Textiles Environment Design

The work of recent graduates and alumni from Chelsea College of Art and Design who focused on sustainability throughout their research and design practice can be found on the Textiles Environment Design website below. The varied projects make for interesting reading whilst also showing the diversity of approach from students.

Textiles Environment Design website

Youth Group Workshop

 This week I visited the White City community centre to run an Upcycle Fashion workshop with a youth group. With an introduction about upcycling followed by a sewing workshop, time was rather tight as we only had an hour. However, the group began quickly and really impressed me with their neat and straight stitching! The workshop was part of a series called White City/Green Planet at the community centre. This series is organised by Our Common Place, an initiative run by Waste Watch to encourage communities to work together to improve social and environmental wellbeing. For more information please visit the  Waste Watch website

Upcycled Jewellery

           Making jewellery with a year 3 class at a primary school

The props used in high street shop window displays are changed frequently and often discarded after use. The beads, bangles, ribbons, pom poms, lace and other such decorations I used in this jewellery workshop had been saved from Monsoon/Accessorize by my friend who works there. The company invest in many props frequently to decorate their visually enticing window displays. After the season ends however, these decorations become 'waste' and are thrown away unless staff or the public save them from landfill. Fortunately my friend could not let these wonderful gems and beads to go waste and took around 5 huge bags of decorations home. I was lucky enough to be able to take a couple of bags from her to use for a jewellery making workshop at  a primary school. The children loved the beads, bangles and gems and when I told them the story of the materials, and that they had been saved from landfill it raised many questions regarding other waste from shops, other things that are unnecessarily thrown away. This is such a waste of materials that have plenty of life left in them and so much potential to support creative projects!

BBC Blast Fashion @ the V&A

The BBC Blast Fashion Festival was held at the V&A museum on the 2nd October 2010. Bringing together over 1000 young people at the Sackler Centre, the day was filled with free fashion workshops and lectures.


I was facilitating the fashion recycling workshop along with two other great fashion recyclers from Beyond Retro. The recycling workshop and the day in general was a huge success, and I was grateful to be given the work experience opportunity by the BBC Blast team to plan, promote and help to manage the event.


From  pom pom and ruff making to assisting young people with their own projects or school work, the BBC Blast Fashion Festival was only available to young people aged 13-19. This was great research for my MA project and it is a shame that BBC Blast has been cut and thier fantastic work has come to an end. The website is still online, although no further content will be added in the future. I hope many more young people can continue to be inspired by the great BBC Blast online platform archive and continue to attend other events and workshops to further their creative talents and develop hands on, practical skills.

Sustainable Fashion: A Student Guide

Cover Page

Contents Page

Chapter Two heading

Sample Pages - Retail

Education Workshops - In Schools

A few images from my MA research - working with young people in schools to promote the values of sustainable fashion and the importance of learning where our clothing and accessories come from. Focusing on the end-of-life scenarios for clothing enables young people to gain hands on experience of upcycling. Encouraging young people to explore the ways in which clothing can be transformed and manipulated into other shapes provides skills that are transferable to other clothing items and can be passed on to friends and family.

 

Chris Huhne at LSE

The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Chris Huhne MP spoke yesterday at LSE about the new Green Deal. The talk was chaired by Eric Neumayer - Head of Department for Geography and the Environment at LSE.

Chris Huhne was speaking about the Green Economy and also the 3rd Industrial Revolution that will support an economy 'built to last'. The Green Deal will support 'jobs, investment, technology, a skilled workforce and further innovation' and an economy prone to fewer ups and downs with green energy providing the backbone of the revolution.

To nurture new industries through innovation in clean energy and to develop the UK's energy independence through low carbon goods and services. The Green Deal has set itself the target to support 1 million Green Jobs by 2015 by taking the lead in off shore wind and carbon capture technology with other renewable energy supplies and nuclear also having a role to play.

As we move ahead to a low carbon future, Chris was positive that 'the next generation's prosperity will come from green energy'. 

Due to the 'chronic inefficiency' throughout homes in the UK, the Green Deal does not leave out our houses, aiming to 'futureproof' the homes in need of eco-improvements. With further green jobs created through the assessment, installation and construction of further green housing, along with boilers and insulation I really hope the Green Deal works as well as Mr Huhne suggested.

This is sure to improve our current rating of 25th (out of 27 countries in Europe) for our dependence on renewable energy sources. Shocking!