back or intensify imagination, curiosity and surprise, both as part of design processes, and in the product, services, systems and living conditions that one targets’ (Feder & Gudiksen 2022).

Approach Imagination, curiosity and surprise were what my approach needed to embrace. Not that I was fully conscious of that in 2014, when I embarked on the volunteering. I  knew that it would have to be fun and playful, but at that stage, I hadn’t really understood how deep our habits and behaviours are engrained, and just what it takes to change them. I found that I needed to really extend my usual research methods to work with these participants and the unique questions that came about through the process. The methods for this research are based around a hand-on materials and making practice, with workshop design and facilitation used in industry and in schools, as a way to explore ideas to feed back into my longitudinal practice research projects.6 A PAR model was developed (Chevalier & Buckles 2019, 2021; Kindon et al. 2007; Schneider 2012) to enable a clearer categorisation of the projects in schools, which had been set up in an informal way. The projects led to writing blog posts, a book chapter and giving podcast interviews, amongst other outcomes. These are all noted in the PAR framework (Table 8.1). The framework was also used to structure the two practice review sections of the chapter. Playful approaches at work, at home and at school I began making and using playful tools – mainly card decks – for workshops around 2009. The sustainable design strategy cards, The TEN, were co-created through playful workshops in the Worn Again: Rethinking Recycled Textiles AHRC project.7 Using the cards with industry stakeholders created change in the daily practices at clothing brands, but change was also experienced by the facilitators. In ‘We Shape Our Tools Then They Shape Us’, we discuss how making The TEN and using them in various situations, changed the way we saw ourselves as researchers when working with other stakeholders. When used together, the cards can serve as practical guidelines to examine, survey and highlight the problem of sustainability and the role of designers in change and innovation… Each card identifies a significant, critical area for attention in the lifecycle of the product and suggests a strategy for analysis and change; approach and resolution; consideration and action, acting as a tool to overcome the barriers to improvement. Developed with a focus on textiles and fashion, they have a potential role in generating strategic concepts for the design process generally… The cards promote group workshop discussions in game-play and roleplay formats. They are offered as a range of entry points for positive research-led engagement from the practical to the idealistic. (Earley & Politowicz 2013: 176) After a period of working with these cards with different industry stakeholders, I would often return to a studio practice in which the problems and barriers, the practical as

Re-creation and recreation  143 Table 8.1 The adapted PAR framework which maps the three schools’ projects Projects/PAR

Inside out project (2014–2015)

Cultures of Parkour jacket resilience project (2019) project (2015)

PARTICIPATION: democracy & life in society WHO – School Collaboration kids, teachers, through parents participation Empowerment through participation

Kids Teachers Kids, parents, teachers

Kids Secondary Kids, parents, school boy teacher Secondary school boy, teacher

Homework task; Installation; Redressing uniform; Overprinting workshop sessions Outcome: Assembly (Figure 8.1, left) & Material Box (Figure 8.1, middle) Outcome: Shirts (Figure 8.1, right) & Auction

Visual research, Toys to design, remake make, model, uniform in photoshoot, a gallery exhibit event Outcome: Outcome: Exhibit – Jacket Exhibit – (Figure 8.3) Toy Toolkit (Figure 8.2, left) Kids clothes (Figure 8.2, right)

ACTION: practice & experience HOW – Based on materials, (used) uniform, creative play

Change, real life experience Evidenced through different outcomes

RESEARCH: mind(set), inquiry, knowledge WHAT – Recreation, Re-creation Other schools, DATA podcast

New knowledge, Reflection & Insights document Blog posts lessons Making with scientists

Reflection & Insights Seminar: Presentation and discussion

Reflection & Insights Art GCSE Portrait work COVID-limited future shows

well as the idealistic ideas from the workshops would continue to reverberate. I would find ways to make and experiment with materials in as many project future engagements as possible. This might mean entering a project as a workshop facilitator but in a Trojan horse-like manner, once onboard find a way to make prototypes so that the ideas being discussed did not get stuck at a conceptual level (Hornbuckle 2022). The projects in the school didn’t follow this model. Instead, the focus was co-developing an approach with the deputy head, which would focus on facilitating the children to remake textile objects through play. I made toolkits and then guided the pupils through the process of making overprinted garments for themselves. This research was about play, textiles and making and the ambition to create change in others, as well as myself. It was also the result of a period of time where I felt I needed to reflect on the way I was mothering my small kids. Throughout this period, I reflected on the changes that were taking place – at work, at home and in my

144  Rebecca Earley practice. I published blogs during this period via my personal website,8 and I quote from the blog throughout the chapter. Reframing for research Recreation (play, fun, enjoyment when not working) and re-creation (making using old materials, reusing valuable resources) were the core approaches in the project work; because we were working with children and needed their attention and because we had to use materials that were accessible and relatable. These words surfaced as the research evolved through reading, after the workshops took place. I also retrospectively mapped the projects and the outcomes into a PAR framework. I created the framework by bringing together different aspects I found useful in reading about PAR – also after I had done the work at the school. The following points draw from Table 8.1 to summarise the school projects. •

•

•

Participation: Democracy & Life in Society. The school’s projects involved pupils, teachers and parents. Collaboration was achieved through participation in planning and delivery of workshops. Empowerment and learning were experienced by those involved, through participation in the sessions, and through the making of the final outcomes into garment form. Teachers also felt empowered to integrate the ideas into lessons. Public and academic audiences watched the sessions in the gallery (The Well Gallery, London College of Communications, UAL). Action: Practice & Experience. The workshops were based on materials, (used) uniform and creative play. Homework tasks were set by the teachers which asked the students to look at the labels on their uniform. The pupils co-created an installation which showed the airmiles for items of uniform (Figure 8.1, left). I made various toolkits (Figures 8.1, middle; 8.2, left) and the pupils made upcycled school shirts (Figures 8.1, right; 8.2, right). The project actions also included: visual research; design and make; modelling and a photoshoot; exhibition of overprinted jacket and framed photograph (Figure 8.3). Research: Mind(set), Inquiry, Knowledge. The workshops were documented and presented at research and teaching events at UAL and formed the basis of a conference keynote.9 I wrote about the work in blogs and talked about it in podcast ­interviews.10 New ideas were generated which fed back into consortium workshops with scientists.

Practice 1: playful design research projects with academia and industry Circular textile design differs from traditional textile design because it asks the designer of the textile to not only create a new material but also prioritise the use and end-of-life of the product at the outset. This requires the designer to understand not only more about the processes of production, use and disposal but also much more about the people in these new systems too. Working with people from a broad set of backgrounds, cultures, training, professions, with different languages can be extremely challenging and progress when working together for the first time can be slow. Playful approaches have been experienced as a really useful way to align expectations and build confidence and trust between stakeholders. This section looks at

Re-creation and recreation  145 previous ‘playful’ industry-located research – grouped into three themes – to reposition the work. Throughout it highlights how the element of recreation (‘play’ and ‘playfulness’) was introduced in formal research project workshops and events. Playful workshops: product speeds and portrait making In the Swedish-based MFF project, I co-created workshop tools to support the generation of new product concepts by stakeholders for multi-speed circular clothing. In ‘Designing Fast & Slow: exploring fashion textile product lifecycle speeds with industry designers’ (Earley & Goldsworthy 2015), we explored how certain products might be created to travel quickly through a cycle and which ones might travel slowly. The results extended beyond individual garment scenarios to include systems perspectives towards more ‘delightful’ and interactive clothing. In ‘Playing for time: seven practice-led workshop tools for making design decisions to extend the life of fashion textile materials and products’ (Earley & Goldsworthy 2017), we built on this work through enhancing the understanding of longevity as both a product and a material consideration. The ‘Speeding Tickets’ are a good example of how a playful approach was used (Earley & Goldsworthy 2019:15). In the article, ‘Face-ing Collaboration: A Meditation on the Faces of Circular Textile Research’ (Earley & Hornbuckle 2017b), we considered effective working relationships between participants in another multi-disciplinary consortium project, Trash-2-Cash11 (T2C). We hosted a series of informal sessions within the larger consortium workshops; participants created portraits using photography, visual data mapping, silent meditation and sketching, to bring partners closer together by taking time to focus on each other’s faces. The co-created recycled shirt print design12 built further connections between collaborators. We found that this method informed the development of subsequent internal communication and facilitation tools, as well as external communication approaches for the project as part of a wider strategy to engage external non-specialist audiences in the work being undertaken. Playful communications: postcards and podcasts In ‘Postcards from the edge: Trash-2-Cash communication tools used to support inter-disciplinary work towards a design driven material innovation (DDMI) methodology’ (Earley & Hornbuckle 2017a), postcards used in workshops contributed to the communication channels and shared understanding of methodological approaches. The inter-disciplinarity of the participants was key to achieving the project aims – but communication between sectors was challenging due to diverse expertise and levels of experience. Language and cultural differences can also be barriers to collaboration as well. Designing easy and accessible and fun communication tools was one of the approaches used help build relationships. In ‘Building Bridges: Design Researchers Making Podcasts to Support Internal Collaboration in an EU Horizon 2020 Scientific Programme’ (Earley 2019), I set out to demonstrate how new methods and tools could further bridge gaps in communication and understanding in the T2C project. Partner questionnaires ascertained how a podcast series progressed the collaborations as well as benefitting the expanded practice of design researchers in social contexts.

146  Rebecca Earley Playful hat wearing: roles and reflection Playful approaches may help designers to move beyond the confines of their usual disciplinary practices. We can assume different roles ourselves; we can empathise with others in different roles; and we can then also build project teams and community groups with infrastructures that foster trust, support risk-taking and encourage inter-disciplinarity. Notional ‘hat-wearing’ and workshops that focus on developing one’s self-empathy skills and the ability to listen and relate to others more are discussed in the article ‘Divide, Switch, Blend. Exploring two hats for industry entrepreneurship and academic practice-based textile design research’ (Hall & Earley 2019). The hats of the academic researcher and that of the industry entrepreneur support the ability to talk to a factory owner, or work with technicians; then switching hats enables the researcher to reflect and write up in a scholarly style. In ‘A New “T” for Textiles: Training Design Researchers to Inspire Buying Office Staff Towards Sustainability at Hennes and Mauritz (H&M)’ (Earley et al. 2016), we reflect on both the training delivered to industry designers in the MFF project, as well as the training I organised within our own research centre team. The notion of the traditional ‘T’ shaped designer is challenged by adding a new horizontal bar across the bottom (making an ‘I’ shape), as the design team used playful, reflective moments (including yoga and meditation, games, journaling and sketching) to build a greater understanding of oneself and others, with a focus on skills that will embed design practice ideas and give them impact. Co-author and MFF PhD researcher, Clara Vuletich, became interested in transition design (Kossoff & Irwin 2021) and what it means to change oneself as well as the community around us. Her final thesis, ‘Transitionary Textiles: a craft-based journey of textile design practice towards new values and roles for a sustainable fashion industry’, explored the inner and outer selves of the activist textile designer (Vuletich 2015). Summary These industry-facing workshops – designed to adhere to the formality of the research funding body stipulations as well as the requirement for the workshops to be viewed by the brand as a good use of its staff’s time – left me curious to experiment with experiences that brought clothing more directly to users further back in the consumption timeline. In particular, as the fast fashion consumer demographic is young adults, was there was a curiosity about what was going on in the minds of the next generation? Would they be buying fast fashion at the same pace as the current customers, or would they want something different, if the climate crisis discourse becomes more popular and urgent?

Practice 2: three school projects How can designers use materials and making with items of old and lost school uniform to playfully explore the habits, behaviours and attitudes to clothes and fashion, amongst the next generation of users and designers? In these practice-based projects, used textiles in the form of discarded school uniform from the lost property box are coupled with hands-on, playful making activities, with different groups of primary school children. Between 2014 and 2020,

Re-creation and recreation  147 I  delivered a number of small projects at a local primary school in West London. The interventions centred on the school uniform as the focal point for exploring how sustainable design might be incorporated into the curriculum in more playful ways. These interventions began by engaging with the school as a parent volunteer – not in my professional work capacity as a design researcher – however as the mini projects progressed, they were brought into discussion points at research events at the university. Working with the children in different spaces inside and outside of the school, as well as in a gallery space at the university, activities were facilitated that ranged from mapping the supply chain journeys for the school cap, to turning jumpers inside out, to paintballing and skateboarding with fabric inks, to co-creating upcycled shirts for fund-raising auctions. Inside out (2014) Reclamation is the process of claiming something back or of reasserting a right. It can be about restoring dignity and the preservation of people, skills and (material) resources throughout the clothing lifecycle. On 24 April 2013, the Rana Plaza factory collapsed, killing 1,138 garment workers. The catastrophic event brought into sharp focus the conditions under which cheap clothes are made. Whilst the industry can be a force for good, providing employment and growth for emerging economies, the high street appetite for fast fashion puts pressure on producers to make economic savings wherever possible. The corners they cut are often wages, as well as health and safety precautions. The fashion industry that clothes us is built on exploitative, highly optimised business models. Fashion activists, stakeholders and researchers are demanding that we challenge this, reclaiming the joy and pleasure of dressing up by creating or accessing clothes outside of the large corporate fashion machine. A week after the disaster, I was invited by Orsola de Castro to support the Fashion Revolution Day advisory group and this provided me with a way to frame the project ideas with the school in 2014. Reflecting on my children’s emerging fashion habits and tastes, I began to write blog posts to help develop a project idea that would respond to the FRD initiative in a more local and personal way. The sofa is where I sew. What I usually sew there is school name tags into school uniforms, and mend sleeves and other ripped and chewed details. I sew labels in to uniform far more often than I really should – as the kids lose clothes and I have to replace them. It’s been bothering me a lot lately. Not that I begrudge the sewing – I find it meditative. It’s more that my own offspring couldn’t seem to grasp that clothing needs to be looked after. From the sofa I can see into my daughter’s bedroom. From the door to the front room, I can see into my son’s room. Both floors are piled up with clothes. Tried on, worn briefly, discarded… left to mum to pick up, put away, move to the laundry basket. Aged 8 and 6 it’s definitely approaching the time when they can get more house trained…13 At school, the lost property area is a mess of unlabelled and unloved green, white and navy cotton and polyester. I decided to start here with my research and look at the way in which primary school children relate to their uniform – their everyday clothes.

148  Rebecca Earley The deputy head and I hatched a plan to run a ‘Who Made My Uniform’ project, in response to the FRD provocation ‘Who Made My Clothes?’ Beginning with a carefully prepared school assembly on the actual day, the project consisted of a week-long residency by myself with the help of another mum, and a series of class projects run by the teachers. We asked, ‘Where was my uniform made? Who made my uniform? What is it made from? Where do materials come from?’; as well as ‘How can I remake my own clothes?’ In the assembly, which took place on the first anniversary of the Rana Plaza factory collapse, the pupils presented the results of a class project, in which they had traced the miles travelled of each part of the school uniform. They were shocked to find that the school cap had been made in Vietnam and had travelled 9,234 km to the UK (Figure 8.1, left). Parents commented on the children’s responses they witnessed at home; the children had shown their parents the labels in their clothes and talked about their surprise – both children and adults – at the geographic diversity that their uniforms spanned. After looking at the installation of uniform, the assembly then asked the pupils to turn their jumpers inside out, so that the labels were on the outside, highlighting the awareness of the supply chain, which led to the assembly then focusing on the people in such supply chains. The deputy head showed the children films and images about factory work and factory life, and how many factories employ children. The pupils were asked to take a moment to think about these children and the deputy head then led a prayer for these children with the pupils. The assembly prepared the pupils for the materials workshops. I asked the pupils, ‘Where do materials come from? Where do they go after you have finished with them?’ I created ‘The Handling Collection’ – a box of material samples, enabling the children to feel for themselves the fibres and textiles, which ranged from cotton, wool, polyester, bamboo and hemp, to less conventional materials with their origins in paper, pineapples, milk and coffee (Figure 8.1, middle). The workshop involved handing around a raw resource – like a bamboo plant – the textile sample was then handed around to allow the pupils to understand that all materials are made from something and that something would need to be grown, harvested and processed in different ways. The workshop then went on to talk about where these materials could be found in the uniforms they were wearing, before ending with reuse and recycling options, and finally how these materials can be made into other things after they finish their first useful lives.

Figure 8.1 Left – ‘Who Made My Uniform?’ installation, special assembly, 24 April 2014. Middle – ‘Where do materials come from?’ workshop series with nursery class to year 6 pupils, April 2014. Right – ‘School Shirts’ workshop series with years 2, 3, 4 and 5, April 2014. Photographs by the author.

Re-creation and recreation  149 For the next workshops, simple domestic tools – like scissors and an iron – were used to ‘upcycle’ school shirts from the lost property bin at the school. Each pupil folded and then cut and printed a square shape on to the shirt using the dry heat of the iron. A patchwork print design emerged organically as each pupil chose the place for their paper square. The shirts were later sold to parents at a fund-raising auction at the school (Figure 8.1, right). Cultures of Resilience (2015) The Cultures of Resilience (CoR) project allowed me to return to the FRD themes a year later, in April 2015. CoR was led by Professors Ezio Manzini and Jeremy Till and was concerned with research ideas that could foster and support ‘resilient’ behaviours and communities. Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; to be ‘tough’. This project was about using fashion textile design to counter current clothing norms of behaviour and expectations. In the essay ‘Elastic Learning Tools’ (Earley & Harvey 2015) Bridget and I explain an idea about resilience and of making the mending of clothes part of the curriculum. Children in particular are hard on their clothes – running, falling, spilling and so on – should we aim not to circulate but to help them remedy mishaps, making time to care for clothing, rewilding garments through the freeing-ness of mending? (Earley & Harvey 2015:74) We go on to align mending and repair to resilience and to the idea of elasticity, flexibility and how the curriculum currently assesses children. Resilience requires trust in those with deep expertise willing to be part of the curriculum and being prepared to build institutional reputation through this exchange. Rejecting the downward slide to the numerical standardisation of assessment and instead crediting our children with their achievements, the quality of their thought processes and their ability to discern between information… to be reflexive and flexible. Assess their resilience. (Earley & Harvey 2015:74)

Figure 8.2 L eft – Objects borrowed from home used as printing tools to make a toolkit for upcycling school uniform through physical play, 27 March 2015, Well Gallery, London College of Communications, UAL. Right – Dyed school shirt overprinted by children with a skateboard, 27 March 2015, Well Gallery, London College of Communications, UAL. Photographs by the author.

150  Rebecca Earley I collaborated with Bridget Harvey to build on previous project work, towards a performative and physical, playful experience. We asked, ‘What everyday items could we use to create an inspiring toolbox for school children, encouraging them to consider old school uniform as a potential resource for fun and creativity?’ Our take on resilience here was to show kids and teachers that upcycling old clothes can be done using anything to hand – specialist equipment is not required – and that it can be physical and collaborative process. Resilience and clothing translating into a ‘toughness’ – as in, despite a lack of money or resources, we can still care for the planet and ourselves in joyful ways. To test these ideas, we took over a public gallery space (The Well Gallery, London College of Communications, UAL) and invited a group of pupils from the same London school to come in for an hour to create overprints on old clothing using a toy toolkit (Figure 8.2). Using a skateboard to overprint a school shirt (previously over-dyed in the washing machine) created great excitement amongst the pupils. From M&S, new and white; to used, dirty and ripped; then made green and overprinted in this manner – the journey in visual and physical terms had a magical effect on the kids and their view of their everyday uniform. Using fingers to make marks is not only pleasurable in a sensory way but also the dramatic nature of the mark which is transferred to the upcycled garment adds to its aesthetic and novel appeal. In other words – the kids loved that their clothes were printed with the evidence of their play and pleasure.14 Several of the shirts from this session were worn by the kids after the event; the energy used in the creation process seemed to translate into an enthusiasm for wearing the bright shirts with pride. Parkour Parka (2019) By the end of the above projects, my son had moved on to secondary school. Here, at a boys-only school, the curriculum now included design and technology, but nothing on textiles and sustainable fashion. By contrast, in the girls-only secondary schools in the area, ‘fast fashion’ was on the curriculum and some schools taught sewing and dressmaking as well. Do boys not wear clothes? Do boys not consume fashion, as they move into their teenage years? The work that had begun in the local primary school now seemed unfinished, as I observed the behaviour of my son and his friends. The definition of regeneration is the action or process of regenerating or being regenerated. This project was about using fashion textile design thinking to enable the reimagining of our mindsets and urban surroundings. It asked, ‘How can remaking my own clothes give me a greater sense of identity and belonging?’ My son loves trainers. He’s a football fan and player, and the influence of the Arsenal team and their colourful attire – and what is donned by his group of friends at school and on his team at the local sports centre – is significant to him. He got the trainers he wanted for Christmas – bright orange. They looked amazing with his lime green away kit. Yet within days he started asking for another pair, in a different colour. I took the opportunity to explain to him again about why ‘stuff’ is special. The materials, dyes, labour, shipping… all comes at a cost, and not just to the bank of mum and dad. At 8, he knows all this already. We talk about ‘stuff’ all the time. But he just can’t make the leap to applying this knowledge to his insatiable desire to be part of the team - to look the part.15

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Figure 8.3 Left – ‘Parkour Parka’, overprinted polyester jacket co-created by the author and her son. Right – image selected for the exhibition at the school. Photographs by the author.

The ‘Parkour Parka’ was a project my son and I decided to do, with the aim of submitting a co-created artwork to the annual school art show, which exhibited the creations of both parents and pupils every year. The collaborators chose to upcycle a piece of sports clothing. A polyester zip up jacket, by Uniqlo, found in a textile sorting facility in China, formed the base piece for the project. Then, the urban sport of ‘parkour16’ was chosen as a theme to inspire the overprint design. Silhouettes of athletic figures were drawn on to black transfer paper and cut out, then pressed using an iron on to the jacket. The resulting garment turned an old, stained, dirty white jacket into a one-off upcycled item. I photographed my son wearing the jacket at night, in urban settings, as he emulated the moves of the Parkour experts (Figure 8.3, left). A large photographic print was chosen and framed for the school exhibition and shown alongside the jacket (Figure 8.3, right).

Re-creation/recreation The climate crisis demands us to make again – to re-create – the way we live and the things we make. One way to reduce impacts is to use circular economy approaches. In the UK textile industry, it has been predicted that as much as 26% of emissions can be reduced through using circular approaches (WRAP 2021:12). This will mean using recycled materials, making things recyclable and making things last as long as possible. The social and economic pressures arising around the climate crisis and the urgent need for us all to change are growing, and we can already see evidence of climate ‘anxiety’ (Clayton 2020). Playful approaches to question behaviour may be useful, especially when trying to engage young users. The model in Figure 8.4 proposes a reframing of sustainability curriculum research to focus on the use of old materials and play, by drawing together the core theoretical elements the research has explored. Re-creation – to make again – enables primary schools to tap into the popular and eternal appeal of using discarded materials for projects. Addressing sustainability issues to combat climate change can also be seen as making again the way we live.

152  Rebecca Earley

Figure 8.4 The ‘re-creation/recreation’ model brings the popular 7Rs together with Hauk’s ‘reclamation, resilience, regeneration’ themes.

The model places the idea of recreation – an activity done for pleasure when one is not working – as the all-encompassing approach for this thematic. Through a sense of fun and play we can plant the seeds of change. Through the process of creating Table 8.1, I was able to reflect on the research by considering PAR. These projects were all about participation. The projects involved pupils, teachers and parents. The Deputy Headmistress was key to agreeing to the projects; teacher1 made her own project in parallel to my activities. Teacher2 accompanies the  children to the gallery workshop. Collaboration was achieved through preparation, planning and participation in workshops. The assembly involved all the teachers and pupils. A parent helped with the shirt printing workshops. Changes in the teachers, children and parents Both the children and the parent helper valued the tactile, playful participatory activities: As the project was play-focussed it gave a great sense of levelling between grownups and children. Exploring together gave the children a sense of ownership, particularly because it was such a tactile experience and kids are so connected with their sense of touch. They spend all day being told not to touch things.17

Re-creation and recreation  153 The sessions also enabled the children to see themselves, their peers and the world in new ways: One of the key aspects of the project was its international dimension, which in an inner London state school with diverse communities was a great way to make classmates feel inclusive as they discover the world through clothing. (Ibid) Using the uniform proved to be an ideal way to connect inwards and outwards to sustainable materials and clothing: Collaboration was very good as the starting point was the uniform which was the same for 4-year olds as well as the 11-year olds. It generated different points of access to learning from the very basic understanding of the geo-politics of fashion (i.e., where is my uniform from?) to more complex levels of understanding about colonialism and sustainability… I think the project was an excellent way of channelling so many aspects of the curriculum into a really meaningful experience which will have lifelong repercussions. The universality of the school uniform is meant to provide a levelling for education and the easy access to cheap supermarket versions are crucial for many families on low income. I remember my fatherin-law did not go to grammar school as his family could not afford the uniform. But in reducing clothing costs the implications are far reaching. (Ibid) The homework tasks set by the Deputy Headmistress asked the students to look at the labels on their uniform and clothes at home. The pupils co-created an installation which showed the airmiles for items of uniform (Figure 8.1, left). The children found this really exciting. The parent helper noted: I remember distinctly during the project my 8-year-old son calling from the upstairs bathroom “Mummy!” In the pause following I was anticipating the usual cry for toilet paper but instead he shouted, “my underpants are from Bangladesh!” The project was incredibly successful in shifting our attitudes at home as we all began looking at labels and recognising the power of our shopping habits. My teenage daughter now no longer buys new clothes but insists on second hand or what is now termed ‘vintage’ clothing. (Ibid) Encouraging children to value the school uniform and view secondhand uniform differently was one of the main aims of the project. The biggest change I saw was in attitudes to secondhand clothing. Formerly the lost property clothing, which I had always rummaged through as a parent of frugal upbringing, was seen by my kids to be somewhat dirty and almost embarrassing. After the project it was suddenly given a moral boost so that my kids were quite proud to be wearing recycled uniforms. (Ibid)

154  Rebecca Earley Changes in my children at home How did the activities – the actions – change my children? I sat down and talked to Martha about these projects, using the figures from this chapter to nudge her memory. By working with old uniform on these projects, what did she learn about clothes and fashion? Now 13 years old, she is beginning the teenage years. Had my time in her school left a mark? It was a long time ago. Thinking back now, it made an impression in my mind, yes. But my main memory was just having fun!… Nowadays I do look at clothes and know that they relate to the state of the planet… but new clothes are so appealing, it cancels out that thought! Clothes give an impression of what I am like as a person. Girls judge each other a lot. Having a sense of fashion is super important… We do talk about the state of the planet in more general terms. We don’t care about what’s in the materials though!18 For Martha, and as the millions of viewers on platforms like TikTok, part of the appeal is also in the ‘unboxing’: I hate seeing the buyers on TikTok with their cheap fashion stuff. My friends and I talk about why we think brands like Shein are bad. And you know the haulers won’t wear most of it. People are having fat arguments in the comments section about it… but I do understand the appeal of the unwrapping. For me, a lot of it is about the ordering of something, the waiting, the arrival, the opening… Martha explains that it reminds her of the excitement of Christmas, ‘...that’s my childhood!’ I had realised this about her some time ago – it’s part of the reason we all love to receive something new – so I have tried instead to encourage excitement around secondhand shopping, in local charity shops as well as via apps like Vinted. This suits her at this age, she is more independent and is experimenting with looks at a rapid pace, ‘I like thinking about what aesthetic to pick. I like a bit of everything’. Martha agreed about sustainable fashion and textile consumption issues being introduced at primary school – ‘…by secondary school it’s too late. You don’t want to be told anything when you get there, as everyone is a teenager, the majority don’t really care about what adults have to say!’ My son, now 16, is definitely less interested in what adults have to say. Since these projects, his views, actions and tastes have changed a great deal. (I just checked on the door frame in the hallway to find he has grown a whopping 53 cm since the first school project in 2014 – he has changed physically almost beyond recognition.) He is now a London teen, through and through. In 2014, he was watching YouTube and this advertising on a laptop, but since then there has been a massive increase in online adverts and retail and these are now widely available to all via social media (not just fast fashion webshops) on mobile phones. The materials-led sessions were important in connecting the kids with their clothes and may be even more relevant now in 2022 as so much consumption is actioned digitally. He declined to be interviewed for the chapter – mostly because he is too busy with exams and then being out all the time – but from where I am observing him, he is carefully combining spending money on cool used stuff from Depop with a few

Re-creation and recreation  155 new ‘luxury’ things bought by me for birthdays and Christmas. Clothes are incredibly important to him. He has a girlfriend now – that’s playing a big part, I think. He even irons T-shirts before he goes to meet her! Changes in me and my practice Re-creation is also considered in terms of how we as design researchers must be ready to change ourselves – our own direction of travel and the focus of our efforts – when working with urgent wicked and complex challenges. My research practice changed significantly during this time. My methods extended to making various toolkits (Figures 8.1 (middle) and 8.2 (left)) and the process for supporting pupils to make upcycled school shirts (Figures 8.1 (right) and 8.2 (right)). During the same period, I explored ways to work with adults on co-created shirts: I found a way to collaborate with my teenage son, which resulted in the exhibition of the overprinted jacket and framed photograph (Figure 8.3); and I explored new ideas with PhD students and in the consortium workshops with scientists.19 The workshops were documented and presented at research and teaching events at UAL and formed the basis of a conference keynote. I wrote about the work in blogs and talked about it in multiple podcast interviews. Re-creation continues in my work through the ongoing upcycling of shirts, with my most recent design work integrating the idea of designing for longevity – for example, a shirt that last 50 years, that changes hands many times. 20 I am also writing about what things might look like in 2070 – connecting up new materials, technologies and business model innovations into speculative design scenarios (Earley 2020). These visions are playful and fun, focusing on what families might want, as our world changes through climate impacts. However, I don’t think it’s that easy to articulate the exact ways the projects changed me – in the ways that are perhaps the most valuable – as these are in the way I am parenting and supporting my teenagers at the moment. They still love clothes. They don’t have to be new, and they talk about their needs and desires with me at length. I still hold the purse strings to some extent, but they are buying more often from their own funds. I think the biggest shift is in the way that at home we are all seem to be aware of our clothing, in a more everyday sense. Maybe it has normalised climate change conversations to an extent, bringing it closer to home, into our wardrobes. The parent who helped me with the project concurs, ‘I think it differed from other school projects as the work infiltrated the home life with questions raised and conversations had of lives beyond the kids own’.

Conclusion The three projects in school began in informal ways – through volunteering and through conversations with my kids – but new research questions emerged that I brought into the academic research community I am part of. Moving between home life and work life – using the common threads of the materiality of the school uniform and playfulness – allowed new insights to emerge which may be used to inform future curriculum developments, at primary schools, secondary schools and beyond. The opportunities explored here may also be useful for engaging fashion consumer more broadly too, beyond the formal education structure. Indeed, EU research projects like

156  Rebecca Earley shemakes21 are already using similar playful approaches to build the skills and confidence of females in the industry, towards more equitable futures. Design researchers, being playful with materials and making approaches, can reach more diverse – and younger – audiences and uncover new models which might support or even accelerate the evolution of sustainable design activities taking place in art and design rooms in our schools today. A seemingly light-touch approach, bringing joy and tapping into flow states, will help us – including both researchers and child participants – to confront, and cope, with the challenges and change that lies ahead.

Acknowledgements Many thanks: to all the collaborators on these projects, especially Ezio Manzini & Jeremy Till; Bridget Harvey, Rosie Hornbuckle and the other members of Centre for Circular Design; the funders – Mistra Future Fashion, Trash-2-Cash, Chelsea College of Arts, University of the Arts London; staff and students at the primary school in London, especially Jan Free and Christina Chiocca; and my children for being so willing to experiment and learn with me. Trash-2-Cash was funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme (grant agreement number 626226). This chapter is dedicated to the memory of Deputy Headmistress, Mrs Andrea McManus.

Notes 1 The Sustainable Design Inspiration Programme (SDI) at H&M in Sweden can be accessed in the project report, https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/11281/ 2 http://www.beckyearley.com/weekly-diary/2015/1/12/week-1-setting-my-intention 3 Fashion Revolution, http://fashionrevolution.org/ 4 ‘The arts in schools: 40 years on’, https://www.artsprofessional.co.uk/magazine/356/ feature/arts-schools-40-years 5 ‘The 7R’s for schools’ (14.1.19), https://www.treehugger.com/sustainable-fashion/7-rssustainable-fashion.html 6 See for example, the ‘Top 100’ project, which spanned a 20-year period and remade polyester through different research questions, http://www.upcyclingtextiles.net/ 7 The 2009 AHRC project report can be accessed at https://www.academia.edu/38311773/ PROJECT_REPORT_Worn_Again_Rethinking_Recycled_Textiles_2005_2009_ 8 Read the author’s blog posts about these projects at http://www.beckyearley.com/ weekly-diary 9 Play with Purpose conference, https://events.beds.ac.uk/uniofbeds/detail/343/15833 66400000 10 Design and Technology Association (DATA) podcast interview, https://www.data. org.uk /for-education /media-video-and-podcasts/podcasts/in-conversation-withprofessor-rebecca-earley/ 11 Trash-2-Cash, https://www.trash2cashproject.eu/ 12 Silence Shirts, http://www.upcyclingtextiles.net/#/silence-shirts-2017/ 13 http://www.beckyearley.com/weekly-diary/2015/4/14/week-17-fashion-revolution 14 This workshop with kids can be seen in the project film, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=dGZw5lRX3Tg 15 http://www.beckyearley.com/weekly-diary/2015/4/14/week-17-fashion-revolution 16 The urban sport of ‘parkour’, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkour 17 Email exchange between author and parent, 18.7.22. 18 Recorded conversation between author and daughter, 15.7.22.

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158  Rebecca Earley Sustainability Education’. Journal of Sustainability Education, http://www.susted.com/ ­ wordpress/content/the-new-three-rs-in-an-age-of-climate-change-reclamation-resilienceand-regeneration-as-possible-approaches-for-climate-responsive-environmental-andsustainability-education_2017_02. Hofverberg, H., Maivorsdotter, N. (2018) ‘Recycling, crafting and learning – an empirical analysis of how students learn with garments and textile refuse in a school remake project’. Environmental Education Research, 24:6, 775–790. DOI: 10.1080/13504622.2017.133867. Hornbuckle, R. (2022) ‘Project proximities: A meta review of how design addresses distance in complex collaborations’. In D. Lockton, S. Lenzi, P. Hekkert, A. Oak, J. Sádaba, P. Lloyd, P. (eds.) DRS2022: Bilbao, 25 June -3 July, Bilbao, Spain. DOI: 10.21606/drs.2022.677. International Commission on the Futures of Education. (2021). ‘Reimagining Our Futures Together: A new social contract for education’. Paris: UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Available at: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000379707. locale=en. Kindon, S., Pain, R., Kesby, M. (eds) (2007) Participatory Action Research Approaches and Methods: Connecting People, Participation, and Place. Oxon: Routledge. Kossoff, G., Irwin, T. (2021) ‘Transition design as a strategy for addressing urban wicked problems’. In H. Sadri, S. Zeybekoglu, P. Marcuse (eds) Cities without Capitalism. Oxon: Routledge UK. ISBN9780429352485. Manzini, E., Till, J. (eds) (2015) Cultures of Resilience. Hato Press. Available from: https:// culturesofresilience.org/. Pelling, M. (2011) Adaptation to Climate Change: From Resilience to Transformation, Oxon: Routledge UK. ISBN: 9780415477512. Schneider, B. (2012) ‘Participatory action research, mental health service user research, and the hearing (our) voices projects’. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 11:2, 152–165. Vuletich, C. (2015) ‘Transitionary textiles: A craft-based journey of textile design practice towards new values and roles for a sustainable fashion industry’. PhD thesis, University of the Arts London. Available from: https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/. WRAP. (2021) ‘Textiles 2030 Circularity Pathway: Transforming our industry for the planet’. [Online] Available at: https://wrap.org.uk/sites/default/files/2021-04/Textiles%202030%20 Circularity%20Pathway.pdf.

9

Fashion activism and design for social change – the Making for Change: Waltham Forest project Francesco Mazzarella

Introduction In this chapter, I reflect on the Making for Change: Waltham Forest project which I delivered in partnership between a Higher Education Institution (London College of Fashion – LCF) and a local government department (London Borough of Waltham Forest – LBWF) for the London Borough of Culture 2019 (LBOC) and the Great Place scheme. With my project team, I engaged, through fashion and making, local schools, businesses, residents, and hard-to-reach communities in order to develop and retain creative talent in the borough and address socio-economic issues affecting the community, such as deprived youth, skills shortage, and high unemployment rates. With these challenges in mind, I initiated the Making for Change: Waltham Forest project, which aimed at exploring ways in which fashion activism, design and making can be used to catalyse positive social change and activate long-term legacies within the local community. To address this aim, the following questions drove my research project: 1 In what ways can design research be used to embed sustainability and innovation within heritage fashion manufacturing businesses? 2 What cross-sector collaborations can enable the activation of positive social change and the creation of tangible legacies in order to make the borough a better place to live and work in? Adopting a participatory action research methodology, I developed a range of fashion activism interventions in relation to education, manufacturing, and community engagement, which resulted in the creation of a number of artefacts or ‘provocations’ for social change. As a result, this fashion activism project contributed to raising people’s awareness of sustainability issues, developing making skills, opening up career pathways, and building cross-sector partnerships. In the conclusions of the chapter, I discuss the challenges experienced throughout this participatory action research project and outline recommendations for future work.

The context of the fashion activism intervention The project focused on Waltham Forest, a North-East London borough, which is ethnically diverse. In 2015, Waltham Forest was ranked 35th in England for multiple deprivations out of 326 local authorities (London Borough of Waltham Forest, 2020), and several neighbourhoods in Waltham Forest are in the top 10% of the most

DOI: 10.4324/9781003260356-10

160  Francesco Mazzarella deprived in England (William Morris Big Local Plan, 2015). Income in Waltham Forest is lower than the London average and inequality is evident in employment and pay across minority ethnic groups. Nevertheless, recent employment figures show a sharp growth rate of new businesses and of self-employed; the number of new businesses and start-ups has increased by around 47% in recent years (A New Direction, 2019). Within the borough is located the William Morris Gallery, a museum dedicated to the life and works of William Morris, a world-renowned designer (of fabrics, wallpaper, furniture, and glass), craftsman, writer, and socialist activist from the 19th century who was a major contributor to the British Arts and Crafts movement. Heritage craftsmanship underpins the growing creative industry and grassroots ‘making’ initiatives of Waltham Forest and its fashion industry; at the same time, we are witnessing an increased interest in preserving and innovating the traditional practices that are essential to the material culture of this place. Within this textile and fashion context, craftsmanship can be defined as the human-centred economic activity of giving form and meaning to locally sourced fibres; through skilled handwork or by directly controlling mechanised and digital tools, textile artisans manage the process of making small batches of quality textiles, clothes, and accessories (Mazzarella et al., 2021). Besides well-established businesses and start-ups, there is also a growing number of creative initiatives led by local residents, revealing more untapped talent which deserves surfacing. In East London, the fashion industry has created 36,000 jobs in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) focused on advertising, retail, design, manufacturing, and distribution (Fashion District, 2019). These fashion businesses comprise of clothing retail or fabric merchants followed by designers, manufacturers, and specialised crafts such as embroidery, beadwork, and leatherwork. Furthermore, Walthamstow is in the top 8% of all UK Parliamentary Constituencies, when it comes to the number of people employed in the fashion industry. The challenges faced by the local fashion industry are highlighted by a study conducted by non-profit organisation A New Direction (2019) based on the review of grey literature, interviews, a focus group, and a series of workshops with local stakeholders and project partners (i.e. LCF and LBWF). The report provides the evidence base for a local partnership plan setting the vision for making Waltham Forest a place where fashion businesses and people can thrive. As highlighted in an interview conducted by A New Direction, there is ‘a growing consciousness of waste and ethics in fashion, particularly amongst young people’ (ibid., p. 24). The local community adopts a ‘make do and mend’ or ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’ approach to sustainability, which is primarily driven by economic necessity and only secondarily by environmental, social, and cultural concerns (ibid.). In terms of the local fashion sector, the borough is rich in local heritage and specialised craftsmanship. However, there is a lack of connectivity across the local fashion industry which is made up of small businesses and discrete initiatives, leaving the makers and manufacturers feeling isolated. In this regard, some businesses argue for the need for the local Council to support communication and networks and ‘create an infrastructure to support collaborations between designers and makers’ (A New Direction, 2019, p. 21). A growing attraction to fast fashion over craftsmanship has led to the disappearance of specialist technical skills and a shortage of a skilled workforce. Therefore, there is a need to retain and protect the remaining existing skilled workforce and to upskill new potential employees to maintain the rich cultural fabric of the borough. Finally, the demand for workspaces

Fashion activism and design for social change  161 outstrips the supply. Since rent is sharply increasing, several creative businesses are moving out of the borough or are fearing the prospect of having to do so. Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic and related financial crisis have contributed to making the local fashion industry even more fragile. The role of fashion activism in social change and place-making Within this context, the Making for Change: Waltham Forest project adopted a design activism approach to catalyse change in the local fashion industry towards sustainability. Design activism has been defined as ‘design thinking, imagination and practice applied knowingly or unknowingly to create a counter-narrative aimed at generating and balancing positive social, institutional, environmental and/or economic change’ (Fuad-Luke, 2009). Adopting a design activist approach in this project meant that I played the role of an ‘agent of appropriate change’ or ‘catalyst for systematic transformation’ (Banerjee, 2008). This implied going beyond the well-recognised role of the designer facilitator (supporting on-going initiatives) and expanding the role of the designer to become an activist (aimed at making things happen) (Manzini, 2014). Furthermore, we are witnessing a trend in which universities are increasingly playing an ‘anchoring’ and place-making role in driving social innovation within the local urban contexts in which they are based (Birch, Perry & Taylor, 2013; Fassi et al., 2019). In fact, alongside the entrepreneurial university model of universities (Pinheiro & Stensaker, 2013), the civic university model is gaining momentum, driven by a mission oriented towards community engagement, social service, and local regeneration (Goddard et al., 2014). For example, London College of Fashion’s (LCF) civic role and social purpose as a University interacting with and influencing the local community is embodied in the ‘Better Lives’ agenda, which means using fashion to drive change, building a sustainable future, and improving the way we live. In particular, the Social Responsibility team at LCF has extensive experience in working with women in prison to aid their rehabilitative journeys, by giving them professional skills and qualifications in fashion and textiles and supporting them upon release. Furthermore, in light of its upcoming move to East London, the College has developed a programme of public and community engagement activities, driving transformation, regeneration, innovation and place-making. Adopting a Quadruple Helix Model (Carayannis & Campbell, 2009), the University has activated collaborations with industry, (local and central) government and civil society across East London. This has opened strategic opportunities to take place ahead of the College’s move, rather than ‘parachuting’ into a new area without any engagement with, or relevance for, the local community.

Methodology Although the overall Making for Change: Waltham Forest project comprised also a range of educational and community engagement activities, in this chapter I will focus on three research residencies undertaken with fashion manufacturing businesses as exemplar of design researchers who hold materials and making at the heart of their approaches to activating positive social change. As illustrated in Figure 9.1, using Participatory Action Research (PAR) as a methodology, a collaboration with the project participants was created to explore social, cultural, economic, and

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Figure 9.1 The researcher (right), a young participant in the project (middle) and a craftsman (left) in the making. Photograph by Julia Sabiniarz.

environmental issues within a specific research context and enable the development of interventions or innovative fashion practices to address the very same issues (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2003). Throughout the process, my role as a researcher entailed listening and responding to the needs and aspirations of the participating businesses, setting up the briefs for the residencies, activating the collaborations and mentoring the researchers in their practice. In this, my knowledge and experience of working with materials and handling making processes was essential in leading the threads of the residencies, underpinned by stories of making and collaborative practices to enable positive social change. Using materials as ‘boundary objects’ (Star, 2010), the researchers in residence and I engaged in an in-depth investigation of qualitative data collected from purposively selected groups of people participating in the research. Based on these premises, the project was developed in two phases: 1 The first phase was a residency which I undertook at Waltham Forest Town Hall with the aim of identifying a suitable scope for the project, detailing its outputs and expected outcomes, as well as defining the project timeline and budget. In order to do this, I adopted ethnographic methods (i.e. participant observations and contextual interviews) in consultation with people from diverse departments within LBWF (i.e. Culture, Education, Business Growth, and Regeneration). These initial consultations contributed to establishing partnerships with local organisations (schools, fashion manufacturing businesses, social enterprises) to deliver the project. Adopting an ethnographic approach as per Malinowski (1987), I immersed myself in the local context in order to observe people in their

Fashion activism and design for social change  163 natural environment for an extended period of time and discover the perspectives of local community members on a series of social, cultural, economic, and environmental issues. Throughout the ethnographic investigation, I took field notes, capturing comments and insights from the interaction with the project participants, paying particular attention to contextual elements. 2 The submission and review of a detailed project proposal were then followed by the second and main phase of the project, funded by different departments at LBWF (i.e. the Great Place scheme, Business Growth, Regeneration, and Culture). This consisted of a range of participatory action research interventions, grounded in the themes of makers, fellows and radicals. Given the word limitations of this chapter, I will focus only on the research through making activities undertaken for this project. The researchers in residence and I adopted multiple data collection methods to address the project’s aim, as summarised in Table 9.1. Data analysis Over the course of the research project, large amounts of qualitative data were collected, in a range of formats, such as field notes, post-it notes, audio recordings, photographs and videos. I thematically analysed the data through a manual and iterative process to synthesise data in relation to emerging codes, make comparisons between identified themes, and draw conclusions from the findings (Miles & Huberman, 1994). I used ATLAS.ti software for coding so that raw data (such as audio transcripts, research reports, and feedback questionnaires collected through the project activities) were imported for analysis. In the thematic analysis, codes emerged from the data through an inductive process (Sadler, 1981); I then clustered frequently recurring codes into themes, and I used software-generated word clouds to validate the themes. The process of analysis was guided by the impact evaluation framework developed by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO, 2018). Such a framework is mostly aimed at third-sector organisations to measure the (social) impacts of their programmes. I adopted this framework to demonstrate the outputs and outcomes of this project (funded by a local government department and led by a Higher Education Institution) as evidence base to inform a theory of change. As a result of the impact evaluation process, I outlined the outputs (i.e. the goods, services Table 9.1 Multiple data collection methods adopted throughout the project. Project activities

Research methods

Research residency at Cactus Leather

Desk research Exhibition Co-creation workshops Semi-structured interviews Desk research Prototyping Scenario building Focus group Semi-structured interviews Desk research Semi-structured interviews

Research residency at Blackhorse Lane Ateliers

Research residency at Wagland Textiles

164  Francesco Mazzarella or products being delivered) and outcomes (i.e. single, measurable changes) produced through the research project. Project participants The qualitative nature of the research project led me to use a purposive sampling strategy (Mays & Pope, 1995) to explore how fashion activism, design and making can be used to catalyse positive social change and activate long-term legacies within a specific community. In collaboration with the Business Growth department at LBWF, I visited thirteen textile and fashion manufacturing businesses based in Waltham Forest in order to understand their needs and aspirations. Through this initial scoping activity, it emerged that, although the overall decline of heritage textile manufacturing in the East End of London, a high number (over 40) of fashion businesses were operating in the borough at the time of my investigation and that fashion designers are increasingly returning to produce their own collections locally. In consultation with different members of staff at LCF and LBWF, I selected three – micro, small, and medium – textile and fashion manufacturing businesses for hosting researchers in ­residence to address issues of economic, environmental, cultural, and social sustainability. The decision was based on the businesses’ openness to collaborate, and especially on the potential large-scale and long-term impact of their visions, benefitting not only the businesses themselves, but having also positive impacts on the local community and the fashion industry at large. After I set up three project briefs tailored to the businesses’ needs and aspirations, three members of staff at LCF were selected to undertake three research residencies for the duration of approximately three months each.

Results In this section, I discuss the results of three research residencies undertaken within fashion manufacturing businesses (i.e. Cactus Leather, Blackhorse Lane Ateliers, and Wagland Textiles) and their contribution to making change – respectively – towards cultural sustainability, sustainable production, and policy change. Making change towards cultural sustainability Based in Leyton, Cactus Leather is a micro-business led by Stephen Jones, who has worked for fifty years with brands such as Ally Capellino, Jimmy Choo, and Clarks Shoes. He is now the last remaining clicking press tool maker in London, bending by hand and welding metal tools which are used to cut leather for manufacturing bags and accessories (Figure 9.2). Traditionally, the East End of London was at the centre of fashion manufacturing, but skill-based businesses like Cactus Leather are becoming a rarity in the UK capital. As part of the Making for Change: Waltham Forest project, Xandra Drepaul (Lecturer in 3D Realisation at LCF) undertook a research residency at Cactus Leather, collaborating with Stephen with the aim of retaining this craft know-how and developing a sustainable future for the business. Through her residency, Xandra learned and documented the process of making clicking press tools. As an outcome of her residency, Xandra curated ‘Crafting

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Figure 9.2 Stephen Jones at the Cactus Leather workshop. Photograph by Julia Sabiniarz.

Leather and Steel’, a week-long exhibition to celebrate the unique skillset and creative process of Stephen and showcase how a piece of steel can be transformed into a leather cutting tool. As stated by one visitor, ‘the exhibition showed the simple process and tools to achieve beauty in the craft’. Alongside the exhibition, Xandra and Stephen facilitated two workshops. Each workshop began with an introduction to the craft process, the materials, tools, and machines used, followed by a demonstration by Stephen. Afterwards, Xandra facilitated a brainstorming session  in groups, and the co- creation workshops concluded with the actual making of steel shapes and keychains. Based on feedback received by one participant: The workshop made me think that my skills can be developed further. The workshop helped me better understand the craft. The first workshop was targeted at people without craft experience and interested in learning the skill of steel bending in order to create their own clicking press tools. The steel bending workshop, lasting four hours, was attended by seven people from the arts and crafts industry, ranging from a print designer, a saddle maker, a ceramist through to fashion students. Four out of seven participants had previous experience working with leather. In this regard, one workshop participant stated: I like how there were so many different types of people from different trades! It made way for some fun and interesting conversations.

166  Francesco Mazzarella The second workshop was targeted to children for them to create custom keychains or unique artworks using offcut pieces of leather cut into different shapes using various clicking press tools. This three-hour-long workshop was attended by eight adults with their children from the ages of three to ten. Participants in the workshops included several local mothers, Waltham Forest residents, and three people who were visiting the street market. Findings from the research – as outlined in the residency report (Drepaul, 2019) – evidenced that delivering the workshops also contributed to activating change in Stephen himself, and opened up new opportunities for his business, expanding it from merely delivering commercial products to also training other people, especially the youth. Based on this successful experience, Xandra and Stephen planned further workshops to be delivered every second Saturday. Through Xandra’s research residency, some local people showed interest in future workshops and visited the factory to find out more about the process of making clicking press tools. Xandra created a mailing list, which would help Stephen connect with people who could be involved in future collaborative projects or workshops. Xandra and Stephen also planned the delivery of an eight-hour-long workshop including steel bending to make clicking press tools, leather cutting, and producing bags and accessories. Another business expansion idea generated through the residency was to organise open days in which the public could join guided tours of the factory or use the facilities and tools upon payment of a small fee. Furthermore, plans were made to connect Stephen with LCF students who might be interested in leather cutting and use the clicking press tools as an alternative to laser cutting. Stephen stated that: The residency has not yet improved my business, but it is going to. I realised that I like teaching people. The aim of this residency was not about growing my business financially but teaching people. Overall, the residency – through a holistic exhibition of the craft process – had a positive impact on the local community as it raised people’s awareness of Stephen’s business, his craft, and tools (Figure 9.3). The residency also made a positive impact on Stephen, who currently works in isolation but, through this project, got in touch with many people and realised that there is a growing interest in learning his craft, so that this heritage know-how can be preserved and transmitted to future generations, as he stated: This project will activate positive change within the Waltham Forest community when I start delivering workshops and will pass my craft to others. […] Many people showed interest; before, I thought it was just me. I was surprised by all the people who came looking for me. […] Even my grandson – who generally thinks that my craft is boring – took photos in the workshop; he got inspired and he cut some leather. The workshops have not been delivered as yet, due to personal circumstances and lack of time for Xandra, who works almost full-time at LCF, compounded by the COVID19 pandemic, which has put on hold any plans for community engagement activities. Another issue that has emerged is the fact that Stephen may be losing his workspace

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Figure 9.3 Visitors of the ‘Crafting Leather and Steel’ exhibition. Photograph by Julia Sabiniarz.

due to rent increase and is looking for another space where to move and from where to deliver workshops and other activities: My main issue is to find a place that suits all the things we want to do. I don’t want to move out of the borough after sixteen years which I have been based in Waltham Forest.

Making change towards sustainable production Blackhorse Lane Ateliers is London’s only craft jeans making business producing raw, selvedge and organic denim, right in the heart of Walthamstow. As part of Making for Change: Waltham Forest, the Ateliers hosted a research residency with Anna Schuster, LCF graduate, and independent designer and researcher. For the purpose of this residency, Anna investigated sustainability issues related to denim, one of the most water-intensive materials used in fashion and focused on garment finishing processes. Crucially, this was informed by the fact that the production of a pair of jeans requires up to 7,000 litres of water (Levi Strauss & Co, 2015) and every year 1.7 million tons of chemicals are used to produce 2 billion pairs of jeans (Webber, 2018). Anna explored and experimented with sustainable and innovative textile and garment finishing processes that would reduce water and chemical consumption, as well

168  Francesco Mazzarella as manual labour. In order to understand how the technology works, how it can be integrated into the design process, and what impact it can create in the denim industry, Anna spent three days in Valencia, at the headquarters of Jeanologia – the world leader in sustainable and efficient finishing technologies for textiles and other industrial applications. As illustrated in Figure 9.4, at Jeanologia Anna used laser technologies to understand their function within mass production and customisation of jeans and show the potential of such processes to develop new denim wash aesthetics in the UK, especially important, at the time, in the face of the uncertainties facing the country due to Brexit (the UK leaving the European Union): Using technologies does not mean to be sustainable per se, but we need to use technologies to improve processes and develop innovative ways to design and make. [Researcher] Blackhorse Lane Ateliers is a socially oriented business, focused on quality and craftsmanship. Jeanologia’s vision is not only to develop and market their technologies but also to make innovation accessible by educating their business customers and helping them improve every step of the textile finishing process. During her residency, Anna was inspired by the two companies’ visions to create an ethical, sustainable, and innovative textile and fashion industry.

Figure 9.4 Laser customisation on denim at Jeanologia, Valencia. Photograph by Anna Schuster.

Fashion activism and design for social change  169 This residency was a chance for me to explore two very interesting companies which have disruptive business models and integrate their values and visions into the development of future scenarios for democratising technology. [Researcher] Inspired by the companies she worked with, Anna developed four scenarios for a Wash Lab to be established in East London, equipped with innovative wash machines and laser technology. Based on the scenarios developed by Anna, the Lab could be established either within the premises of Blackhorse Lane Ateliers, or in East London, or as an Innovation Hub within The Trampery Fish Island Village (London’s new campus for fashion innovators, including studios, facilities and social spaces) or as a University research centre. The aim was to create a multi-disciplinary space where designers, artists, scientists, fashion manufacturers and students can undertake research and development, local prototyping, and production. This would also allow for the development of an innovative textile aesthetic specific to London, forward-thinking materials, and laundry techniques. In this vision, collaboration is key to flourish and activate sustainable change in the fashion industry, as highlighted by Anna: The future needs spaces accessible to independent designers, local makers, small and medium fashion enterprises and especially students – the designers of tomorrow. As an outcome of the residency, a feasibility study was developed, including an outline of the research undertaken, a discussion of a comparative analysis of the Wash Lab scenarios, and a detailed business case including financial data (Schuster, 2019). The scenarios – especially those of an Innovation Hub within a fashion ecosystem, or affiliated to a local University – contributed to amplifying Blackhorse Lane Ateliers’ commercial vision to include also educational objectives in order to share the capital investment and sustain the Wash Lab. The scenarios opened up new opportunities for the business, as a provider of services to other designers; this, in turn, required different considerations in terms of logistics and infrastructure. The residency also contributed to increasing the business’ network of contacts (such as LCF, LBWF, Jeanologia, The Trampery, Fashion District, the Greater London Authority) and made the business more widely known, as emphasised by Han Ates, founder of Blackhorse Lane Ateliers: Before we focused on limited channels with the hope that someone would come and help us. Now we know that there are partners who can help us. […] We have created valuable networks, beyond our commercial ones. We now understand the local Council better. Also, since we went to all these meetings at the University, now people know more about Blackhorse Lane Ateliers. Based on feedback from the manufacturer hosting the research residency, the visual report produced by Anna proved to be very effective for the business to communicate their vision to other investors and fundraisers: Having someone to put all the information together, and producing an amazing visual report was extremely valuable. The actual document is a tangible benefit

170  Francesco Mazzarella to the project. Now we can go to other investors and fundraisers and talk about our project in a more concrete way. [Manufacturer] Anna also helped the business in applying for a grant as part of an SME R&D support programme within the ‘Business of Fashion, Textiles and Technology’ (BFTT) project led by LCF, to sustain the legacy of this initial short-term research residency. The application for the SME R&D support programme was successful and Blackhorse Lane Ateliers was awarded a grant of £180,000 to undertake a 24-month-long period of R&D around the implementation of the Wash Lab, which will contribute to the economic growth of the business and the sustainable development of the local fashion industry. Making change towards sustainable fashion policy Founded in 1919, Wagland Textiles is one of the oldest textile manufacturing companies in London, having headquarters in Walthamstow and managing a global supply chain to produce 11 million metres of fabrics every year, mostly supplied to highstreet fashion brands (Figure 9.5). As part of Making for Change: Waltham Forest, Anna Fitzpatrick (Project Coordinator and PhD Researcher at Centre for Sustainable Fashion, UAL) undertook a research residency at Wagland Textiles. The aim was to explore the role of legislation and public policy in fashion and sustainability. The residency provided an unexpected opportunity for Anna to learn about textiles and also ‘the more hidden, often less glamorous, sides of the industry’, as she said at the final review meeting. She embedded herself into the business and discovered that relationships are key to many business endeavours, and these were cultivated in a

Figure 9.5 Andrew Wagland, managing director of Wagland Textiles.

Fashion activism and design for social change  171 particular way at Wagland Textiles and across the supply chain. Hosting a researcher in residence had a positive impact also on Andrew Wagland, managing director of Wagland Textiles. In fact, through the collaboration with a researcher committed to activating change in the fashion system, Andrew had the opportunity to share his frustrations about the exploitative nature of the industry and gain hope that things can be done differently, as he stated at the interview at the end of the residency: The main thing for me has been to share some of my frustrations and annoyances about my trade, especially with people who are trying to make a difference. It is an industry full of exploitation, and this shouldn’t happen. […] There is momentum outside of our industry and pressure inside. During the research residency, Anna engaged with twenty people (parliamentarians, lobbyists, and industry stakeholders) through email correspondence and interviews and interacted with seven employees at Wagland Textiles. In this way, she developed a scoping study into the public policy landscape with the aim of influencing sustainable fabric manufacturing. Given that around 60% of all garments are produced from virgin polyester, and this quantity has doubled since 2000 (Cobbing & Vicaire, 2016), this research residency focused on reducing the amount of virgin polyester in the fashion economy. In this regard, the study shed light on the difficulties for individual businesses like Wagland Textiles to break out of the prevalent model based on speed and volume, even if they would like to operate more sustainably. Nevertheless, the residency contributed to Wagland Textiles gaining a clearer idea of the unintended consequences of actions and the need for legislation to activate systemic change in the fashion industry, as stated by Anna: Legislative change could bring about improvements in this area and, importantly, it would create opportunities for agile businesses to benefit from. They [Wagland Textiles] are obviously very keen for this to happen, but individually they don’t have the lobbying power to effect such a change at a governmental level. […] Anyway, the business now better identifies itself as a stakeholder with a voice which could and should be listened to. Anna explored the possibilities for shifting public policy towards the increased use of recycled polyester, which could contribute significantly towards a more sustainable fashion industry. The report produced as an output of the research residency includes a set of recommendations, which could be of a regulatory, policy, incentivising, or social nature (Fitzpatrick, 2019). Each of these might work best for different businesses operating at different points in the supply chain, but some – such as trade policies – were deemed to have the most considerable potential. Moreover, Anna curated an installation of the outputs of her research residency within the Making for Change: Waltham Forest showcase. Using the exhibition as a creative method for research, she displayed five PET bottles (whose material was crucial in her residency) with handwritten labels representing different recommendations (i.e. trade policies, regulations, economic incentives, communication/campaigning, and innovation policies), as illustrated in Figure 9.6. Hence, the exhibition visitors were invited to vote on which of the different policy recommendations would be the best way to encourage the use of recycled polyester and therefore contribute to shifting the fashion industry towards sustainability.

172  Francesco Mazzarella

Figure 9.6 Interactive installation curated by Anna Fitzpatrick. Photograph by Adam Razvi.

One of the main challenges encountered by Anna was the need for more time to engage in in-depth policy research, navigate a complex and ever-changing political landscape and outline timely policy recommendations. Another drawback was the proroguing of Parliament and subsequent election which made it more difficult to engage people who had previously expressed a willingness to be involved in the project. For example, at the beginning of the residency, Anna engaged both Members of Parliament Mary Creagh and Anne Main with the aim of bringing about change in the fashion industry, but both lost their seats in Parliament after the election. Nevertheless, Anna and Andrew kept committed to presenting the policy recommendations developed through the residency to Baroness Lola Young OBE (Member of the House of Lords) as an outline of work for the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Ethics and Sustainability in Fashion. The ambition was also to share the white paper with the Environmental Audit Committee – once reconvened – to feed into furthering of the ‘Fixing Fashion’ report. Furthermore, the think-tank Fashion Roundtable expressed interest in furthering this research project through their lobbying work towards a more sustainable, inclusive, and fairer fashion industry. At the review meeting with LBWF at the end of the residency, Andrew Wagland stated: As a Council, you cannot do the lobbying, but you have the right contacts. I would love to have a tunnel wave, with the Council at the front, and it leads to the next level. This is how we should get this through. It is about little ripples and putting them all together, we will have a big wave of change!

Fashion activism and design for social change  173 Some of the new ideas that were developed through the research residency at Wagland Textiles are being taken into consideration by Andrew and there is the need to keep the momentum going, both within the business and the whole supply chain. There is also scope for a potential working group on rPET (recycled polyester) to be founded by Andrew, and there is interest in developing a procurement policy at the Council level with Wagland Textiles supplying any rPET needed. However, since a single Council (such as LBWF) doesn’t have huge demands for uniforms, there could possibly be room for a procurement policy at central government. In this regard, Wagland Textiles has started to develop a project on recycled fabrics for the uniforms of the Immigration Department, for which the business is producing 3,500 m of fabrics. Andrew also highlighted that: As this is a new project, you can’t lose momentum. This is the right thing to do. We need to take ownership to make this happen. […] Now people are more interested; our recycled range is now more appealing. Finally, whilst aiming at envisioning change in a business and across the fashion industry, through her research residency, Anna also experienced a process of change in herself. She acknowledged that the residency contributed to expanding her understanding of sustainability to consider, besides environmental issues, also the economic consequences of any possible change. In fact, given the price difference between virgin polyester and rPET, policy change is needed to influence the industry to adopt sustainable materials more widely. In this regard, Anna stated: My academic background has tended to focus more on the social, cultural and environmental aspects of sustainability, and it’s been really interesting to see some of these issues from the perspective of a small business owner. Whilst I think there is an environmental imperative to sustainability issues, this research has shown me how carefully we should consider the economic dimension to any possible change.

Discussion In this section, I discuss the outcomes of the project as they emerged from the process of thematic analysis of the data collected throughout the research residencies within the three fashion manufacturing businesses. In particular, the outcomes were clustered into four key themes: sustainability awareness, empowerment and skills development, career pathways, as well as networking and partnership building. The researchers in residence gained a deeper understanding of textile manufacturing and enhanced their awareness of sustainability issues, considering also the economic, cultural, social and environmental implications of any change. The designers in residence enhanced their research skills, developed craft know-how and learned to use innovative technologies. The manufacturers hosting the researchers in residence felt empowered as they gained a stronger voice in activating positive change in the fashion industry. For instance, Stephen Jones – the last remaining clicking press toolmaker in London – felt uplifted that other people are interested in his craft. The research residencies also provided further income for some of the hosting manufacturing businesses. In particular, Blackhorse Lane Ateliers received a grant as part of

174  Francesco Mazzarella an R&D support programme, which will in turn contribute to the economic growth of the company through the provision of innovative wash services to other designers and businesses. Moreover, Xandra paved new business opportunities for Cactus Leather through the delivery of paid-for skills development workshops or renting out the facilities and tools to other designers and makers. The project also contributed to piloting a model for long-lasting collaborations across departments at LBWF and LCF and building a network of partner organisations across the borough. For their part, LCF researchers and local fashion manufacturers expanded their networks of contacts in view of potential collaborations and business expansions. For instance, during the research residency at Cactus Leather, Xandra Drepaul and Stephen Jones developed a positive personal and professional relationship, which is likely to lead to further collaborations. Overall, the Making for Change: Waltham Forest project explored ways in which fashion activism can be used to listen and respond to locally experienced issues and trigger participation across a wide range of public and institutional organisations. When designing for social change, it is imperative to ensure that investments and interventions lead to real empowerment and capabilities building, so that communities become self-sustainable and resilient and not merely reliant on the designer leading the project. With this in mind, the ambition behind the project was to contribute to activating long-term legacies within the local community, beyond the funding and timeframe of LBOC 2019. Moreover, it is important to acknowledge that activating change from within the system – in partnership with LCF and LBWF as public institutions – implied facing significant institutional barriers. Perhaps another route could have been to activate change from outside the system, adopting a disruptive approach, but this would have been likely unsuccessful in this context, given that the project was funded by a local authority. Hence, I decided to adopt a ‘quiet’ form of activism, as an embedded and situated approach to co-designing meaningful innovations within the local community. As a design activist leading the project, my role implied encouraging people (i.e. the researchers in residence, the fashion manufacturers, members of the local Council, and the community members participating in the research activities) to think and do things differently by opening up strategic opportunities for collaboration and innovation to transition the local fashion industry towards a more sustainable future. In this regard, being an outsider to the local community, whilst at the same time having insider know-how (as I was a former resident of Waltham Forest) had perhaps a beneficial effect in activating positive change within the borough as it led to creating research outcomes that were deemed meaningful and sustainable by the local community. Furthermore, to enable the project to be conducted from an insider’s point of view, with a first-hand understanding of the participants’ day-to-day realities and their diverse social worlds, I put particular efforts into establishing inclusive relationships with the groups involved and gather rich insights and direct knowledge of their experiences. In this process, the relationships between me as the fashion activist, the researchers in residence, the industry and public stakeholders, and the materials and making activities involved in the project were crucial to activate change at personal, social, and organisational level. The project also contributed to demonstrating the true nature of working as a design activist within an academic institution. This implied having to complete numerous administrative tasks, handle several legal and financial issues, undertake evaluation procedures, and continuously report to many different stakeholders and audiences.

Fashion activism and design for social change  175 Finally, I would like to acknowledge that, as a design activist leading the project, whilst enabling change in others, I also undertook a process of change in myself and in my own way of engaging with materials and making practices within a social context. The project contributed to reinforcing my own values, which include rescuing cultural heritage, tackling social inequalities, making local economies flourish, and enhancing environmental stewardship.

Conclusions In this chapter, I discussed the Making for Change: Waltham Forest project to demonstrate how fashion activism, design and making can be used to catalyse positive social change and activate long-term legacies within local communities. Adopting a design activism approach, with my project team, I engaged heritage manufacturing businesses in order to address issues of economic, environmental, cultural and social sustainability within the fashion industry. The project contributed to raising people’s awareness of fashion sustainability and empowering them through gaining voice and agency. Even though the changes activated through the project are difficult to capture using quantitative measures, it is justifiable to say that the project has indeed built many legacies. In fact, it has evidenced itself as long-lasting through the skills developed by the researchers in residence and the knowledge generated, as well as the partnerships activated and the new business opportunities for the fashion manufacturers, such as the development of the Wash Lab in Waltham Forest. The research project also showed a wide array of formats in which fashion activism can manifest itself (from fashion artefacts to workshops, exhibitions, future scenarios, through to policy recommendations) in order to raise people’s awareness of sustainability-related issues in the fashion system and co-create social, cultural, economic, and environmental value. A model for a Higher Education Institution to collaborate with a local government was piloted, and provides an opportunity to deepen the partnership, but could also be scaled out to other boroughs in order to further contribute to place-making. Finally, it is thanks to the aligned values, creative skills, and continued engagement of a network of makers and activists that we were able to create positive social change within the borough. Limitations and recommendations for future work Although the project enabled the gathering of interesting findings and created positive impacts, several challenges were experienced throughout the process. The short-term nature of the evaluation process meant that it was not possible to measure any longerterm impacts of the project; furthermore, the outcomes of the project are almost intangible and difficult to measure using quantitative metrics. It is important to highlight that this is a recurring issue in any social innovation projects; in fact, social impacts require a very long time to become manifest, often beyond the project’s timeframe. Moreover, although the research project discussed in this chapter was conducted in 2019, the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 compromised the development of some follow-on activities. For instance, the delivery of the workshops at Cactus Leather has been delayed due to the UK undergoing numerous periods of lockdown. Blackhorse Lane Ateliers is progressing the implementation of the Wash Lab but having to take into consideration social distancing and other requirements not envisaged

176  Francesco Mazzarella before. Perhaps the pandemic has also contributed to shifting government’s priorities away from the policy recommendations outlined with Wagland Textiles towards other issues related to health and safety as well as economic austerity. Nevertheless, there is evidence of several long-lasting legacies being activated within the borough, as mentioned in the previous sections. As the next steps, I envisage that the approach devised and implemented for the project could be further developed and tested in other contexts to build a transferable model of working that contributes to social change and place-making. I would like also to recommend that local governments and Higher Education Institutions collaborate and take joint actions in order to support businesses, strengthen existing networks and enable them to thrive. In such contexts, it is also important to map out and better understand all the different programmes existing across different departments and consider how they could be joined up or better developed through embedding some of the learning from this project. Finally, I hope that this chapter will inspire the readers in many ways to engage with fashion activism as a tool for social change and contributing to shaping a more sustainable future.

Acknowledgements The Making for Change: Waltham Forest project was part-funded by the Sheepdrove Trust, London Borough of Waltham Forest, and the Great Place: Creative Connections, a programme supported by Arts Council England and the National Lottery Heritage Fund. My infinite gratitude goes to all the project participants who gave their invaluable contribution to achieving positive social change.

References A New Direction (2019) Waltham Forest Fashion District: Partnership Plan. London, A New Direction. Banerjee, B. (2008) Designer as Agent of Change: A Vision for Catalysing Rapid Change. In: Cipolla, C. & Peruccio, P.P. (eds.) Changing the Change Conference Proceedings, Turin, 10–12 July 2008. Birch, E., Perry, D.C. & Taylor, H.L. (2013) Universities as Anchor Institutions. Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement 17(3), 1–9. Carayannis, E. & Campbell, D.F.J. (2009) ‘Mode 3’ and ‘Quadruple Helix’: Toward a 21st Century Fractal Innovation Ecosystem. International Journal of Technology Management 46(3/4), 201–234. Cobbing, M. & Vicaire, Y. (2016) Report: Timeout for Fast Fashion. Greenpeace. Available from: https://wayback.archive-it.org/9650/20200401053856/http://p3-raw.greenpeace. org/international/Global/international/briefings/toxics/2016/Fact-Sheet-Timeout-for-fastfashion.pdf [Accessed 7th February 2022]. Drepaul, X. (2019) Research Residency – Cactus Leather. Available from: https://padlet.com/ xdrepaul/cactusleather [Accessed 1st April 2021]. Fashion District. (2019) The Fashion District Overview. Available from: https://www. fashion-district.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/2019.04-Fashion-District-Overview. pdf [Accessed 2nd June 2020]. Fassi, D. et al. (2019) Universities as Drivers of Social Innovation – Theoretical Overview and Lessons from the “Campus” Research. New York, Springer.

Fashion activism and design for social change  177 Fitzpatrick, A. (2019) Policy and Regulation as a Lever for Change: The Case of Recycled Polyester  (rPET). Available from: https://issuu.com/affitzpatrick/docs/policy_and_ regulation_as_a_lever_for_change [Accessed 31st March 2021]. Fuad-Luke. (2009) Design Activism: Beautiful Strangeness for a Sustainable World. London, Earthscan. Goddard, J. et al. (2014) Universities as Anchor Institutions in Cities in a Turbulent Funding Environment: Vulnerable Institutions and Vulnerable Places in England. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 7(2), 307–325. Kemmis, S. & McTaggart, R. (2003) Strategies of Qualitative Inquiry, 2nd ed. London, Safe Publications Ltd. Levi Strauss & Co. (2015) The Life Cycle of a Jean. Available from: https://levistrauss.com/ wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Full-LCA-Results-Deck-FINAL.pdf [Accessed 5th March 2021]. London Borough of Waltham Forest. (2020) Statistics about the Borough. Available from: https://www.walthamforest.gov.uk/content/statistics-about-borough [Accessed 2nd June 2020]. Malinowski, B. (1987) Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagos of Melanesian New Guinea. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul. Manzini, E. (2014) Making Things Happen: Social Innovation and Design. Design Issues 30, 57–66. Mays, N. & Pope, C. (1995) Qualitative Research: Rigour and Qualitative Research. BMJ 311, 109–112. Mazzarella, F. et al. (2021) A Methodological Framework for Crafting Situated Services. Journal of Service Management 32(5), 752–782. Miles, M.B. & Huberman, A.M. (1994). Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook. Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications Ltd. NCVO. (2018) How to Develop a Monitoring Evaluation Framework. Available from: https:// knowhow.ncvo.org.uk/how-to/how-to-develop-a-monitoring-and-evaluation-framework [Accessed 2nd June 2020]. Pinheiro, R. & Stensaker, B. (2013) Designing the Entrepreneurial University: The Interpretation of a Global Idea. Public Organization Review: A Global Journal 14(4), 497–516. Sadler, D.R. (1981) Intuitive Data Processing as a Potential Source of Bias in Educational Evaluation. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 3, 25–31. Schuster, A. (2019) Research Residency – Making for Change: Waltham Forest. Available https://www.academia.edu/45645491/Research_Residency_Report?source=swp_ from: share [Accessed 30th March 2021]. Star, S.L. (2010) This is Not a Boundary Object: Reflections on the Origin of a Concept. Science, Technology, & Human Values 35(5), 601–617. Webber, K. (2018) The Environmental and Human Cost of Making a Pair of Jeans. Available from: https://www.ecowatch.com/environmental-cost-jeans-2544519658.html [Accessed 5th March 2021]. William Morris Big Local Plan. (2015) William Morris Big Local Plan. Available from: http:// www.wmbiglocal.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/William-Morris-Big-Local-Plan-08-10. pdf [Accessed 2nd June 2020].

10 Decolonising design perspectives Steps towards more inclusive circular economies Sophie Tendai Christiaens

Introduction Difference must not merely be tolerated but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialect … only then can difference be a true force for change. (Lorde, 1984) The term, ‘we are all connected in the great circle of life’, is one that was first popularised by Disney’s The Lion King (Allers & Minkoff, 1994). A movie which dismisses the idea that we are mere ‘specs in the universe’ by promoting our integral part of complex natural systems that exist and operate together in a delicate balance (Knowles, 2019). Whilst this term continues to be deeply associated with the story of Simba and the fictional ‘Pride Lands of Africa’, the concept of ‘the great circle of life’ is one which extends far beyond this slightly heart-breaking but wholesome children’s story. In fact, it is rooted in worldviews embedded across the African continent where cyclical philosophies of time reflect an intimate relationship with nature and promote an understanding of the ‘interconnectedness and holism of our place in the universe’ (Mpofu, 2014: p. 65; Muchenje, Gora & Makuvaza, 2014). While many Western societies have presupposed that time is linear and is constituted of a past, present and future, Mpofu illustrates that in communities like in the Bindura District of Zimbabwe, time does not necessarily have a beginning or an end but is framed in circular patterns characterised by progression and continuity (Mpofu, 2014). ‘The great circle of life’. Although this is a simplification of the complexity of both notions of time, these concepts extend past metaphysical theories and manifest themselves in the activities and practices of the communities in which they were perceived (Mpofu, 2014). One such example is how Western societies have taken on linear models of product lifetime perception, where items are assumed to have a beginning and an end. ‘People have graves, and so do products’ (McDonough & Braungart, 2010: p. 36). On the other hand, concepts of reuse and regeneration have been woven into production processes and practices in Zimbabwe and across the African continent for decades, where products can and do have multiple life cycles. Nevertheless, as the urgency to decouple economic growth from the immense pressures on our finite resources grows, the circular economy as a means to achieve this has become increasingly popular in the Global North (Linder, Sarasini & van Loon, 2017). The 2019 United Nations Environmental Assembly describes the circular economy as an economic model ‘in which products and materials are designed in

DOI: 10.4324/9781003260356-11

Decolonising design perspectives  179 such a way that they can be reused, remanufactured, recycled or recovered and thus maintained in the economy for as long as possible’ (UNEP, 2019: p. 2). Circularity thus constitutes the intentional design of practices that form a system in which the cycling of these materials can be achieved (U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, 2017). However, despite this massive shift in global product lifecycle perception, the role that existing circular perspectives, practices and technologies can play, which are rooted in the history and cultures of communities like those in Zimbabwe, have not yet found its place in dominant discourses. After a brief outline of the methodologies adopted in the research for this chapter, we will illustrate why from a historical perspective, the exclusion of these narratives is unsurprising. The chapter will, nevertheless, continue to show how designers in the Zimbabwean Fashion industry have adopted and developed a range of circular practices in order to meet a number of environmental, economic and social goals. However, Zimbabwean designers continue to face numerous barriers that prevent them from transforming these practices into fully comprehensive circular business and production systems. Consequently, designers are held back from capitalising on their own technologies and innovations in order to further institute wider transitions towards a circular economy. Our discussion will highlight what these challenges are and, in doing so, argue why decolonising existing design perspectives is one of the many steps that need to be taken in order to ensure the development of more inclusive circular economies. This refers to economies in which difference towards Western models can be embraced, creating the room for ideas and designs to develop and effectively serve the needs of the contexts that they operate in.

Methodology The context for this research has come from designing educational programmes in Zimbabwe that aim to encourage the further development of localised circular sourcing and regenerative design practices. In doing so, we have gained a deeper understanding of Zimbabwe’s waste-ecosystems as well as the diverse range of designers, artisans and craft communities who interact with and innovate within these systems. This chapter is inspired and informed by the vast resource and opportunity we have seen for circular economic innovation and development across these communities. Six semi-standardised interviews were conducted for this chapter with four apparel and two accessories designers (Lune & Berg, 2017). The interviews were constructed to pay particular attention to five key aspects of each designer’s practice. These were inspired by Zinzi de Brouwer’s five pillars of circular design, namely: design philosophies, practices, production models and methods, processes and end of production services (De Brouwer, 2020). These pillars have provided a solid framework for us to investigate the different ways in which circular design practices can manifest at all stages of the designers’ processes. Therefore, allowing us to paint a complete picture of how each designer has adopted design strategies for cycling materials. In order to analyse the outcomes of each interview, we have developed a framework based on a range of circular design literature. This has allowed us to highlight how these designers are adopting circular design practices, why they are adopting these practices and what the barriers are that keep them from further expanding these practices into wider circular systems. Due to limited time and resources, as well as

180  Sophie Tendai Christiaens mobility constraints imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, this research has been limited to design practitioners based in Harare or those who have access to 3/4G network services or internet access. Moreover, limited access to appropriate translation resources has also meant that this research has been largely restricted to English and Shona speakers. It is therefore important to note that this chapter does not fully reflect the diversity of design practices adopted across the country. In fact, we are of the opinion that this chapter scratches the surface of the scale and depth of circular design practices being deployed across the country. This in itself serves as a motivation to recommend that further research be conducted, particularly in rural and artisan communities in Zimbabwe.

The circle economy and historical design omissions in Africa Whilst the heightened enthusiasm for the circular economy is not misplaced, this is not to say that there are no gaps in the rapid development of popularised circular perspectives. White points out that a majority of the dominant discourses assume that the development of circular economies will be apolitical (White, 2021). It is expected that the best innovations and technologies will be foregrounded, and their development and diffusion ‘will be processes that occur autonomous from politics, cultural life and social relations’ (White, 2002: p. 16). However, history has given us very little reason to expect that the rise of circular economies will suddenly give way to such a technocracy (White, 2002). Rather, their development could just as likely embody the historical ‘cultural and political resistance to accepting that Africa has evolved its own explanatory framework of systems and ideas’ (Emeagwali & Shizah, 2014: p. ix). In doing so, this could give way to the dominance of Western perspectives which have in the past, had ‘destructive effects on the development of other technologies by undervaluing the creativity of other cultures’ (Emeagwali & Shizah, 2014: p. 6). Technology can be defined as ‘the use of knowledge, skills, values and resources to meet people’s needs and wants’ and innovation as the ‘act of introducing something new, be it a method or a thing’ (Gumbo, 2014: p. 14; Mavhunga, 2014: p. 16). In this sense, both technology and innovation could manifest themselves in an infinite number of ways and contexts, and their usefulness is symbiotically related to contextual relevance, specificity and locatedness (Shizah, 2015). However, innovation and technology have historically been viewed as an artefact of the industrial revolution and the West, where mechanisation and later on digitalisation, have become the key markers of technological innovation. Therefore, despite African history brimming with examples of people innovating solutions to meet every-day needs and experiences, this narrative has meant that Africa has predominantly been seen as a place that receives technology rather than one that innovates it (Mavhunga, 2014). This has been further exacerbated by neo-liberal economic policies which have asserted that poverty eradication and development require ‘a large-scale transfer from the vast pool of technology accumulated in developed countries’ (UNCTAD, 1972: p. 1; Mavhunga, 2014: p. 296). As a result, not only has Africa been flooded with technologies that are not location specific, nor meet the socio-cultural needs of the people they aim to serve, the important role of Africans as designers and innovators who possess a wide range of skills, technologies and a rich design history has been erased (Mavhunga, 2014; Shizah, 2014). Instead, design and

Decolonising design perspectives  181 innovation history has been ‘taught through the pantheon of work by predominantly European and American male designers’, and anything deemed as ‘different’ has been downplayed as craft (Khandwala, 2019). Craft in this sense has often been denoted as cheaper and more decorative, overlooking the skill, expertise and the vast bodies of knowledge that ‘craft’ communities deploy in their product development (Fitzpatrick & Reilly, 2019; Tung, 2012). When put into the context of the circle economy, the current development of circular discourse can be seen as following a similar trajectory. The most popularised literature tends to place the current drivers of circular economic design and innovation in the Global North and often narrates particular histories which foreground the insights of ‘certain great white designers’ (White, 2021). However, Africa continues to have a long history of circularity, one which is socially and ‘culturally embedded’ and often much more complex and advanced than in other contexts (Akerele et al., 2020; Ellen Macarthur Foundation, 2021). In fact, many designers on the continent, particularly in the fashion industry, have inherited, developed and deployed circular practices for years and are paving the way for circular design innovation (Ellen Macarthur Foundation, 2021). It is the lack of acknowledgement and empowerment of these designers as key players in circular economic development by local, regional and international actors, as well as dominant discourses that sets a dangerous precedent for exclusion. This creates the opportunity to further perpetuate systems of inequality which maintain that Africa is a place that receives technology when, in reality, this will create more barriers than solutions. It takes away from the agency of, and the investment in individuals and communities that can build circular economies that are contextually effective. Nevertheless, circular economic funding and investment patterns have in the past few decades favoured circular development and innovation in the West, where Europe in particular has become the epicentre for financed circular economic growth. It is therefore imperative that design perspectives in the circular economy are decolonised by considering and investing in the different ways by which ‘ideas, projects and designs arrive within, and relate to, particular contexts’ (Quinn, 2010: p. 2). Whilst in a globalised environment we have been conditioned to think of this ‘new’ form of economic thinking as the circle economy, we need to refrain from universalising this model and emphasise the plurality of circular economic discourse (Emeagwali & Shizah, 2014). As Kaya argues, ‘the history of Africa’s indigenous ways of knowing and knowledge production did not begin with the coming of Western knowledge systems, and neither should their future depend exclusively on Western and other worldviews’ (Kaya, 2014: p. 89).

Designer profiles Consequently, whilst circular practices and processes outside of Western contexts may digress from normative perceptions of technology and innovation, this is not to say that they are not a vital part of circular economic discourse. In fact, this chapter will proceed to illustrate the depth of circular practices adopted by the designers who have taken part in this research. The following designers are composed of a mix of self-taught and institutionally trained designers, who have attended design schools in South Africa and Europe.

182  Sophie Tendai Christiaens Chido Kaseke (Chido) Chido is the founder of the brand PatCh Maokoe Zimbabwe which produces handmade bags from hessian fibre (see Figure 10.1). The ethos of the brand is to promote the life cycle continuation of hand craft and social practices and operates on a madeto-order and ready-to-wear model. Danayi Madondo (Danayi) Danayi is the founder and creative director of Haus of Stone. The brand uses fashion as a vessel for narrating contemporary Zimbabwean stories whilst encouraging sustainable design practices and experimenting with handcrafted skills. The brand operates on a ready-to-wear and made-to-order production model, centring its designs around the use of cotton, linen and voile (see Figure 10.2).

Figure 10.1 A selection of PatCh Maokoe’s designs. Image by Chido Kaseke (2021) for PatCh Maokoe.

Figure 10.2 A selection of Haus of Stone’s designs. From right to left images by: Ngonizashe Chinara (2017), Ode to Askana for Haus of Stone; Masimba Tinashe Madondo (2019a) Mughadeni for Haus of Stone; Ngonizashe Chinara(2019) Seed of Esther for Haus of Stone.

Decolonising design perspectives  183 Julian Tamuka (Julian) Julian is the founder and agent of GUYLLELUJAH, which is inspired by future consciousness’ and born out of a desire to disrupt modern consumerist behaviour. GUYLLELUJAH operates on a made-to-order model which favours the reclamation of rejected and disused woven cotton-based fabrics and makes only one of each product design (see Figure 10.3). Rungano Nyamayedenga (Rungano) Is the co-founder and creative director of Paper Pieces, a women-led jewellery brand that upcycles paper to carefully craft beads which are used to make earrings (see Figure 10.4). Paper Pieces operates on a made-to-order and ready-to-wear production model and aims to help customers appreciate how they can be part of the upcycling, handcrafting journey where ‘each piece has a story’.

Figure 10.3 A selection of GUYLLELUJAH’s designs. Images by Masimba Tinashe Madondo (2019b) for GUYLLELUJAH.

Figure 10.4 A selection of Paper Pieces’ designs. Images right and left by Wonai Haruperi (2020), for Paper Pieces; Image centre by Lennox Tatenda Makurumidze (2021) for Gemma Griffiths.

184  Sophie Tendai Christiaens Sharon Tiyamike Dingilesi (Tiyamike) Tiyamike is the founder and creative director of the brand A Stranger to the Earth which aims to explore life through conceptual knitwear with a commitment to sustainable fashion (see Figure 10.5). The brand places a strong emphasis on handcrafts such as hand knitting, natural dyeing and crochet and operates on a made-to-order model that favours Merino and Peruvian wools, cottons and linens. Vimbai Natasha Naomi (Vimbai) Vimbai is the founder and creative director of the brand Vimbai Natasha Naomi (VNN). The brand’s ethos is to continually find ways to creatively rejuvenate textiles that are already in existence by repurposing their function. VNN operates on a madeto-order and occasionally capsule collection model which favours cottons and linens (see Figure 10.6).

Figure 10.5 A selection of A Stranger to the Earth’s designs. Images by Yessica Çelebi (2018) for A Stranger to the Earth.

Figure 10.6 A selection of VNN’s designs. Images from right to left by Ross Charnock (2014) for VNN; Vimbai Natasha Naomi (2016) for VNN, Vimbai Natasha Naomi (2020) for VNN.

Decolonising design perspectives  185

Results: exploring current circular design practices amongst Zimbabwean designers The aforementioned designers have each deployed a range of circular design practices that aim to slow and close resource loops. In doing so the designers have developed specific processes and technologies that ensure their products not only meet a range of social and environmental goals but also continue to create opportunities for further material and process innovation. Design strategies for closing resource loops The term closing resource loops refers to eliminating the gap between post-use and production in order to propagate a cyclical flow of resources (Bocken et al., 2016). This is achieved either by ensuring the indefinite use of a material through recycling, or ensuring materials are safely converted into their raw form so that they can once again become a part of nature’s biological cycle (Bocken et al., 2016). The following section illustrates the different strategies designers have adopted to achieve this, as well as their motivations behind them. Material sourcing All six designers predominantly use reclaimed materials which are sourced from a wide range of local waste ecosystems. Julian gives us an insight into his sourcing process, stating: I source materials anywhere as long as it makes sense. Sometimes I get gifted fabrics or if I know somebody keeps a lot of fabric for something that they do career wise, I’ll go for a visit. If I need a lot of fabric for a special project, I go to some of my suppliers, but even then, majority of the fabrics are tarnished, coming from places like Asia and Europe. (Tamuka, 2022) Vimbai, Danayi and Tiyamike often source deadstock fabric from warehouses and factories, many of which were forced to shut down due to Zimbabwe’s hostile economic climate. The designers have pointed towards material resourcefulness as a key strategy to surviving an unpredictable local economy with a highly undercompensated creative industry. ‘You’re fighting odds every single day. Not only do you have to deal with the scarcity of material, of funding, of a functional system, there are also things like trying to get funding in banks, there is so much red tape’ (Dingilesi, 2022). Vimbai goes on to note: Sourcing materials from textile mills was initially to save money. I had become so used to making collections and spending so much money but not selling as much as I wanted. So, when I found out I could collect these end of the mill materials and rejects for much cheaper, I figured ok, let’s go that route and try find something that is at least good quality. (Natasha Naomi, 2022)

186  Sophie Tendai Christiaens A proximity to waste from the global fashion industry has additionally played a big role behind the designers’ motivations to reclaim materials. ‘When you go to the second-hand markets in Zimbabwe there are so many clothes on just one day and when you think of the number of designers and brands that are churning out collections it is quite overwhelming’ (Dingilesi, 2022). This has encouraged designers like Danayi and Tiyamike to source fabric from local markets that sell imported second-hand clothing, often at the final stage of their journey to landfills or incinerators. Half the time when you go thrifting you find designer clothing made out of high-quality fabric, you’ll find leather and the best cottons and linens. It’s like a treasure hunt. I go find the pieces of fabrics that I want, deconstruct them and then transform them into something else. Often in Zimbabwe we demonise thrifted clothing for what they have done to our local fashion industries. But is it truly a competitor? Ultimately, a lot of people are living off of the second-hand clothing industry, especially lower income communities. So thrifting fabrics is a way we can synergise and work with what we have so no one is displaced. (Madondo, 2022) Community inclusion and shifting local mindsets about waste has similarly played a motivating role behind Chido and Rungano’s material sourcing. Chido collects used hessian sacks from local farmers which were formerly used to store cotton and tobacco and Rungano sources the paper used to make her earrings from local hairdressers, nail salons and sometimes even her own clients, stating: ‘choosing to collect rather than just buy new paper feeds into the story. I want people to be involved in the process and show them that what they may consider trash can actually be used to make something beautiful (Nyamayedenga, 2022). This focus on second-hand material sourcing has meant that designers have had to shift towards material-led design processes. Danayi jokes that sometimes she asks the fabric ‘what would you like to be today’ (Madondo, 2022) and Tiyamike states: You can’t always control the process when you’re working with stuff that has been given to you or that you have found. You have to be flexible enough to think maybe the swatches don’t match the design I was imagining. Instead of abandoning the process completely, you have to think, how can I pivot the process to make something that works. Second-hand material sourcing is just one example of the strategies the designers have deployed in order to adapt to their local environment so that they can continue to create and produce their products. In fact, many of the designers have had to deconstruct their training, Danayi states: It’s not as simple as going to university abroad, getting a blueprint and then coming back to Zimbabwe and replicating it. Zimbabwe is its own beast. You have to learn the systems or figure out how to create your own systems that work for the environment you are in and the goals you are trying to achieve. That’s how Zimbabwean designers continue to create in a hostile environment. (Madondo, 2022)

Decolonising design perspectives  187 Disassembly and reassembly Designers have additionally displayed design strategies for disassembly and reassembly, some further integrating this into their business models. Disassembly and reassembly refer to ‘ensuring that products can be separated and reassembled easily’ (De Brouwer, 2020). Julian and Danayi for example have integrated this into their design process from the start. Rather than making samples, both designers use their intended materials from the beginning. Julian states ‘I make and remake the product until it works’, ensuring that once the product is complete, it is still in a state where it can be disassembled for repurposing (Tamuka, 2022). ‘I design a product that can be taken apart because it is much more valuable in its components’ (Tamuka, 2022). Danayi similarly states: I don’t believe in creating samples out of calico or alternative cheap fabrics. I’ve come to realise that when you develop thoughtful samples that are created with love and care, even if they don’t make the final collection, I make sure I am able to deconstruct the piece and transform it into a new style. (Madondo, 2022) Tiyamike takes a similar approach to her knitwear, often choosing not to buy new materials but rather undoing old sweaters and creating a new design with the yarn, maintaining this ethos throughout her production processes. ‘I look at the material first and think, what is the best silhouette I can get with this type of yarn without interfering with the material structure’ (Dingilesi, 2022). Both Chido and Rungano have further included disassembly and reassembly in the services they offer their customers. If the customer wants something completely new, it can be disassembled and turned into a new design. In doing so, not only do both designers maintain longerterm engagement with their customers by encouraging waste reduction practices, but also they have additionally integrated cyclical resource flows into their business models. Whilst designers such as Vimbai and Tiyamike have expressed a further interest into looking at how they can break down fabrics into their raw forms in order to make new materials, a lack of resource and investment has meant that designers are not currently able to explore this. Nevertheless, there are considerable opportunities within Zimbabwe’s existing infrastructure, particularly in the form of abandoned textile mills, in which this can be achieved. Material and process selection Proximity to nature and how it as well as local communities have been affected by climate change also acts as a motivator behind why designers are increasingly selective in their materials and processes: We live in a country where we have nature all around us and we have farming all around us. When you know, or you have family members that rely on crops to survive, it helps you understand that environment is important because it is actually someone’s life source, our life source, and we need to try and preserve it better. (Natasha Naomi, 2022)

188  Sophie Tendai Christiaens This motivation has seen all designers take initial steps towards designing for a biological cycle. This refers to the production of designs using safe and healthy materials which, when broken down, can create food for natural systems (Bocken et al., 2016). Whilst still emphasising waste reduction in material sourcing strategies, all designers carefully balance second-hand sourcing with material consciousness, each showing an intent to predominantly source materials that are less likely to harm the environment and are, in theory, biodegradable. Nevertheless, when it comes to designing for biological cycles, de Brouwer states that ‘it is worthwhile to look at the end-of-life stage of the product and assess whether the materials can end up in an environment that can sustain biodegradability’ (De Brouwer, 2020: p. 7). While designers have indicated interest in the lifecycle assessment of their products as well as testing how their materials can be safely broken down, limited access to financial and educational materials hinders the designers from taking the necessary steps. Nevertheless, the designers do continue to adopt green-design practices in order to lower the environmental impact of their production processes (Ceschin & Gaziulusoy, 2016). Julian states: The resources that I know are in abundance, or the resources that I know I can use, I use modestly and only when needed. For example, I am mindful of the fact that if I have less access to water, I can’t be going around dyeing fabric because I just don’t have the water for it. (Tamkuka, 2022) In fact, Danayi and Vimbai in general both avoid fabric that has been dyed. This is done both for aesthetic purposes but also environmental reasons. Vimbai notes, ‘If it hasn’t been dyed it is less likely to have polluted a river source. If I can control where and what I’m using, knowing how it was made, it makes me sleep at night’ (Natasha Naomi, 2022). Moreover, whilst Chido uses natural dyes for some of her designs, she has not been able to achieve this for all of her products, stating: ‘we have been trying to do research, working with artisan communities who use natural dyes and trying to see how we can make use of these things so that we are a little bit kinder in our processes towards nature and our environment (Kaseke, 2022). Ultimately, whilst designers may not have the resources to comprehensively design for a biological cycle, they are seen actively taking steps in their material and process selection to ensure that if this is at some point possible, the chances of these products being able to return to a biological cycle are higher, and in the meantime, the adverse effects of their production on the environment remain minimal. Design strategies for slowing resource loops The six designers have additionally adopted a wide range of strategies for slowing resource loops, where an emphasis is placed on the design of long-life goods in order slow down the flow of resources (Bocken et al., 2016). Product life extension Designing products for longevity is a central aspect of all six designers’ processes. By sticking to the same materials each designer has developed a depth in material knowledge that has enabled them to understand how to manipulate their materials

Decolonising design perspectives  189 and create design processes that extend the lifecycle of their products. Danayi states, ‘the longer you work with a certain fabric the more you can understand the versatile ways you can create with it (Madondo, 2022). Chido expresses similar sentiment, illustrating that an understanding in materials has allowed for the adjustment of her production processes in order to ensure product durability: There are certain things that you learn you can do to manipulate the hessian, and there are certain things you cannot as they will lead to you shortening the lifespan of the material. We slow the process down and take the time to understand that even the way we are stitching a bag will impact how long it will last. (Kaseke, 2022) All designers display this acute awareness and intent to adjust their production models to ensure product durability. Julian states: I am selective about production methods, when to apply a machine and when not to. I won’t put a lot of dye or corrosive elements on my garments in order to ensure their longevity and tend to prefer woven materials because they are robust once you really understand how to apply them together. I design the product understanding that 11 years from now this garment might be ripping out at the seams here, or the stress points here. So, I make the product in such a way that the first signs of age don’t show, and I spend a lot of time enhancing the integrity of the garment. (Tamuka, 2022) Material knowledge and methods of trial and error have also played a role in Rungano’s design process. Originally, she used to make the beads for her jewellery using the paper from recycled cereal boxes. However, increased familiarity with different types of paper and how they affect the rolling of the beads led to Rungano choosing to work with the paper you typically find in the packaging of hair for braids. Rungano states that this type of paper has allowed her to maintain a level of consistency in all of her earrings due to its flexibility whilst, ensuring better quality and more durable products. To date, the beads Rungano has made have lasted a minimum of six years. Each designer has shown this strong intent to ensure the longevity of their products, utilising their material knowledge to think about how the product may respond to age at the beginning of their design process, and adjusting or creating new production methods to alleviate variables that can adversely affect product durability. Storytelling and contemporary archiving The designers have also described longevity as a central factor behind their aesthetic choices. Danayi and Vimbai take similar approaches to aesthetic longevity, describing their design aesthetics as understated and minimal sticking to natural and solid shades such as pastels, whites and creams: From a business perspective, I found that solid shades made for a more sustainable business. If my fabric ever runs out, there is a higher chance I can source it from an alternative source. I design apparel that is predominantly loose fit, comfortable and understated enough to compliment diverse wardrobes and styles.

190  Sophie Tendai Christiaens I want to create a stylish canvas for individuals to create their character upon. I like this simplicity because clothing doesn’t make the person, the person makes the clothing. (Madondo, 2022) Considering how the brand’s design aesthetic can be centred around the customer is a similar strategy adopted in Julian, Rungano, Tiyamike and Vimbai’s aesthetic decisions. Each designer has adopted a high level of customer engagement at the beginning of the design process in order to understand how to balance what the customer may want, with what the brand has to offer as a way to ensure aesthetic longevity. Julian states: I design toward an awareness of what people value in the message their clothes send about them. I want to weave the spirit of the person in the design so that when you hand them a piece of clothing, all they see is themselves. I let them speak about what they like and what they don’t like. I try to make something that carries their sentiment and character so that when it is time to let go of the item, this person’s instinct is to find a second purpose for it. (Tamuka, 2022) The steps taken to understand what the customer wants therefore operates as a strategy to ensure the emotional durability of a product. This is similarly achieved through an emphasis on storytelling. Danayi, Tiyamike and Vimbai state that when starting the design process, production comes second to telling a story or evoking an emotion. Chido goes on to state: A lot of my culture was lost with colonialism. Our cultural values have slowly been erased over time and we have generations who are at risk of not inheriting these valuable legacies that our ancestors left for us. I take inspiration for some of my designs from material culture items of my Shona heritage. This is my way of cultural preservation. Sharing the stories behind these objects with my audience helps to keep legacies alive, for future generations to learn and embrace. (Kaseke, 2022) Danayi and Tiyamike take similar inspirations from Zimbabwean culture and in doing so, use their brands to create contemporary archives through their designs. An urgency to preserve Zimbabwean stories and cultures resonates deeply with many Zimbabweans and makes the designers’ products highly relatable, serving as an effective tool for ensuring a customer’s longer-term emotional connection to their product. An emphasis on connecting to the story of the product is further complimented by the designers’ slower production models. Danayi states ‘If you are constantly dropping new costumes every month, when do people have time to connect with your clothes’ (Madondo, 2022).

Design strategies for innovation All designers have adopted strategies for material, process and social innovation, geared towards creating more eco-conscious materials and processes with the aim

Decolonising design perspectives  191 of addressing social problems such as unemployment (Ceschin & Gaziulusoy, 2016). Collaboration and skills sharing serve as all of the designers’ primary strategy. Chido gives the example of the collaboration she did with a fellow jewellery designer and a local papermaker for Fashion Revolution Zimbabwe’s Fashion open Studio in 2021. In this collaboration both designers used the waste from their own production processes (hessian and leather offcuts) to make a pulp which was then turned into a new felt-like material. This was achieved by using the methods and technologies adopted by local papermakers. However, a lack of resources in the form of time and finance has meant that further research into how this process can be developed to produce an eco-friendly material at a larger scale has been halted. Such collaboration and skills sharing is as much an intentional strategy as it is ingrained in a lot of communities across Zimbabwe. Whilst four out of six designers went to design school, all designers point out that many of the skills that they use in their processes have been attained through skills sharing or observing people in their surrounding environment. Rungano, Chido, Danayi and Tiyamike emphasise the role that learning skills from family members have had in their design processes. Julian goes on to state: I began my fashion journey here in Zimbabwe and I learned from people who were weavers and the guys who were sitting at the sides of the roads. People with interesting skills that I never knew were valuable because nobody in the economy was compensating them. (Tamuka, 2022) Not only has collaboration and skills sharing been a great way for designers to develop their own methods and processes, but also designers have additionally used these strategies as a means to create opportunities for others in their communities. This has been done by placing an emphasis on hand making and slower production models. The idea about handcraft is trying to bring a few more people onto the team because obviously slow fashion takes a bit longer but if we train a lot more people to hand craft, it means we can make a bit more just to cater to the demand whilst creating employment for others. (Kaseke, 2022) Considering the frequent electricity shortages and general lack of access to machinery, production methods by hand constitute a form of technology that is accessible to a wider range of people in Zimbabwe. This emphasis on hand craft creates wider opportunities for individuals and communities to take on skills, adapt them to their own environment and then pass them on. Not only does this create opportunities for employment and business development, but also it serves as an effective form of further encouraging waste-reductive practices and wider circular innovation on the grass roots level. Furthermore, all designers have emphasised the opportunities that focusing on hand craft present for wider mental health care. The designers note that not only is creating products by hand a meditative practice and a form of therapy, but it also adds to the story of the product further contributing to its emotional durability. Tiyamike states: ‘It adds an element of humanity to the product and reminds the customer that the product has been made for them, by someone like them’ (Dingilesi, 2022).

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Discussion Although the different circular practices adopted by the six designers have served as a means to meet specific social, economic and environmental goals, they are derived from narratives of reuse and regeneration that have existed in Zimbabwean society for a much longer time. Coming from an African background we didn’t always use the language of recycle and reuse because it was our reality. We didn’t put a word to it to make it sound cool, or hip, or like something we should do. We just did it. My grandmother for example, she used and reused everything, and it wasn’t a matter of poverty, it is just the way people existed. (Madondo, 2022) This philosophy, similar to many of the methods and skills that the designers have integrated into their design processes have been orally transmitted across communities and through generations. This has ensured that many practices have remained location specific with the primary concern of the ‘utility, accessibility and practicability’ of the knowledge being transmitted (Emeagwali & Shizah, 2014: p. 9). Historically efficiency has been associated with fast and high quantity production at a low cost (McDonough & Braungart, 2010). However, the designers in this chapter have illustrated that within their own context, hand craft practices have served as efficient technologies that can be used to meet a range of economic, environmental and social goals. Slower production models have created the room for wider process adaptability and have allowed for intentional decisions to be made at every step of the design process. As a result, designers have been able to continuously develop their products, whilst taking their energy and water use into account and ensuring that their processes remain accessible to wider communities in ways that can create opportunities for employment and wider mental health care. In addition, the designers continue to operate as some of the primary drivers behind normalising perceptions of waste reduction in the local fashion industry. Although reuse is very common in a Zimbabwean context, this is not to say that products designed from second-hand materials are not underappreciated. Vimbai notes that garments are often expected to look a certain way and many people want what they see on social media, products which are not necessarily synonymous with material repurposing (Natasha Naomi, 2022). Consequently, local narratives often purport that if your designs don’t align with the Western aesthetics and/or production models that dominate media platforms, they are automatically less valuable. Nevertheless, by championing beautiful and relatable stories, understanding what a customer values in their product and drawing customers into the narratives of what waste reduction can entail, the designers are pushing to establish an understanding that material repurposing can look and is fashionable. They sophisticatedly navigate and adapt to Zimbabwe’s waste ecosystems, combining their material knowledge with their design skills to create durable products that celebrate their materials rather than apologise for them (McDonough & Braungart, 2010). In doing so, the designers illustrate what it looks like to adapt to a circular reality where design and production processes cannot always be pre-determined. Rather, they champion a range of dynamic design

Decolonising design perspectives  193 processes that aid in the regeneration of materials, encourage innovation and take community and environment into account. Circularity in the Zimbabwean context therefore includes, but also extends far beyond just the cycling of materials. Zimbabwean circular design encompasses creating integrally, aesthetically and emotionally durable products whose value is intrinsically tied to and measured by their positive impacts on the environment, and their ability to address wider social and economic issues. By embracing this notion of circularity, the designers display an acute awareness of their own integral roles as a part of complex and interconnected environmental and socio-economic systems. They disrupt the narrative that dismisses them as key players in the circular economy by continuing to drive and innovate circular materials, processes and perspectives. In doing so, the designers display what the foundations of a larger circular economy in Zimbabwe could look like. Nevertheless, designers continue to face numerous challenges that hold them back from being able to research and develop their material innovations and practices into a system of fully comprehensive circular business and production models. A lack of investment or access to funding is a dominant challenge that designers face when it comes to further growth. Whilst the designers have displayed an impressive level of resourcefulness, resilience and adaptivity, they are still navigating a hostile economic environment that does not favour small businesses in the creative industry. This means that on a production level, it is not easy to expand and a majority of the production work needs to be done independently or with the help of one or two other individuals or outsourced tailors. Nevertheless, this still remains a form of income and has meant that the designers have less time, in addition to financial resources to commit to the research and development of their circular materials and practices. The complexity of getting loans or funding locally has meant that the designers have limited opportunities to access the financial resources they need, particularly because fashion design is still perceived as being a part of the informal sector – which requires much smarter financing than what current banking structures have been able to or are willing to provide. This is exacerbated by the fact that many global narratives still assert that Africa is a place that requires development rather than investment and international funding models are consequently often donor based. However, donor funding does not favour business development (due to its profit structure) and although investment in start-ups across the continent is increasing exponentially, because local design is still often labelled as informal and craft, investment tends not to go to independent designers in the fashion industry. The bulk of foreign investment additionally favours activities associated with the linear economy, emphasising resource led development ‘which focuses on leveraging the potential investment in, and revenue and jobs from, natural resource sectors’ (Preston, Lehne & Wellesley, 2019). This has meant that designers don’t have many opportunities to access the financial resources that can enable them to continue to innovate scalable materials and turn their individual practices into circular production systems. Additionally, limited access to resources for equitable knowledge exchange and skills sharing has acted as a barrier for further research and development. This has manifested itself twofold. On a local level, designers lack the resources to access the knowledge and skills bases in artisan communities that are farther away. Secondly, they lack the tools to ensure that their own knowledge and skills can be effectively

194  Sophie Tendai Christiaens passed on. This may be as simple as having enough needles and thread or may take the form of more complex social tools for culturally sensitive engagement. The designers likewise lack access to knowledge bases on a more regional and international level. Nevertheless, this research has shown how vital knowledge exchange and skills sharing has been for material and process innovation and can only imply the extent of the benefits more complex and inter-cultural collaborations that take similar approaches could reap. However, for this to occur, narratives that communities in Zimbabwe and across Africa are not capable of more than misconstrued perceptions of craft need to be deconstructed. For balanced knowledge sharing to occur, the dominant narrative needs to become that the world has something to learn from designers like those in Zimbabwe, just as much as they have something to learn from the world.

Conclusion Despite this, the research for this chapter illustrates the vast resource and opportunity there is for circular design and innovation in the small section of the continent where these six designers operate. The designers refute agendas that have often put humans above nature and champion design processes that embrace their own integral roles in interconnected natural and socio-economic systems. Designers have used technologies, particularly those in the form of hand craft, to efficiently meet a range of social, economic and environmental goals and continue to use contextually relevant means of knowledge transfer to further encourage material innovation and wider circular and regenerative practices. In doing so, the designers have clearly illustrated how they stand at the forefront of the material and process innovation that will be incremental in Zimbabwe’s transition to a more circular economy. However, as long as their key roles as designers and innovators in the circular economy are downplayed and dismissed, they will not be able to operate as such. Rather, narratives that orient circular economic design innovation in the West will continue to reinforce a financial barrier which maintains that innovations and technologies from other contexts and cultures are less valuable. This in turn will continue to impose barriers that limit exciting opportunities for further development and innovation. Ultimately decolonising and expanding dominant circular economic design discourses, both on a local and international level, will be the first of many steps necessary to ensure the development of more inclusive circular economies. Only then can difference be a true force for material and social change where the designs and processes from a wide range of cultures and contexts can develop to spark contextually effective global economic transitions.

Acknowledgements Thank you to the six designers that agreed to be a part of the research for this chapter: Chido Kaseke, Danayi Madondo, Julian Tamuka, Rungano Nyamayedenga, Sharon Tiyamike Dingilesi and Vimbai Natasha Naomi. Your designs and creative processes continue to inspire and push for better and more innovative practices. Thank you to Kathleen Grevers and Rudo Nondo who’s contributions have been invaluable to the research for and writing of this chapter. Thank you to Fashion Revolution who has been a connector for us all. Finally thank you to Centre of Circular Design and its members, particularly Rosie Hornbuckle and Rebecca Early for the opportunity and platform to conduct and present this research.

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196  Sophie Tendai Christiaens Mpofu, V. (2014) Time: An African cultural perspective. In G. Emeagwali & G.J. Dei (eds.) Anti-Colonial Educational Perspectives for Transformative Change. Sense Publishers, Holland, African Indigenous knowledges and the disciplines, pp. 65–78. Muchenje, F., Gora, R.B., & Makuvaza, N. (2014) Interrogating the concept of time among the Shona: A postcolonial discourse. In G. Emeagwali & G.J. Dei (eds.) Anti-Colonial Educational Perspectives for Transformative Change. Sense Publishers, Holland, African Indigenous knowledges and the disciplines, pp. 65–78. Naomi, V.N. (2016) For VNN. Harare. Naomi, V.N. (2020) For VNN. Harare. Naomi, V.N. (2022) Interview by Sophie Tendai Christiaens, 10th January. Nyamayedenga, R. (2022) Interview by Sophie Tendai Christiaens, 12th January. Preston, F., Lehne, J., & Wellesley, L. (2019). An Inclusive Circular Economy: Priorities for Developing Countries. Research Paper. Chatham House. Quinn, B. (2010) Design and Culture: The Journal of the Design Studies Forum. Berg. Shizha, E. (2014) African indigenous perspectives on technology. In G. Emeagwali & G.J. Dei (eds.) Anti-Colonial Educational Perspectives for Transformative Change. Sense Publishers, Holland, African Indigenous knowledges and the disciplines, pp. 13–32. Tamuka, J. (2022) Interview by Sophie Tendai Christiaens, 18th January. Tung, F.W. (2012) Weaving with rush: Exploring craft-design collaborations in revitalizing a local craft. International Journal of Design 6(3), 71–84. U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation. (2017) Circularity vs. Sustainability. Available from: https://www.uschamberfoundation.org/circular-economy-toolbox/about-circularity/ circularity-vs-sustainability [Accessed 15th February 2022]. UNCTAD. (1972) Guidelines for the Study of the Transfer of Technology to Developing Countries. UNCTAD Secretariat. UNEP. (2019) Resolution 1: Innovative Pathways to Achieve Sustainable Consumption and Production (15 March 2019). Valenzuela, F., & Böhm, S. (2017) Against wasted politics: A critique of the circular economy. Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization 17(1), 23–60. White, D.F. (2002) A green industrial revolution? Sustainable technological innovation in a global age. Environmental Politics 11(2), 1–26. White, D.F. (2021) HCES Labour & Education in the Circular Economy. [Lecture] Harvard University, 7th March.

11 Making for our time A journey told through the dress as catalyst for change Sandy Black and Helen Storey

Preface by Sandy Black I first encountered Helen Storey’s work in the 1980s as a contemporary fashion designer making waves in the industry. I was a designer-maker myself, running an international business creating fashion knitwear and knitting kits. Our paths converged in the late 1990s, when I was a lecturer at University of Brighton, and became aware of Helen and Kate Storey’s ground-breaking work in their Primitive Streak Science/Art project. Being a mathematics graduate turned knitwear designer, I was interested in inter-disciplinary research and ideas and produced the first film of their project with the support of the innovative science and arts organisation Interalia.1 Writing this chapter has provided an opportunity to reflect on both our journeys from industry design practitioners in fashion and textiles to educators in the university sector (both eventually at London College of Fashion’s Centre for Sustainable Fashion), developing a research focus in the process, grounded in a deep knowledge of making. This has become known as practice-based research – a key topic of this volume – and the account that follows outlines Helen’s unique trajectory using the power of making and the role of fashion design practitioner to communicate impactfully with diverse groups and effect positive social change through education, participatory action research and fashion activism.

Introduction The popular image of fashion is frivolous, often hedonistic and narcissistic, and it is of course a highly commercial global industry. How then does an award-winning fashion designer evolve their practice to become a designer-in-residence in one of the world’s largest Syrian refugee camps situated in Jordan? This chapter, based on an in-depth interview and ongoing dialogue, recounts the extraordinary journey of designer, artist, researcher and activist Helen Storey through her role as Professor of Fashion and Science at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London. This is a story initially narrated in dresses, not simply embodied as clothing, but over time becoming an increasingly powerful symbol and metaphor for some of the most complex challenges of our time. This work, covering a period of six years and several innovative projects, culminated in a unique position being created for Helen within Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan, working in a research and knowledge exchange capacity with the residents and NGOs, to co-create and develop life-improving projects. These have created a tangible legacy of social change within the refugee

DOI: 10.4324/9781003260356-12

198  Sandy Black and Helen Storey community, particularly for women, and demonstrated how collaborative processes of making and co-creation can be central to transforming lives and livelihoods.

Background Having trained in fashion design at Kingston University and worked as a designer in the luxury fashion sector in Italy, Helen Storey ran her eponymous fashion label for 11 years between 1984–1995, winning several accolades including, later, Royal Designer for Industry. Her work often challenged the norms, such as the infamous grunge collection in 1990 made with black bin bags, and her “2nd Life” ranges, long before recycling was a recognised contemporary practice. Helen’s first venture into working with the notion of the dress as metaphor, and her first collaboration with a scientist (sister Professor Kate Storey, a developmental biologist) was the highly successful Primitive Streak project, inspired and funded through a novel Wellcome Trust SciArt award in 1997 to engage the public more deeply with science, through art. This innovative body of work, comprising a series of 27 dresses and a millinery work by Philip Treacy, was designed and made to communicate and physically materialise the universal process of human embryonic development over the first 1,000 hours of life (Figure 11.1).

Figure 11.1 Primitive Streak Collection 1997: Anaphase dress. Image by Justine Laeufer, model Korrina.

Making for our time  199 The exhibition subsequently toured to eight different countries over a period of 15 years, indicating how powerful fashion can be as a means of science communication. 2 This was to become the founding concept on which Helen’s academic research career and material practice developed, far from its industry base. By establishing key scientific collaborations rooted in a material practice, expressed through a maker’s avid curiosity and willingness to engage with new ideas, processes and materials, Helen has continued to develop ground-breaking projects harnessing fashion practices. She developed a co-creative practice and approach to communicating ideas through the medium of fashion that is able to powerfully engage many different audiences. Her work with specific communities (from school children to refugees) empowers participants with creative agency through the shared activity of making.

Fashion and science collaboration A long-standing collaboration with Professor Tony Ryan of Sheffield University, an expert in polymer chemistry, was established in 2005 through a serendipitous act of “cold calling” – making contact to ask basic questions through an almost childlike curiosity. This, Helen says, has served her in good stead whenever she feels her practice becoming “stuck”. Having been tasked by Unilever to challenge them about the future of packaging, and subsequently hearing Tony Ryan on the radio speaking about plastics (“buried sunshine” in his description), Helen made a follow-up call. This conversation generated their first research collaboration to explore the “behavioural” qualities of plastic and culminated in the co-creation of a plastic bottle which could dissolve into a harmless gel, providing an alternative substrate for growing plants, thereby potentially eliminating a problem of single-use plastic and pollution, to create, instead, new and useful life. This concept became the Wonderland project that “created beauty out of difficulty” as a means of communicating this science. 3 In its prototype form the bottle itself would not have drawn much attention, but by using the same chemistry in materials for a body of fashion pieces, something with great public appeal was created. Helen designed and developed a group of 27 Disappearing Dresses, collaboratively produced with chemists and textile designer and printer Trish Belford. These beautiful pieces took three years to develop and create, but each polymer dress was then destroyed in days, by gradually dissolving it in water during Wonderland exhibitions in 2008 in London and Sheffield and later in Europe. This poetic expression of a potential new relationship with plastic materials, raised awareness of the endemic problem of plastics that modern society has created, together with the impact of clothing waste from the fashion industry. It was a call for imaginative change in society and industry through the powerful agency of creating and then purposefully and publicly destroying beautiful garments, proposing instead that “plastics are precious” as materials to be regenerated. Unilever explored the potential for manufacturing the “Dissolving bottle” but finally dropped it as a concept, as it would have challenged existing systems for recycling. As concerns for environmental action became more and more prominent in the public and political discourse, Helen and Tony continued to respond to global challenges and to develop new research projects to tackle other major aspects of sustainability. Their next project, disseminated in 2011, was Catalytic Clothing – an experimental and ambitious proposal to utilise the clothes we wear as catalysts to purify the air from particulate pollutants, so “we can be the most effective tool to catalyse pollution

200  Sandy Black and Helen Storey clean-up on the planet”.4 This innovative concept takes inspiration from a­ rchitecture, where surface cleaning nano-technologies are applied to exterior glass and concrete surfaces of buildings and other urban environments. Capitalising on the fact that fibres have a much greater surface area than such urban surfaces, the Catalytic Clothing concept involves depositing titanium dioxide (TIO2), a nano-scale catalyst, onto the surface of our clothes via the standard machine-washing laundry process, and in so doing, radicalising the clothes we already own and wear. The catalysed clothing neutralises the nitrogen oxides (NOx) in the atmosphere, 5 providing clean air for those around the walking wearer. Installations of treated denim jeans – the most common form of everyday clothing worldwide – were presented as provocations in large city locations around the UK in a “Field of Jeans” (Figure 11.2). In tandem, a hybrid dress sculpture “Herself” was created and exhibited with an evocative film to present the concept.6 Despite strong public interest being demonstrated globally, commercial investment and development has not been forthcoming. This is not altogether surprising to Helen, who sees her projects and her role very much to inspire behaviour change, to imagine what large corporations can’t and to ask the questions they dare not ask themselves; questions that can also present commercial challenges to existing business models through innovations that require social change. The complex practical and commercial issues identified with the implementation of concepts developed in both the Wonderland and Catalytic Clothing projects demonstrate the huge barriers to be overcome when aiming to scale innovation and shift industry and consumer practices and paradigms. In 2013, Helen’s practice of elucidating science through fashion found expression and form in a new material, glass, as she developed a piece for the Glasstress: White Heat/White Light group show at the Venice Biennale. The Dress of Glass and Flame,

Figure 11.2  Field of Jeans in Chelsea, London 2011. Image by DED.

Making for our time  201 with its living flame poised inside a glass bodice, and skirt made from pieces of waste glass, took the alchemy of glass and its creation through the medium of fire to exemplify its process and the material ambiguity between solid and liquid (Figure 11.3). In the making of this unique and unwearable dress, Helen had of necessity to entrust the material process to the glass masters and communicate as creative director, rather than directly as a maker through tacit knowledge of the material itself. This dress stands independently within Helen’s body of work as an experimental material expression and highly contemplative artwork, the flame mesmerically drawing attention to the constant present, rather than provoking ideas of uncertain futures. In many ways, it is a piece that also allowed Helen “a pause” and a moment of artistic reflection of what next and why. Helen’s collaborative approach to making and utilising a wide range of materials and fashion artefacts to communicate concepts has, over the years of her practice,

Figure 11.3  Dress of Glass and Flame 2013. Image Berengo Studio.

202  Sandy Black and Helen Storey been harnessed to engage audiences emotionally and viscerally, to illuminate complex major issues within sustainability, climate change and social justice. All of these crucial areas fused together once more in her recent and current work, using the power of fashion as a universal language and experience, and fashion thinking as an approach to participatory research in action.

Dress for our time – linking the refugee crisis and climate change The most recent dress, and arguably the most symbolic to feature in Helen Storey’s body of work is Dress for Our Time, a dress that catalysed a series of events leading her to the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan and two years later, to front line action. The journey began in 2014, in the run up to the crucial Paris UN Climate Conference of the Parties COP21, scheduled for the following year.7 The London Meteorological Office (the UK’s national weather service known as the MET) was starting to engage with different industries to explore how climate change would impact them. Having identified the sectors, such as music and fashion as ones with mass followings that could provide the MET Office with a way to scale fast what climate change means for us all, they consequently contacted London College of Fashion. This was the first time Helen had engaged in conversations with climate scientists and she subsequently brought them together with different stakeholders (including industry, business people, NGOs and psychologists) to share how they saw the world’s future through their knowledge and experience. In what became a new and defining moment for Helen, ideas began to germinate for an intervention to raise awareness of climate change, its impact on migration and in particular, the refugee crisis, in relation to COP21. The key moment came (ironically) whilst Helen was waiting in a departure lounge at an airport to visit her textile collaborator, Trish Belford, to explore the cloth for the dress inspired by climate. She found herself watching thousands of people on the move on all the surrounding TV screens – Syrian refugees fleeing their homeland and the war for Jordan, and the myriad of tents that were to shelter them on arrival. Deeply affected by what she saw and inspired by the symbolism of the tent, Helen realised she did not need to source or create new materials for the project – these tents held “humanity in their threads already”. In another cold calling instance, Helen immediately emailed the head of communications at the UN in Geneva with an enquiry and, remarkably, received an answer by the time her plane touched down. At the time, the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan was in the process of transitioning from tents to “caravans” (customised shipping containers). Since the camp never threw anything away, there were many surplus tents available that had previously housed refugee families. Helen set about the task of getting hold of one, a process fraught with bureaucracy. Eventually, a tent was delivered and Helen, together with her pattern cutter collaborator Mark Tarbard, created the Dress for Our Time from it at London College of Fashion over the summer. With the further collaboration of digital agency Holition, the symbolic dress also became a canvas to display scientific climate data, showing the impact of climate change and subsequently, war, on the planet. This was done by taking the number of those who fled for their lives in that year from the annual UNHCR report and mapping their movement across continents with pixels of light. Each pixel of light represented 100 human beings on the move from seven points around the hem of the piece, these representing the seven most frequently

Making for our time  203 fled-from countries. The lights moved in a 2-minute sequence to the countries of final destination – a previously unseen map, in effect, a map of Governmental kindness and hospitality by those open to receive refugees in large numbers.8 In November 2015, the Dress for Our Time installation was strategically positioned alongside the Eurostar terminal at St Pancras Station London, the gateway to Paris and COP21. To enhance its symbolic power, the dress was evocatively filmed being worn moving gracefully through strategic city locations. The dress was further exhibited in several other locations including the Science Museum in London, and later, the dress opened on the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury Festival in 2016 and appeared at the UN in Geneva, as the backdrop to a TED-X talk on lives in transition (Figure 11.4). Over a 20-year period, through her extensive body of work, Helen has demonstrated the power of fashion and dress to communicate and raise awareness, on issues such as climate change. Such powerful imagery using fashion can draw people in and facilitate having the difficult conversations, where other methods might cause a defensive reaction and close the conversation down. As she says, “no-one is afraid of a frock”. The human connections and conversations instigated by the Dress’s first appearance at St Pancras Station also resulted in questions from children, that Helen was unable to answer, so she went back to UNHCR in the UK to seek the replies. This resulted in an invitation to visit Zaatari Refugee Camp and the first of a series of seven visits made by Helen and Tony Ryan between 2016 and 2019. As Helen notes, the camp is

Figure 11.4 D ress for Our Time in Geneva 2016. Image by David Betteridge, model Louise Owen.

204  Sandy Black and Helen Storey a place where impossibilities become possibilities. On their first visit in March 2016, the Syrians they met recounted their great longing for the colour green, having been farmers back home and now, in this desert, felt the unbearable deprivation of being unable to grow anything. On that first visit, the seeds of several future projects were sown. Tony noticed the many used but redundant foam mattresses, previously stained with the urine of the traumatised young. He realised, in a light-bulb moment, that this nitrate source, and the earth substitute that the sponge material provided, could be hijacked for hydroponic cultivation. Helen notes: “Now in 2021 there are 5,000 new kinds of farmers, now convinced and trained in hydroponics and teaching us the best methods to scale up this initiative”, as hydroponics with used mattresses spreads to other UNHCR camps around the world. For her part, Helen met women and girls who had brought their craft and culture with them to the camp, making crochet dolls, soap and perfume contained in industry-rejected lopsided bottles. A further moment of serendipity came when meeting Ahlam, a refugee community leader for the women with whom Helen made an immediate connection. Together, along with many other women and inspired by their existing making skills and ideas, they co-created a series of interventions and workshops to better the residents’ futures. Funding was secured from Unilever, who had generously funded Dress for Our Time over six years, and with the support of LCF and Sheffield University, amongst others, further trips to the camp were made, each resulting in new projects. By 2019, Helen’s direct, hands-on way of collaborating and her unique role as designer, artist, connector and facilitator were recognised, and UNHCR created a new and pioneering position for her as UNHCR Designer in Residence in the camp.

Zaatari designer in residence 2019 Being the first Zaatari designer in residence during 2019 was uniquely challenging, and Helen needed to “learn fast and listen deeply”. The camp itself is vast, established in 2012 and currently home to 78,000 refugees. Although the people remain deeply connected to Syria, the camp is now a semi-permanent city where 80 children are born each week. Zaatari exercises a wide range of life skills, a place where people have become highly adaptive in extreme circumstances. With limited access to resources, they are forced to live sustainably, and in this respect, Helen remarks “they have a lot to teach us”. For cultural reasons, her work has focused on the women in the camp including working with some of the camp’s 10,000 adolescent girls (aged 9–18), whereas Tony worked on projects with men on his visits. On her first visit to Zaatari, Helen met a radical class of self-styled Tiger Girls, whose name stands for “These Inspiring Girls Enjoy Reading”. Several such pioneering groups of Tiger Girls across the 12 districts of Zaatari are receiving extra support and education, representing and encouraging alternative paths to the norm of early marriage. Over five years, a series of projects has been developed based on the women’s and girls’ needs and wishes with a focus on female empowerment and livelihoods, although it can be noted that the Tigers now include boys too (These Inspiring Guys). The first project, developed in 2017, became known as the “Love Coats”, it utilised and transformed the infamous grey UNHCR thermal blankets issued to each refugee on arrival. The Tiger Girls are glamorous, young and outspoken. This co-created project was born out of the girls’ expressed wishes; “a need to be warm in winter, a love of fashion and ‘bling’, their wish to learn new making skills and to have something

Making for our time  205 to gift”, which is so culturally important to them. Helen went back to London with a shopping list for materials and returned with a wealth of donated fabrics and embellishments she had gathered together, plus a prototype and pattern for a simple coat. The girls then saw an opportunity to transform these basic blankets into something desirable and individual – the “Love Coats”. Helen and two colleagues from UAL worked with 29 Tiger Girls and their mentors, and by the end of the week’s project, the girls were so proud of their creations they wanted to present a fashion catwalk show to celebrate their achievements – the first such event to be held in a refugee camp9 (Figure 11.5). Through this project, Helen established a new participatory way of working within the Zaatari community, with clear and immediate benefits, a process through which they got to know each other which was then applied to further co-making projects. Helen remarks: Collaborating and co-making in Zaatari puts you in touch with all the tensions of life held there; how to balance patience with urgency, originality with tradition, modesty with bling, governance with unseen laws, owning nothing with domestic pride, trauma with celebration – and all, with your future in someone else’s hands. From these beginnings Helen and Tony brought in many more partners with specific expertise from London College of Fashion, Sheffield University and externally (such as Givaudan, global makers of fragrance) to enable further projects. Tony and his Sheffield colleagues continued to work on developing hydroponic garden systems, so families could grow their own food, herbs and plants such as jasmine and thyme – a different type of successful making and creating. Helen’s projects with the women

Figure 11.5  Love Coats catwalk show 2017: Love Syria. Image by Helen Storey.

206  Sandy Black and Helen Storey focused on developing new products that could be sold to visitors to the camp and to markets outside, specifically personal products including cosmetics, soap and perfume (with the assistance of Givaudan), and also co-creating new jewellery concepts. The women already loved making jewellery as a social activity, and Helen identified different skills they wanted and brought in specific expertise in order to help create new high-quality hybrid jewellery pieces, such as earrings, necklaces, wristbands and hair pieces that would appeal to international markets and provide future income. These pieces were based on the women’s craft knowledge and existing practices, but with novel elements introduced combining eastern and western cultural aesthetics; in a five-day project they produced 200 pieces of jewellery. Further training in tambour embroidery was delivered by fashion designer Elie Saab, which was cascaded out to many other women, through their family networks. The aim of all this making activity was to support community self-care and provide people with sought-after income and therefore economic independence from reliance solely on the NGOs working within the camp – making to create the future. In response to the evolving relationships and trust between Helen and the women makers of the camp and at a moment of change within the camp as a whole, a new co-developed initiative was realised: a Made in Zaatari Centre. Operating from five caravans around a central courtyard and opened in March 2019 on International Women’s Day, this was a first-of-its-kind community for the camp, and a central place for making, friendship, motherhood and economic ambition. It comprised one outside space where plants could be grown, and four caravans to provide services – a beauty salon, a soap and perfume making Lab, a crèche and a retail outlet for their “Made in Zaatari” products. Since its opening, the Centre’s kitchen has become the NGO’s supplier for much catering and sharing of Syrian food heritage and cookery skills.

Tarek’s story The camp has many artists, makers, trades people and students, both men and women (just like our own society). The story of the artist Tarek Hamden poignantly illustrates extreme resourcefulness, the valuing of materials around you, skills development and adaptation to extreme new circumstances. Helen first saw Tarek’s extraordinary carved mini-sculptures on a visit to the camp’s new art gallery in 2017 – created from found pencils with their lead carved into minute clasped hands (­Figure 11.6). Nothing is ever thrown away in the camp, and Tarek explained how he “picked up what’s around and scratched away at it” using a pin to carve the lead into physical manifestations of his emotional inner life. As a former construction worker in Syria, Tarek had suffered depression when arriving in the camp, and this creative activity helped to mediate it. Helen encouraged his work and brought in a jewellery expert from Paris, who helped Tarek transform his artwork into wearable pieces – necklaces and earrings. Once these started to sell, Tarek’s work went on to sell widely at local Bazaars and for the first time, to an online platform called Souqfann.10 Helen arranged an exhibition of his work in London’s Hatton Garden in 2019, and by matching Tarek to a UK-based designer, Bleue Burnham, who works in silver and gold, they created jewellery pieces for sale in Paris stores and at Matches in London. The quality of this and other work started to attract store buyers from London and elsewhere to the camp, and a piece of Tarek’s recent work (a carved broom handle depicting his life story) was exhibited at the

Making for our time  207

Figure 11.6  Tarek’s carved pencil: Holding Hands 2017. Image by Helen Storey.

Venice Design Biennale in May 2021. This creation of new markets beyond the camp is vital to the future of livelihoods, as is the work that is ongoing for how refugees can receive payments direct from international markets. Tarek has continued to make his unique work and has materially improved his circumstances from the income he has earned through his art, facilitated by UNHCR and Helen’s mentoring and connections.

Reflections on 2019 and beyond Through the initial series of visits to Zaatari, Helen made strong and potent relationships across cultures, faiths, languages and extremes in life conditions, learning from refugees and sharing ideas of what fashion, making and materials can mean in such different circumstances. As with all collaboration, part of the human bonding and sense of meaning came from tensions and misunderstandings too. For example, when developing the Love Coats project, the very meaning of what seems imaginative, or sustainable could be misjudged. When Helen initially looked for materials that would be sustainable after the initial project was over, she was drawn to the utility and ever present supply of blankets issued by the NGOs, but as seen from the girls’ perspective, these blankets served as unwelcome reminders of the day they had first arrived in camp and were issued with the obligatory “camp kit” with the very basics for living. For women, this comprised dignity kits, basic cooking utensils, sponge mattresses, a torch and thermal blankets. In an effort to bring to camp her own sense of sustainability, Helen had unwittingly stumbled into very difficult memories and, in so doing, revealed associations that NGOs were also unaware of. Similarly, the intention to reuse materials from second-hand clothes sourced with the assistance of Oxfam

208  Sandy Black and Helen Storey caused some negative reactions, as such disused clothing was associated in the girls’ minds with the discarded clothing of those that had passed away. Once revealed, these differences in perception were blown wide open and through empathy and dialogue and a sense of wanting the best for each other, the bonds between everyone involved only became stronger. From the experience of the first trip, a new type of role emerged: on the one hand, Helen in close collaboration with her NGO partners and, on the other, evolving and held confidences of those who lived in camp, as unique kinds of social friendships began, simultaneously professional and personal. As Helen puts it: Zaatari asks for your soul, whether you like it or not, an extreme life commute had begun – the journey between London and Zaatari’s front gates changed my life for good. The impact of working in Zaatari has been profound in many ways. Helen’s unique position – neither formally from an NGO, nor a citizen of the camp – kept her acting upon an increased sensitivity and a novel form of intimacy that developed, far from any recognisable, or previously named, social status. From this position, creativity was part of her own response to living alongside extreme life, and the need to intuitively experiment to find ways of co-creating and working together, primarily through making. She describes her situation in this way: There is only one place of equality in Zaatari, between me and my friends there and it happens when we are engaged in the process of making – somehow the brain focuses down, is momentarily released from the past and stops projecting into the future – and a necklace, or perfume later, it’s just us, just here, just now. In working in this highly responsive way, Helen speaks of several lessons learnt, such as knowing when she is needed to intervene, or contribute, and when she is not needed at all: “often, despite best plans it’s a good idea to not expect to control everything from beginning to end”. Being sensitive and responsive to “what the situation is telling you” is hugely important, including an awareness of the constant presence and legacy of trauma and war amongst the people in the camp – those still suspended, ten years later, between Jordan and home. There is naturally a great sense of responsibility with many different perspectives to balance, a balance that comes from a form of service and attention to reality as it presents itself. The formal UNHCR Residency was renewed to the end of 2023 and Helen’s work was planned to continue in camp, but the arrival of COVID-19 prompted UNHCR to tell her to catch the last flight out of Jordan in March of 2020. Work at a distance began, but again, in partnership with Tony Ryan at Sheffield University a successful funding bid was made to the UK’s Global Challenges Research Fund to respond to the COVID crisis on the ground in Jordan; the project PPE4REFUGEES, to ­create personal protective equipment for camp residents and train 60 refugee researchers, was delivered until March 2022, to “deal with a crisis by building livelihoods”. Using the women’s existing sewing skills The Mask House was set up, manufacturing 100,000 masks for camp residents in three months. The scientific and design input here (from Helen and Tony) was to provide technical support with mask designs, to work on specifications for testing mask efficacy and to explore potential new coatings to increase the effectiveness of the masks in preventing

Making for our time  209 spread of disease. This facility demonstrated real potential for new livelihoods and is now looking for a new purpose, within the local textile/clothing industry outside the camp. The nature of Helen’s work, reliant on direct human contact, was more difficult under the necessarily constrained and remote circumstances caused by COVID-19, but after nearly two years, Helen returned to Zaatari in November 2021. During the period of remote working, attention was given to the legacy of Helen’s and Tony’s interventions, with the training of 60 refugee researchers undertaken. Their roles are to continue the participatory action research initiatives directly on the ground, via training in three main areas: social sciences (to be researchers working in camp), digital technologies (for research and livelihood creation) and technical skills (for textile developments and design of new products). The reciprocal effect is the exchange of knowledge with the refugees about human resilience, innovation in a life of extreme circumstances and cultural preservation, amongst other learnings. Discussing this recent work, Helen says the COVID-19 crisis has “shown us what the future requires from us”. Helen’s most recent visit at the end of 2021 was focused on an embroidery project which had been on the wish list for the camp’s women, to build on their existing making skills. Helen was accompanied by a designer and womenswear course leader from LCF, Syrian-born Nabil El-Nayal. Building on a long Syrian textile heritage, this pilot project engaged 28 women in creative embroidery sampling, telling their stories (Figure 11.7), to identify ten highly skilled women to take part in a second-stage project during 2022. Here, ideas will be taken to product development with a view to commercialisation and scaling up to provide livelihoods.

Figure 11.7 Embroidery samples from different women in the Syrian Stitch pilot project Nov 2021. Image by Helen Storey.

210  Sandy Black and Helen Storey Looking forwards to a time (perhaps not too far ahead) when NGOs will want to make the transition from aid givers, to enabling economic independence, the first series of co-created projects initiated through Helen’s involvement were beginning to help those living in camp and outside in the urban areas, transitioning from dependency to economic freedom. Building on the success of these projects, continuing to both develop existing craft skills and introduce new ones to create novel products, more external opportunities are now being sought, involving new partnerships with local industry. These partnerships will therefore impact livelihoods beyond the camp’s residents and into Jordan more widely, where there are competing social and economic problems. Developing local, national and international markets for the new products is therefore essential to the success of these initiatives, which was part of the work of the recent grant funding. Innovation may well stretch to the imagining and forming of new types of partnerships and alliances between governing systems, industry and local universities in Jordan, as new future-fit models of business are co-created. To this end, at the beginning of 2022, a new making lab has been set up within a nearby university campus site outside Zaatari. This unit is working to make soap, perfume and other personal care products and aims to further professionalise the Made in Zaatari products to export standards. In addition, to achieve this, the unit is able to work with products and materials that are currently restricted within the camp.

Conclusions This evolving body of work is defining a new space for designers, artists and scientists to apply their creativity. The role taken on by Helen is still extremely hard to define – she is simultaneously designer, artist and broker of projects, people and ­collaborations – orchestrating, or choreographing, many simultaneous activities with multiple agents. It is more than facilitation alone, it requires constant listening, empathy and emotional investment and has culminated in her work being appreciated as activism. In Helen’s words: It’s all about being in relationship – the first person you meet in Zaatari is yourself, you, such are the questions that come to the surface within one’s own sense of right and wrong; that response is then immediately connected to the people you meet there – quite quickly, it’s apparent that the most powerful teachers are heartbreak, emotional resilience and disappointment. The ‘job’ then, is highly relational, people-led first on all sides – it doesn’t work unless all are heard, all involved, in what gets created. Helen’s unique position as Designer in Residence also involves a level of vulnerability, as she was not a formal UNHCR employee, whilst also being at a great distance from her home university. Helen believes that unlike more formal roles in NGOs, part of hers is to deliberately remain vulnerable, and not shut down the depth of emotional connections, even if this can come at a personal cost. She says: At times, last year did me in – things I witnessed that I couldn’t process, moments that just don’t leave you and the ‘commute’ between College and Zaatari – one day in relationship to the consequences of huge protracted loss and the noblest of continued fights to counter it, the next, doing your expenses receipts back at a

Making for our time  211 London based desk – flying back, somewhere over Greece, something inside starts to prepare for the familiar – although now the familiar has changed forever. Helen has observed the effects of war and displacement, as much as is possible, and what it means to be a refugee – how fear impacts creativity, but also how true “resilience” presents itself. Helen’s work has succeeded in finding ways of working together and co-creating, that can encourage and release the imagination, particularly through craft and the process of making things. The journey described here exemplifies not just the power of fashion to connect across cultures, communicating beyond words, but also how some of the skills and aptitudes of being a designer are now being asked to repurpose themselves, playing a different role in the world: To do this you need to make peace with uncertainty – see self-doubt, as intuition knocking. Helen has arrived at a new and yet to be named place, in which design and designers can explore what it means to evolve – a responsive, relational place that gives value to the measurable and immeasurable in equal form, the recognisable and the yet to be recognised. Her practice has morphed to become this evolution itself. Through this work the role and importance of art and design in sustainability and wellbeing is vitally brought to life, linking to the changes we all need to make in our response to climate change, social and racial injustice and a pandemic, that will continue to affect our lives for years to come. The only habitat we have any control of, is our own minds and the ways in which we can nurture and shelter each other, humans in the arms of each other, by will and design. The unique journey, process and outcomes described above provide abundant evidence of the powerful social impact that can be achieved through a direct and empathetic engagement across cultures and across time, utilising both the innovative material practices and the participatory activities and methods of making. The universal experience of wearing and creating clothing and artefacts has enabled Helen Storey to reposition the dress not only as metaphor but utilise dress, design, craft and fashion in its many forms as a catalyst for vital conversations, and urgent action in the face of current global challenges. A new role for the (fashion) designer has been demonstrated – using design thinking to facilitate working in a sustainable way and “more than simply making stuff” – but making for a purpose, leading to creating sustainable livelihoods and bettering lives. This socially responsible way of working, aiming to develop non-dependency, directly responds to the key crises faced by refugees – in health and in finance – and helps articulate what it means to be living as a refugee in another country. The impact on policy of both the Made in Zaatari Centre and the Hydroponics projects, catalysed by Helen Storey’s and Tony Ryan’s initiative, vision and ­co-creative approach, is now becoming clear. Despite the pause in some activity caused by the COVID-19 crisis, their creative response has provided a new opportunity for self-­ sufficiency and a key legacy of training. The Made in Zaatari Centre is a sustainable hub for female creativity and economic empowerment – one of the direct results of

212  Sandy Black and Helen Storey the Designer in Residence position. The hydroponics work has enhanced survival and given farming back to farmers through the re-imagining of material purpose and practical empowerment – both projects remain UNHCR flagship examples and as a direct consequence of this work, the UNHCR is looking at ways in which such projects can be spread to others of the 135 UNHCR bases around the world. At the end of 2021, Helen was invited to expand her work next to Africa, across four countries including Zambia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi – a somewhat monumental task. This powerful impact is a direct result of Helen’s individual open and ­collaborative approach, finding practical ways to catalyse the social changes required to meet the significant humanitarian challenges contemporary societies face – enabled by the imaginative power of making and materials.

Notes 1 Interalia convened innovative conferences bringing together world class scientists and ­artists. It now exists as a magazine, edited by its founder, physicist and painter Richard Bright – see https://www.interaliamag.org 2 Primitive Streak was shown between 1997 and 2011 at 42 different venues, including 32 across the UK in galleries, universities and other institutions. Overseas exhibitions included venues in China, the USA, The Netherlands, Spain, Denmark and Germany. Two dresses have been acquired as part of permanent collections of the Wellcome Trust and the National Museum of Scotland and the archive is to be gifted to a University during 2022. 3 The Wonderland project was funded by the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. 4 Catalytic Clothing project was funded by the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. 5 See http://www.catalytic-clothing.org/faq.html for an explanation of NOx particulates and other information about the chemical process. 6 See film at: http://www.catalytic-clothing.org/ 7 COP21 was the 21st Conference of the Parties, convened annually by UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), held in Paris in 2015, resulting in the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. 8 See film of this map at https://holition.com/work/farfetch-data-visualisation-­projectionmapping 9 See the Love Coats film at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr_fXZQy_Zs 10 See https://souqfann.com/

Index

Note: Bold page numbers refer to tables; Italic page numbers refer to figures and page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes. ‘aakh’ fibre 98, 99, 99 Active Textile Tailoring 39 Adams, B. 31 Africa 193, 194, 212; circle economy and historical design omissions in 180–181; culture 3 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2030) 11 agricultural sector, food wastage from 16–17 Alessandrini, L. 2, 3, 21 All-Party Parliamentary Group for Ethics and Sustainability in Fashion 172 Ally Capellino 164 Anima 23 animal-derived FLW 18 anthroposystems 33, 33, 42 Araki, K. 23 artichoke fibres 20 Ates, H. 169 ATLAS.ti software 163 Bacillus thuringiensis 89 bacterial polymer 17 Bak-Andersen, M. 10 Ballie, J. 3, 4, 6 Balsamo, A. 79 banana agricultural FLW 17 Bananatex 17 Banerjee, S. 87 Barker, G. 4, 106, 109, 117 Baurley, S. 57 Belford, T. 199, 202 Betteridge, D. 203 ‘Better Lives’ agenda 161 Betts, A. 131 BFTT project see Business of Fashion, Textiles and Technology (BFTT) project Biddiss, E. A. 70 Binns, H. 48

Biocouture project 22 Biogusto company 18 Biohm, UK-based startup 21 biomedical engineers 70 Bioplastic Skin project 20 Biotrem company 18 Blackhorse Lane Ateliers 167–169, 173, 175 Black, S. 2, 6, 197 Blood Related’s tableware project 19 Boschma, R. 51, 62 Bowles, M. 131 breeding sector, food wastage from 16–17 British Arts and Crafts movement 160 British colonialism 89 The British Fashion Council 119 Brooks, A. 31 de Brouwer, Z. 179, 188 Bulley, E. 17 Burnham, B. 206 Business of Fashion, Textiles and Technology (BFTT) project 170 Cabourn, N. 104 Cactus Leather 164, 165, 174, 175 Cairns, N. 69 Calotropis gigantea 98 Cambridge Engineering Selector (CES) 73 Campbell, K. 131, 133 Cao Zheng 17 Carbonaro, L. 22 Catalytic Clothing 199–200 catering food sector, food wastage from 20–21 CCD see Centre for Circular Design (CCD) CCI project see Cutting Crime Impacts (CCI) project Çelebi, Y. 184 Centre for Circular Design (CCD) 47, 48, 106

214 Index CES see Cambridge Engineering Selector (CES) Charnock, R. 184 Chatterjee, A. 88, 96 Chau, T. T. 70 chewing gums 22–23 Chido Kaseke (Chido) 182, 182, 186–192 Chilote shoes company 20 Chinara, N. 182 Christiaens, S. 3 circular design 3, 10, 30, 31, 47, 92, 102, 124, 179–181, 185, 193, 194; circle economy 181; circular economy waste 30; circularity 42; ‘circular, responsible design’ model 119; circular textile design 46, 48–49, 53, 144 Clark, B. 3, 4, 6 Clarks Shoes 164 CLO3D 37, 38 Clothing Longevity Workshop 114 co-design 58, 125, 126, 129, 174 collaboration 3, 5, 38, 46, 47, 49, 51, 53, 54, 57–64, 85, 94, 95, 100, 101, 104, 106–108, 112, 119, 124, 131, 133, 141, 144, 145, 152, 153, 161, 162, 164, 169, 171, 174, 191, 194 Collet, C. 57 combined hand-on/hands-off approach 61–64, 63 community fashion event 112 The Community Live in Nottingham 110 complex WTf systems 36 contemporary systems theory 52 contextualising material preferences 76–77 CoR project see Cultures of Resilience (CoR) project COVID-19 post-pandemic era 60 ‘Crafting Leather and Steel’ exhibition 167 Creagh, M. 172 ‘Creative and Cultural Business Program’ 93 Creative Food Cycle in 2019 17 Creative Quarter showcase 115, 116, 117 Creative, T. 112 C2renew company 21 cultural sustainability 164–167 Cultures of Resilience (CoR) project 149–150 Curiosity programme 104 cut and sew (C&S) methods 31, 36 Cutting Crime Impacts (CCI) project 64 cutting phase, FSC 14 Danayi Madondo (Danayi) 182, 185–191 DDMI methodology see design driven material innovation (DDMI) methodology Decafè company 21 decentralised Indian textile design 85; decentralising material 98–100; decentralised material innovation 100–101;

decentralised supply chain, of IRO IRO system 92; decentralised textile system 95–96 decolonisation 87–89; circle economy and historical design omissions, in Africa 180–181; and decentralised materials innovation 100–101; decolonising design perspectives 178–179; decolonised material innovation 100–101; decolonising materials 85–87, 98–100; designer profiles 181–184; design strategies for innovation 190–191; IRO IRO journey in Govindgarh 93–100; IRO IRO system 91–93; methodology 179–180; practice of Indian crafts 87–89; research approach 89, 91; Zimbabwean designers 185–190 ‘deconstruction fashion’ methodology (Margiela) 108–112, 113; ‘deconstruction/ reconstruction’ techniques 108 De La Peñaa, A. 17 ‘dematerialise design’ 115 design activism 161 design driven material innovation (DDMI) methodology 145 ‘design for upcycling’ approach 106 design for use 110–111 DesignLab workshop 64 Design Primario (Primary Design) 9 design research for change 65 Design Research Society (2022) 141 design strategies: for closing resource loops 185–188; for innovation 190–191; for slowing resource loops 188–190 digital design/crafting skills 37, 119; digital learning platforms 140; digital-making process 38; digital-physical zero waste prototyping process 36; digital prototyping process 37; digital tools 36 direct remote exchange 60 Dishbratta company 21 Distefano, L. 19 distribution phase, food wastage from 20 DIY-Materials approach 8–11, 16, 17, 22–24 Dress for Our Time 202–204, 203 Dress of Glass and Flame 2013 201 Dundee City Council 134 Earley, R. 4, 6, 49, 50, 52, 62, 135 Earth Logic Fashion Action Research Plan 104 ECD see environment-centred design (ECD) ecosystems 33, 33, 42 education research 141 elasticity cube sets 74; elastic silicone rubber 75–76 Emmanuel House Support Centre 103; Emmanuel House X NTU Fashion Event 113

Index  215 engagement 3, 4, 46, 53, 54, 133; community engagement 161, 166; continued engagement 175; customer engagement 190; direct and empathetic engagement 211; participatory engagement 108, 116 enhanced communication technology 51 Environmental Audit Committee 172 environment-centred design (ECD) 105 EOL stage see End Of Life (EOL) stage Escobar, A. 49 Escott, A. 4, 109 ethnographic approach 3 EU Circular Economy Action Plan 11 EU Commission 11 Eurocentric view of circularity 3 European-funded research 48 evaluation 6, 31, 32, 34, 35, 129, 163, 174 Everything and Everybody as Material 106 Experimental Field Test 1 (EFT 1) tested method 34, 35; Experimental Field Test 2 (EFT 2) tested method 35–36 experimental minimal waste digital prototypes 35 extreme proximity 51–52 Extreme Sugar project 17 facilitation 46, 47, 62, 128, 131, 142, 145, 210 fashion: activism interventions 159–161; education 118–120; participatory approaches for 126–128; and science collaboration 199–202; and textile industries 30, 36 Fashion and Textile Research Centre 104 ‘Fashion as a Social, Sustainable Practice’ 109 fashion design 31, 34, 42, 51, 102, 104, 105, 105, 106, 118, 119, 126, 127, 193, 197 Fashion Revolution Day (FRD) 140, 147; Fashion Revolution NTU 104; Fashion Revolution Zimbabwe’s Fashion 191 Feliu, D. 17 fibres 16, 17, 20, 21, 34, 38, 42, 43, 49, 53, 72, 75, 78, 79, 98–100, 125, 148, 160, 182, 200 Field of Jeans in Chelsea 200, 200 fillers, in compounds and bioplastics 18 ‘first-world’ countries 86 Fischer, V. 23 fishing sector, food wastage from 16–17 Fitzpatrick, A. 170, 172 ‘Fixing Fashion’ report 172 Fletcher, K. 30, 104, 127–128, 135 FLW see Food Loss and Waste (FLW) Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations 11, 12, 18 Food Loss and Waste (FLW) 12, 18, 25n15; End Of Life (EOL) stage 20; within Food Supply Chain framework 13, 14, 16; household and urban disposal 21–23

Food Supply Chain (FSC) 8; five phases of 12–14; FLW within 23; globalisation of 20 food wastage (FW) 8, 11–13, 25n15; from agricultural, breeding and fishing sectors 16–17; case studies framework analysis 12–16, 15; from catering food sector 20–21; from distribution phase 20; from household and urban disposing 21–23; in industrial contexts 34; from industrial food processing 18–20 FRD see Fashion Revolution Day (FRD) fruit FLW 18 Frumat company 18 FSC see Food Supply Chain (FSC) FUSION EU project 13 Futurepower company 18 FW see food wastage (FW) Garland-Thomson, R. 71 Geographical Proximity 51 G.H. Leathers Ltd 20 Giummarra, M. J. 72 Glasgow School of Art’s Centre for Advanced Textiles 131 Glasstress: White Heat/White Light group 200 Goenka, B. 3, 4, 6 Goldsworthy, K. 50, 57, 62 Goodyear Tyre and Rubber Co. 18 Gopalji, R. 95 Great Place scheme 159 Green, L. 111 grinding phase, FSC 14; grinding process, FLW 18 Groth, C. 60 GUYLLELUJAH 183, 183 Hamden, T. 206–207, 207 Handicrafts in India 96 Handloom Development Corporation 94 hands-on/hands-off design research 5, 46–47; combined approach 61–64; context 48–54; methods 47–48; systemic materials development 54, 55–56, 57–61; transferable proximities model in 64–65 Happy Grenie company 18 Haruperi, W. 183 Haus of Stone 182, 182 HCI see human-computer interaction (HCI) Henry&Co design studio 21 HEREWEAR project 54 HE Sahle-Work Zewde 140, 141 Hickey-Moody, A. 79 High Society company 21 Hijosa, C. 17 holism 30 Hoole, M. 119 Hornbuckle, R. 5, 52, 58

216 Index household and urban context 12 household and urban disposing, food wastage from 21–23 Huges, L. 19 human-centred approach 135 human-computer interaction (HCI) 57 Hussain, S. 69 ‘ideal’ systemic materials innovation project eco-system 51, 52 IICD see Indian Institute of Crafts and Design (IICD) IIT see Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) ILP see Intelligent Label Solutions (ILP) Indian Institute of Crafts and Design (IICD) 87 India’s freedom struggle movement 89 indigenous peoples 92 industrial ecology 24n12 industrial food processing, food wastage from 18–20 Industrial Revolution in England 87 infrastructuring 60–61 innovation, design strategies for 190–191 Innovation Hub 169 Inside Out (2014) 147–149 Institute of Making’s Materials Library 72 Intelligent Label Solutions (ILP) 118 ‘intention-behaviour gap’ 140 International Women’s Day 206 IRO IRO system 88, 89, 90–91, 91–93, 97; decentralised supply chain of 92; in Govindgarh village 93–100 Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) 20 Jayakar, P. 88, 96 Jay, S. 133 Jensen, O. 42 Jimmy Choo 164 Jones, S. 164, 165, 166, 173 Joseph, F. 50 Julian Tamuka (Julian) 183, 185, 187–191 Kabra, J. P. 93–94 Kaffeform company 21 Karana, E. 61 Kaya, H. O. 181 Khadi 87–88 Kindred Clothing 132, 133, 134 Klein, L. 22 kombucha 22–23 Koskinen, I. 35 Kozlov, N. 111 Krill Design 21, 22 Krogh, P. G. 35 Kuusk, K. 57, 59, 60, 62

‘ladders of participation’ 108 Laeufer, J. 198 laser customisation, on denim 168 Laughlin, Z. 73 Lavenham company 118 Law Enforcement Agency (LEA) 64 LCF see London College of Fashion (LCF) LEA see Law Enforcement Agency (LEA) Lenihan, K. 112 Likert-type scale 74 Limbcare 70 Limbs4Africa 70 Liu Fei 17 Liu Xiaodong 17 LMICs see lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs) London-based Stitch-School 128 London Borough of Culture 2019 (LBOC) 159 London College of Fashion (LCF) 161 London Meteorological Office 202 “Love Coats” project 204, 205, 205 lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs) 70 Lvine, S. 19 Made in Zaatari Centre 211 MADE project 10 Madondo, M. T. 183 Maigue, C. E. 23 Main, A. 172 MakeGrowLab 20 Making for Change: Waltham Forest project 159–161, 174, 175 Makurumidze, L. T. 183 Malinowski, B. 162 Manzini, E. 127, 133, 149 Map of Bindings (MoB) 37, 39, 40, 43n6 Margiela, M. 102; ‘deconstruction fashion’ methodology (2018/2019) 108–112, 113 Marsilla, K. I. K. 19 Mars, M. M. 51 Mary Quant Dress 133 material-centred design models 30 Material Driven Design (MDD) method 9 materials 1–2, 4–5; changes in 6; decentralising material 98–100; decolonising material 98–100; design 2, 46, 49, 53, 54, 57, 58; designer 10; development of 8; drafts 2, 8, 10; lifecycle 47; making and systems 5; new spaces for 3–4; objects 5; for prosthetic limbs 69; prototypes 1; relationship building and identity 78–81; and skilled community 69; and social entanglements 2–3; stimuli 73 ‘materials continuum’ exercise 74, 75, 80 Materials Experience 9–11

Index  217 Materials Library 72, 82 Materials Models and Mindsets 49 Maupetit, H. 23 Mazzarella, F. 3–6, 135 McCartney, S. 21 McGowan, A. 96 McMullan, C. 2–4, 72, 74 McQuillan, H. 3, 5, 34, 38, 39 MDD method see Material Driven Design (MDD) method MDS see Multimorphic Design Systems (MDS) Mentos 23 Metsavaht, O. 20 micro-scale digital textile systems 40 mindsets 47, 59, 111, 141, 150, 186 Ministry of Textiles 96 Mi Zhou 21 MoB see Map of Bindings (MoB) models 19, 21, 32–35, 38, 108, 119, 139, 141, 175, 176, 178, 183, 184 More, M. 3, 4, 6 Morris, W. 160 Mpofu, V. 178 MTS model see Multimorphic Textile System (MTS) model Multimorphic Design Systems (MDS) 43n3; multimorphic textiles 30; Multimorphic Textile System (MTS) model 32, 32–34, 38, 43 multiple data collection methods 163 museums & galleries 4, 124, 128, 129, 131, 134, 136, 144, 147, 150, 152, 160 muslin cloth 1 Nat-2 19 National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) 163 National Lottery and European Social Fund 104 El-Nayal, N. 209 NCVO see National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) Niedderer, K. 65 Nimkulrat, N. 64 NTU X Emmanuel House 102–103, 103, 105, 117, 120; circular economy model 102; collaboration 106–108; fashion education model 120; Margiela’s methodology (2018/2019) 108–112, 113; materials and making experiences, feedback on 116–118; from physical to digital outcomes (2019/2020) 113–116; project partners 103–106 Ochis company 21 Ohmie The Orange Lamp 21

Orange Fiber, Italian company 18, 19 Orineo company 21 Paine, H. 57 Palmas, K. 127 Paper Pieces 183, 183 pardah system 97 PAR framework see Participatory Action Research (PAR) framework Paris UN Climate Conference of the Parties COP21 202, 203, 212n8 Parkour Parka (2019) 150–151, 151 Parmar, A. 21 Participatory Action Research (PAR) framework 139, 142, 143, 144, 152, 159, 161 participatory approaches, for fashion 126–128, 129, 135; participatory engagement 108 PatCh Maokoe Zimbabwe 182, 182 patient journey 65 Payne, A. 104 peeling phase, FSC 14 Peerdeman, B. 70 Pentland Brands 118 Perch, N. 20 person-centred design 116 Peterson, K. 39 phantom limb sensation (PLS) 72 Pharma Factory project 64, 65 Pinatex leather; pineapple leaves fibres 17 Pladec company 21 plant bioreactor 65 playful communications 145; playful design research projects 144–146; playful research 141 PLS see phantom limb sensation (PLS) police toolkit 65 Politowicz, K. 1, 53 Pollini, B. 2, 3 polyester 147, 148, 151, 171; heat-shrinking yarn 41, 42; microplastics 33 polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) 17 ‘poly khadi’ 95 PPE4REFUGEES project 208 Primitive Streak Collection 1997 198, 198 Prince, E. 4, 109 principles of environment-centred design 105, 105 prosthesis 70; prosthetic limbs 69, 70; prosthetics researchers 82 prototype 1, 5, 31–39, 40, 42–43, 56, 57, 60, 143, 199, 205 proximity 62; concept 46; to materials 50; to systems 50–52 Proximity Methods Framework for design research 54

218 Index QR code 13, 15 Quadruple Helix Model 161 quantifying materials experiences 75–76 Raeburn, C. 104, 107 Ragnoli, V. 2, 3 Ramachandran, V. S. 72 Razvi, A. 172 Real, M. 50, 62 reclamation process 147 re-creation/recreation model 144, 145, 151–155, 152, 155 recycled polyester (rPET) 173 recycling schemes 70 regional proximity 50 regulatory process 65 Reilly, L. 65 responsible fashion design model 105, 105 RHI studies see rubber hand illusion (RHI) studies Ribul, M. 57 rice husks 18 Rissanen, T. 104 Rojas, I. 17 Rosner, D. K. 10 rubber 69, 72, 75, 77 rubber hand illusion (RHI) studies 72 Rungano Nyamayedenga (Rungano) 183, 186, 187, 189–191 Ryan, H. 203–205 Ryan, T. 199, 203–205, 208, 209, 211 Saab, E. 206 Sabiniarz, J. 162, 165, 167 Saccharum project 17 Sadkowska, A. 108 Saha, D. 120 Salone Satellite in 2019 21 Sansoni, S. 69 Sato, S. 104 scalable capillary process 16 Schuster, A. 167, 168 SCOBY-based materials 20 Scotweave 38 seafood sector 19 Second World War 86 sensory prosthetics 69–71; contextualising material preferences 76–77; materials, relationship building and identity 78–81; methods 71–74; quantifying materials experiences 75–76 Service Design, in healthcare 64 services 5, 6, 70, 103, 105, 127, 142, 169, 174, 180, 187, 206 Sewing Box for the Future research project 124–125; artifacts 130; context of 125–126; methodology 128–129;

participatory approaches for fashion 126–128; participatory spaces 129; pop-up exhibition 129, 131; Sewing Box for the Future Toolkit 6, 134–135; sewing box team 128–129; Sewing box toolkit 134–135; Stitch-School residency 131, 133–134; Supper Cloth for Sewing Box for the Future 131; visitors 130 Sharon Tiyamike Dingilesi (Tiyamike) 184–187, 190, 191 Shivam Overseas 85 Sinnassamy, P. 113, 119 sketching, drawing and illustrating 4, 71, 145, 146, 151, 189, 192, 201 skinning phase, FSC 14 Smart Materials Lab 20 SME R&D support programme 170 Smitheram, M. 50 sneakers model 19 Sobchack, V. 71 social business models 105 social change and place-making, fashion activism in 161 social proximity 52, 59, 62 Social Responsibility 161 Social, Urban Design & Planning design, in crime prevention 64 Song, H. H. 19 sorting phase, FSC 15 stakeholders 2, 5, 6, 12, 47–51, 53, 57, 58, 63, 64, 65, 86, 105, 124, 139, 142, 144, 145, 147, 160, 171, 174, 202 Steinars, V. 20 Stewart, T. 131 Stitch-School residency 125, 131, 132, 133–134 Stittgen, B. 19 Storey, H. 2, 4, 6, 197–202, 205, 206–209, 209, 210–212 Storey, K. 198 The Student Fabric Initiative 119 student feedback 2020/2021 116–117 Studio Lionne Van Deursen 22–23 Studio Mirei 17 Studio Objects and Ideograms 21 sugarcane 16, 17 Supper Cloth for Sewing Box for the Future 131 sustainability discourses 1 sustainability goals 35 ‘Sustainability in Practice’ award 104 sustainable design 19, 107, 147, 156, 182 ‘Sustainable Design Inspiration’ programme 139 Sustainable Futures and Creative Community 107 The Sustainable Sequin Company 133

Index  219 Suzanne Lee 22 Syrian refugees 202 Syrian Stitch pilot project 209 systemic materials development 54 systems design 93 Tajadura-Jiménez, A. 57, 59, 60, 62 tangible 1, 5, 6, 30, 33, 34, 43, 59, 88, 99, 112, 113, 118, 126, 134, 159, 169, 175, 197 Tarbard, M. 202 Target 12.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 11 The TEN 142 textile design 138; textile designers 30, 49, 138; textile researchers 138 Thailandese supermarket Rimping 20 Tham, M. 30, 104 3D digital model 38, 40; 3D garment forms 31; 3D-printed architectural models 21; 3D printing filament 22 Till, J. 149 touch 48, 77, 78, 152, 166, 205 Townsend, K. 4, 108, 109 traditional Indian craft culture 87 traditional stakeholder eco-system 49 transferable proximities model, in design research 64–65 transition design 49 translational gap 71, 81 Trash-2-Cash (T2C) project 46–48, 51, 58–60, 145 Treacy, P. 198 trouser 38–39, 41, 42 T-shirt series 37–38 Twigger-Holroyd, A. 104 two-dimensional (2D) materials 31 UCL Research Ethics Committee 71 UCRF see Union of Concerned Researchers in Fashion (UCRF) UK school curriculum 141–142 UK’s Global Challenges Research Fund 208 UNEP Food Waste Index 2021 11 UNHCR flagship 212; UNHCR Residency 208; UNHCR thermal blankets 204 Union of Concerned Researchers in Fashion (UCRF) 105 United Nations Environmental Assembly (2019) 178

United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 107 Väljamäe, A. 57, 59, 60, 62 Vans brand 23 Venice Design Biennale in May 2021 207 Vimbai Natasha Naomi (Vimbai) 184, 184, 185, 187–190, 192, 194 von Busch, O. 127, 135 Voorwinden, M. 38 Vuletich, C. 146 Wagland, A. 170, 171, 172; Wagland Textiles 170, 171, 173, 176 Walker, M. J. 70 Walters, K. 39 Wang, K. 21 Wash Lab 169, 175 Wellcome Trust SciArt award 198 Western aesthetics 192; Western contexts 181; Western societies 178 What a Waste 2.0 report 11 Wilkes, S. 2–4 Williams, D. 131, 135 Wonderland project 199, 200 wool 38, 42, 48, 76, 148, 184 Worn Again: Rethinking Recycled Textiles AHRC project 142, 146 Woven Textile-form (WTf) 36–39, 42 Xandra, D. 165–166 Yelavich, S. 31 Zaatari designer, in residence 2019 204–206; Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan 2, 4, 197, 202, 203 zero-waste approach 11, 111; zero waste design strategies 34, 35; zero-waste pattern-making technique 92 Zero Waste Europe 24n13 Zimbabwe 178, 179; context 192, 193; culture 190; fashion industry 179; hostile economic climate 185; society 192; transition 194; waste ecosystems 179, 192 Zimbabwean Circular Fashion Design 3, 193 Zimbabwean designers 3, 179; closing resource loops 185–188; slowing resource loops 188–190