Centre for Sustainable Fashion

Fashion as Catalyst: Making and Advocacy for Social Change | Film Trailer Hear from Dr Seher Mirza and a project participant from CSF’s Decolonising Fashion and Textiles project, which explores and centres design for cultural sustainability with refugee communities. Dr Seher Mirza explains, ‘The project works with refugees and asylum seekers in East London to create fashion garments or fashion accessories and also the advocacy for policy. The pieces that they were making represented different parts of their journeys in the UK since coming from their home countries.’ One of the project participant’s elucidates, ‘These projects have actually given you skills as well as [a] platform to actually display your skills, sell your skills and progress.’ These fashion garments and accessories are currently on display at the free exhibition: Shifting Narratives: Reciprocal Making and Learning through Fashion and Textiles 🌟 🗓️ 5 – 29 July 2024 | 📍Barbican Library, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS The works in the exhibition, co-created with refugees and asylum seekers across three east London boroughs, challenge dominant design practice and bring to the forefront their stories and collective visions for a more equitable and sustainable future. Exhibition Events: 📌Join one of free 30-minute insightful guided tours of the exhibition on Thursday 18th July. 📌Join our symposium, in-person or online, ‘Fashion as Catalyst: Making and Advocating for Social Change’, on 25th July 4pm-7pm. Book your free tickets and learn more by clicking this link: https://lnkd.in/e_mVvavZ Video credit: David Betteridge #CSF #CentreForSustainableFashion #DecolonisingFashionAndTextiles #ShiftingNarratives #TheBarbican #BarbicanLibrary #BarbicanCentre #DecolonisingFashion #SustainableFashion #FashionAsCatalyst

Shifting Narratives: Reciprocal Making and Learning through Fashion and Textiles 🌟 Free Exhibition, Guided Tours & Symposium | 🗓️ 5 – 29 July 2024 | 📍Barbican Library, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS Discover captivating fashion and textiles which explore cultural sustainability and community resilience at the Shifting Narratives exhibition, located at the Barbican Centre Library. The works in the exhibition, co-created with refugees and asylum seekers across three east London boroughs, challenge dominant design practice and bring to the forefront their stories and collective visions for a more equitable and sustainable future. Throughout five immersive sections – focused on storytelling, making, learning, and activating – you can experience multi-media outputs, including textile autobiographies, a map, garments and accessories, textile artefacts, banners, photography and campaigning for policy change. Shifting Narratives responds to the diverse needs and aspirations of refugee communities, whilst valuing and sustaining their cultural heritages. Learn more about the exhibition here: https://lnkd.in/e_mVvavZ Events: 📌Join one of free 30-minute insightful guided tours of the exhibition on Thursday 18th July. 🔗 Book your free tickets by clicking this link: https://lnkd.in/et_5BdA2 📌Join our symposium, in-person or online, ‘Fashion as Catalyst: Making and Advocating for Social Change’, on 25th July 4pm-7pm. 🔗 Book your free tickets by clicking this link: https://lnkd.in/ezRwgaUC Video credit: Centre for Sustainable Fashion #CSF #CentreForSustainableFashion #DecolonisingFashionAndTextiles #ShiftingNarratives #TheBarbican #BarbicanLibrary #BarbicanCentre #DecolonisingFashion #SustainableFashion

🌟 New CSF Blog Post: Nurturing a Fashion Commons for Education 🌱 ⁠ ⁠ CSF’s Head of Education, Nina Stevenson, and LCF Lecturer in Fashion Styling and Production, Sarah May, brought their thinking and practice together to create a walking conversation to imagine what a fashion commons for education might be. ⁠ ⁠ Through these activities a community was formed, and the idea of a fashion commons for education was developed. ⁠ ⁠ If you would like to create your own community for exploring the teaching and learning of fashion in a more than human world and nurture ‘community ready’ learners, then we invite you to use these resources. ⁠ ⁠ 🔗 Click this link to read the blog + download and explore the resources 📝⁠ https://lnkd.in/eHxweD3g Image Credit: Aleks Faust ⁠ #CSF #CentreForSustainableFashion #FashionEducation #SustainableFashion #SustainableEducation #SustainableFashionEducation #SustainabilityEducation

You're invited to join one of two free workshops on Saturday 6th July for the free exhibition, ‘Shifting Narratives: Reciprocal Making and Learning through Fashion and Textiles’ at the Barbican Centre Library. 🗓️ Saturday 6th July 📍Barbican Library, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS    🔗 Click this link to book your free tickets: https://lnkd.in/dYrA9yUJ 📌 ‘Nature Explores’ Workshop  ⏰ Time: 10:30 – 13:30 Come and join us for a morning of Explore and practise change-making skills!  This hands-on session honours diversity and interconnectedness among various perspectives, fostering mutual learning through collaboration. Participants will practise collecting information about how people understand their reality through diverse perspectives and experiences. Learn to identify patterns and connections that reveal the underlying dynamics of a system. This skill is crucial to identify areas within any system to focus efforts to create the most impactful change.    📌 ‘Stories through Food’ Workshop  ⏰ Time: 14:00 – 15:30 Come and join us for an afternoon of Storytelling and Leadership via remembering your favourite dishes! Participants will recreate their favourite dish using craft materials. These crafty dishes will become building blocks of a storyline that participants build into a new story in their own unique way. Stories are a way to exchange and preserve knowledges of personal context and culture, with the potential to bring about agency for changemaking.    About the Free Workshops: This is an opportunity to take part in the workshops that postgraduate students co-created with forced displaced youth as part of the Transition Living Lab, an International Student Challenge that counted with the participation of MA students across Centre for Sustainable Fashion, London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London; Design School, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London , Design Ethnography Lab at the Institute of Technology of Bandung (Institut Teknologi Bandung), and the Department of Anthropology at the Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM). All workshops form the basis of a programme to train and inspire refugees as changemakers and agents in climate justice transition actions. Transition Living Lab was led by Dr Malé Luján Escalante and delivered in collaboration with Revoke in London, RDI-UREF and Emplace in Bandung, Indonesia. It was supported by Refugee Transition Network (Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), The Service Futures Lab and LCC: International Office.    Image Credit: Students from LCC: MA Service Design #CSF #CentreForSustainableFashion #DecolonisingFashionAndTextiles   #ShiftingNarratives #TheBarbican #BarbicanLibrary #FashionWorkshop #TransitionLivingLab

📮 A reminder to sign up to CSF's termly newsletter - our summer newsletter will be sent early next week 🗓️ featuring:⁠ ⁠ 📌 A newly launched open-source resource: Imagining Possibilities for Fashion Education: A Walking Conversation⁠ 📌 New publications and policy papers ⁠ 📌 CSF at Berlin Fashion Week 2024⁠ 📌 CSF researcher's project updates, news and announcements⁠ 📌 CSF Press ⁠ ⁠ 🔗 Sign up to CSF's newsletter by clicking this link: https://lnkd.in/dk7_d_F ⁠ Image Description: A range of CSF publications and publications that CSF recommends, featuring at our Imagining Possibilities Festival, in April 2024. Image Credit: India Mae Alby  ⁠ #CSF #CentreforSustainableFashion #CSFNewsletter

🚨 New CSF Blog Post: Advocating for Refugee Policy Change, through Fashion Centre for Sustainable Fashion researchers Dr Francesco Mazzarella and Dr Seher Mirza reflect on our 'Decolonising Fashion and Textiles' research project, explore valuable insights and share their new policy paper and petition. The project, 'aimed at challenging the status quo and empowering refugee and asylum-seeking participants to build connections and voice their concerns for our collective uncertain future, while advocating for positive policy change.' - Dr Francesco Mazzarella and Dr Seher Mirza. 🔗 Click this link to learn more and read the full CSF blog 📝 https://lnkd.in/e9GrBKNt The 'Shifting Narratives' exhibition will be showcasing the 'Decolonising Fashion and Textiles' research project outputs, from 5th to 29th July, at the Barbican Centre Library. You are invited to the exhibition's free public programme which includes guided exhibition tours, workshops and an in-person and online symposium. 🔗 Click this link to learn more and book your free tickets! 🎟️ https://lnkd.in/e_mVvavZ Image Description and Credit: Nicole Zisman and participant showing the garment customised in the project. Photo by JC Candanedo. #DecolonisingFashion #DecolonisingFashionAndTextiles #RefugeePolicy #RefugeeAdvocacy #CentreForSustainableFashion #CSF #ShiftingNarrativesExhibition 

As part of Berlin Fashion Week, Centre for Sustainable Fashion Researcher Dr. Mila Burcikova will join the “From Soil to Story” panel, at 3pm, presented by THE LISSOME: Slow Style Chronicle, tomorrow July 3rd 2024, 2-7pm at SO/ Berlin Das Stue By bringing together brands and organisations, who embed the care for people and planet into the core of their businesses, the discussion will be full of new learnings on how to embrace chains of stewardship to build mindful fashion futures. The panelists include: 🌱 Dr. Mila Burcikova, Reader in Fashion Systems, Centre for Sustainable Fashion (CSF), London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London. The work of Dr. Mila Burcikova focuses on alternatives to the current fashion system. Her current projects investigate the connections between fashion and agriculture, rural and urban fashion systems, and the role of time and cyclical patterns in sustainable living. 🌱 Dr. Florian K. Öxler, Archivist Florian Öxler decides what is kept at Dr. Hauschka - and what is not. He has built the company’s own archive and turned it into a busy place. This is where all the treasures from the brand’s rich heritage continue to live. 🌱 Kristina Sipulova, Fashion Designer
 Kristína Šipulová combines the art of traditional hand-weaving and Slovak textile heritage with a modern approach. She gained experience while producing custom-made, hand-woven fabrics for Chanel and Dior at the Danish studio Beck & Kinch and as a Visual Researcher at Studio Edelkoort in Paris. 🌱 Dörte de Jesus, Creative Director of THE LISSOME Dörte firmly believes in the importance and power of storytelling to change cultural narratives – that if we are to create shifts toward human and planetary wellbeing, we need to inspire the collective culture of what might be possible. 🌱 Hosted by Hardeep Kaur, London-based Writer, Designer, and Podcaster
 Hardeep is the creator and host of the Architecture of Contemplation podcast, where guests across the arts, sciences and humanities are invited to contemplate on themes of creativity, meaning and purpose. Her work has been featured in publications including Vogue, Dezeen, FT’s How To Spend It; she is a prolific reader and walker. 🔗 Click the link for more info: https://lnkd.in/e_j59Bse In partnership with Dr Hauschka and  SO/ Berlin Das Stue In collaboration with STUDIO 2 RETAIL, Berlin Senate Department for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises, Berlin Fashion Week and Fashion Council Germany. 📸 Photography by Sinden Studios #Studio2Retail #BerlinFashionWeek #TheLissome #CentreForSustainableFashion #FashionCouncilGermany

💫 Fashion Values: Stories of Change Film 💫 In this Fashion Values: Stories of Change film, industry professionals and emerging creatives and changemakers share how they have engaged with Fashion Values (FV) and how the programme has transformed their ways of practicing, communicating, learning about and supporting cultural, social and ecological sustainability action in and through fashion. We hear from Tina Wetshi (Fashion Values: Cultures Challenge 2023/24 Professional Winner, founder of Colèchi), Misaki Tanaka (Fashion Values: Society Challenge 2022 Professional Winner, founder of SOLIT!), Erik Hesselman (Fashion Values: Nature Challenge 2021 Emergent Winner), Kaja Grujic (Next Gen Assembly 2023 member, MA Fashion Futures Graduate) and Jesse Madriaga (Next Gen Assembly 2023 member).  🌱We invite you to join us in re-imagining fashion for people and the planet. 🎥 Watch the film below or click here: https://lnkd.in/eshFvn2p As the Fashion Values programme celebrates three years of developing capabilities, skills and agency, we reflect, through Stories of Change, how Fashion Values educates, informs, inspires, involves and connects fashion changemakers, educators and learners on a global scale to foster sustainable action and offers new ways of valuing fashion.   The Fashion Values programme, by Centre for Sustainable Fashion, London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, provides open-access sustainability education, empowers imagination and innovation through sustainability leadership and enables the next generation of fashion designers, strategists and communicators to create sustainably. Explore the Fashion Values methods, challenge, courses and content: https://fashionvalues.org/  Director: Max Barnett - https://lnkd.in/eMV73d2z #CentreForSustainableFashion #StoriesOfChange #CSF #FashionValues #FashionValuesChallenge  #FashionValuesWellbeing

Guided Tours of ‘Shifting Narratives’ Exhibition 🗓 Thursday 18th July  ⏰ 30-minute tours between 13:00-19:00   📍 Barbican Library, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS 🔗 Click this link to book your free tickets: https://lnkd.in/eeEP4JPZ     Take part in one of five insightful tours to discover the outputs of ‘Decolonising Fashion and Textiles – Design for Cultural Sustainability with Refugee Communities’, a collaborative project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) led by Dr Francesco Mazzarella and curated by Camilla Palestra (Centre for Sustainable Fashion, London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London) across three east London boroughs (Newham, Tower Hamlets, and Waltham Forest) from 2022 to 2024.    📌 Throughout five immersive sections – focused on storytelling, making, learning, and activating – you can experience multi-media outputs, including textile autobiographies, a map, garments and accessories, textile artefacts, banners, photography and campaigning for policy change.     📌 You can gain insight into the lived experiences of London-based refugees and asylum seekers in relation to the themes of cultural sustainability and community resilience.     📌 At the tour, you will have the opportunity to engage with the Project Lead and fellow visitors to understand the reciprocal process of making and learning – through fashion and textiles – that brought this project to life.    ⏰  Available times: Tour 1: 13.00 – 13.30 (1pm - 1:30pm BST).  Tour 2: 14.30 – 15.00 (2:30pm - 3:00pm BST).  Tour 3: 16.00 – 16.30 (4:00pm - 4:30pm BST).  Tour 4: 17.30 – 18.00 (5:30pm - 6:00pm BST).  Tour 5: 18.30 – 19.00 (6:30pm - 7:00pm BST). The exhibition was made possible with the support of the Barbican Library, Barbican Centre, ARBEIT PROJECT LIMITED, Bow Arts Trust, the London boroughs of Newham, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest; Poplar HARCA, Rosetta Arts, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the United Nations Higher Commissioner for Refugees - UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. Image Description: Textile autobiographies showcased at the 'Designed for Life' exhibition at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London.  Image Credit: Jack Elliot Edwards.     #CSF #CentreForSustainableFashion #DecolonisingFashionAndTextiles   #ShiftingNarratives #TheBarbican #BarbicanLibrary

Fashion as Catalyst: Making and Advocating for Social Change Symposium 🗓 Thursday 25th July ⏰ Time: 16:00 – 19:00 📍 Online & In-Person: Barbican Library, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS 🔗 Click this link to book your free tickets: https://lnkd.in/efGjvSCf How can we create safe spaces and facilitate participatory fashion practices that foster cultural sustainability and community resilience? 📌 Through a series of talks, film screening and performance, this event will give an insight on the outcomes of the Shifting Narratives Project, which has created a safe space for participants from different walks of life to meet, learn new skills, and use fashion and textiles to build their new life in the new place of resettlement. 📌 Two interactive panels will discuss the power of participatory making practices, the conditions enabling transformative learning experiences, and community efforts to advocate for better outcomes for refugees, in and through fashion. 📌 Come and join us in reflecting on the evolving role of fashion as a vehicle for social change and cultural regeneration, and foregrounding a just transition, especially in light of the current refugee crisis and our collective uncertain future. This symposium is part of the public engagement and cultural programme of the ‘Shifting Narratives’ exhibition delivered within the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)-funded project ‘Decolonising Fashion and Textiles’ led by Centre for Sustainable Fashion (CSF), London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, with a wide range of partners. This participatory action research project explores the concepts of cultural sustainability and community resilience through the lived experiences of London-based refugees and asylum seekers. Throughout a reciprocal process of learning and making fashion and textiles, the project team and participants challenged dominant design practice and brought to the forefront the refugees’ shifting identities, cultural heritages, and collective visions for a more equitable and sustainable future. The meeting will also be accessible online, and a recording of the event will be shared afterwards. Please select either an 'in-person attendance' or 'online attendance' ticket depending on whether you will be attending this event in person or online. 🔗 Click this link to book your free tickets: https://lnkd.in/efGjvSCf Image Description: 'Decolonising Fashion and Textiles' project participants modelling their fashion creations at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Image Credit: Photo by JC Candanedo. #CSF #CentreForSustainableFashion #DecolonisingFashionAndTextiles #ShiftingNarratives #TheBarbican #BarbicanLibrary