Transformative Fashion Pedagogies 2.0

Transformative Fashion Pedagogies 2.0

Joint Symposium between Parsons School of Fashion (New York, USA), London College of Fashion (London, UK), COLEGIATURA (Medellín, Colombia) and HK PolyU (Hong Kong SAR, China)

Online: 26th April and 3rd May 2024

Based on the success of last year’s ‘Transformative Fashion Pedagogies’ Symposium, we are organising a further opportunity to come together and share the progressive and inclusive pedagogies. The symposium will again foreground fashion pedagogy as critical research, asserting the interconnectedness of research, teaching, industry, and/or community organizations and our role as educators in enacting impactful social and political change with our students. A selection of papers will be published in a special issue, The Fashion Studies Journal, focused on Fashion Pedagogy, and we hope that you will consider contributing to this as well. This year, we will focus on four themes emerging from our previous discussions and presentations.

Design Justice

Can empathy be employed as a powerful tool for change? Within the context of academia and social justice, how do we examine our positionality as designers, students and educators? How can institutions engage in amplifying voices of under-represented and unheard perspectives to engage critically in dissemination of knowledge through the expertise of marginalised bodies and minds?

Defining Fashion

What is fashion? How are we evolving the definition of fashion in response to current times? What must change for a definition of fashion to be considered inclusive? By defining fashion for students are we really only defining ourselves?How do we define what a quality fashion education is? How do we define/ascertain a framework for measuring the quality of fashion education within the current context?

Undoing Fashion

How can/do we encourage students to challenge, or undo established ideas about fashion? How can/do we develop new fashion pedagogies that foreground climate change and social justice? How can educators reconcile the drive for and interest in the image of glamour with current damaging and exploitative elements of the fashion system?

Industry Impact

What tensions and gaps exist between the fashion industry and academia? How do we preserve and/or invent generative fashion systems within the context of current industry? How can/do we collaborate with the fashion industry to drive change within fashion practices?