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I am the Course Leader for BA (Hons) Critical Practice in Fashion Media at London College of Fashion and have worked in creative HE for over a decade. My teaching specialism is the intersection of media arts theory and practice and I employ a materialist media framework to support students to contextualise the complex, multi-sensory phenomena of contemporary fashion communication.
She/ Her
https://www.sophiebarr.com/
https://www.arts.ac.uk/colleges/london-college-of-fashion/stories/meet-sophie-barr-the-new-course-leader-for-ba-hons-critical-practice-in-fashion-media
https://www.instagram.com/sophiebbarr/
https://twitter.com/sophiebbarr
In June 2023 LCF fashion media educators Sarah May and Sophie Barr, are conducting a ten-mile ‘defashioning walk’ for staff and students from our current site in Shepherd’s Bush to our new campus in Stratford. The route passes through the major commercial fashion districts of London.
This walk presents an opportunity to think and sense with human and non-human kin how fashion media is embedded in a fragile planetary system. We will burrow through the seductive images, surfaces and sounds of a global fashion city to find the inter-dependent systems and networks that make our Capitolocene. We regard data centres, sewers, the weather, Prêt-a-Manger, 5G masts, birds’ nests, Gucci handbags, Instagram, manholes, Thames’ beaches, plastic bags, Deliveroo riders, vapour trails and pigeons as actors in a non-hierarchical, messy fashion ecology.
Pozzi’s ‘pedestrian pedagogy of place’ describes sensory learning through walking. We propose to use pedestrian methods to map the global fashion city in more earthly and material ways and resist commercial, gentrification and growth narratives more common to fashion cartography. Our walk marks multiple transformations, from West to East London, from LCF’s past to future and gives us a model for new and long-term forms of collaborating across disciplines, understanding complexity, fashion learning and unlearning across, through and outside the boundaries of the institution.
We will share and discuss our prior experience of walking the city as critical fashion pedagogy, as well as think through with colleagues at LCF and Parsons, the challenges and opportunities this new iteration presents.
Ben Barry (he/him) is Dean and Associate Professor of Equity and Inclusion in the School of Fashion at Parsons. His teaching and scholarship centres the intersectional fashion experiences of disabled, fat, trans and queer people and engages them in the design of clothing, media and fashion systems.
He/Him
@BenDrakBarry
Co-design as a pedological approach benefits fashion students by centering lived experiences in bodies and, particularly, those that do not align with fashion’s normative beauty standards. However, co-design has been critiqued for fostering transactional and exploitative encounters with communities. This presentation explores strategies for engaging in co-design in the fashion classroom through the lens of equity. Delivered from the perspectives of a faculty member and student, we explore our experiences in the course Fashion and Disability Justice. The course introduced students to concepts at the intersection of fashion and disability. Students then collaborated with D/disabled people to deconstruct and redesign one of their existing garments to better support their physical, emotional and spiritual needs. The faculty member will discuss the course structure and co-design project brief. The student will reflect on their co-design process and outcome. Together, they explore how grounding co-design in a Disability Justice framework generates practices to more equitably share benefits between student designers and community members, while illuminating systemic challenges to be addressed in the future.
Dr. Mila Burcikova is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Centre for Sustainable Fashion, London College of Fashion.
Mila works across a range of research and knowledge exchange projects, with an emphasis on alternatives to the current fashion system. Her PhD Mundane Fashion: Women, Clothes and Emotional Durability investigated emotional durability of clothing through the lens of a designer-maker practice. Mila currently holds the prestigious Sheepdrove Trust Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (2021-2024). Her project ‘Life in Clothes: Place-based organic fashion systems for human and environmental healing’ examines the interconnections and parallels between fashion making and farming practices.
https://www.sustainable-fashion.com/meet-the-team/dr-mila-burcikova https://researchers.arts.ac.uk/1315-mila-burcikova
Reflextive Framework for Sensory Fashion and Textiles Design
This contribution presents the Reflexive framework for sensory fashion and textiles design that opens pathways for a deeper, contextual understanding of clothing lifetimes, through the focus on sensory aspects of users’ long-term relationships with clothes. It was developed as an extension of the sensory wardrobe methodology established in author’s doctoral research that investigated emotional durability of everyday clothing. The framework constitutes a design brief that cultivates designers’ sensitivity towards multi-sensory perceptions of clothing and focuses imagination beyond the visual aspects of design. Since 2020, it has been used as a teaching tool within the Sensory Fashion Unit and as a live design brief for the Sustainable Fashion and Textile Design course at the School of Arts, Design and Architecture at Aalto University. The framework can be equally adapted for use within design teams in fashion and textiles MSEs and larger organisations, to facilitate contextual understanding of clothing longevity and to shift creative focus away from the still prevailing cult of newness.
Fashion as Sustainability in Action: Teaching sustainable prosperity in culture, society, environment, and economy
Since 2018, we have been working with micro and small fashion businesses who have proven that fashion can be a reciprocal, mutually supportive process whose core foci are people, empathy, and well-being of all, within the environmental limits of our planet. This collaborative research project, underpinned by 100 in-depth interviews with UK creatives and support organizations has been translated into an interactive guide, Fashion as Sustainability in Action. The guide introduces the concept of sustainable prosperity in fashion, with examples of best practice from the designers that we have been working with.
This contribution presents the guide and the workshop format developed to stimulate discussion and reflection on prosperity across its cultural, social, environmental, and economic dimensions. These methods can be used in teaching and they are also adaptable to a range of non-academic audiences to facilitate a better understanding of the interconnected nature of sustainability in fashion and beyond.
Sara’s research focusses around theoretical and methodological approaches to understanding the sensory and embodied dimensions of fashion and dress. Sara has convened a number of conferences and roundtables in this field and is currently Design Reviews Editor for the Senses and Society Journal. Her most recent publication is a chapter in Revisiting the Gaze: The Fashioned body and the politics of looking, published by Bloomsbury (2020).
She/Her
Fit But You Know It addresses the challenge of decolonising fashion education by exploring a core fashion concept: fit. Industrially-produced clothing has fit ‘built-in’ using pattern-cutting techniques of darts and seam shaping. By contrast, pre-industrial or contemporary examples of non-western garments, rely on fitting techniques deployed by wearers’ hands when wrapping, knotting, or rolling. The standardisation and simplification of fit is critical to fashion's ability to sell, ship and scale products globally. Informed by Enlightenment values of universalism underpinning global trade, Fashion commits ‘episitemicide’ - the destruction of existing knowledge. In this case, that’s the tacit embodied knowledge of how to fit fabric to our bodies. Art schools are ideal settings to challenge deeply embedded industrial-colonial practices and shift epistemic power relations.
In this presentation, we will share the workshopping methods developed for this ongoing research project, alongside initial findings from a range of participants, including design educators and students. The workshops are intended to pilot pluriversal design methods for future fashion practice and education.
In 2021, Parsons approved the launch of Fashion Systems: Latin America, a course that explores contemporary design systems in the Global South, focusing in Latin America and the intersection between textile, fashion, and design practices. The course challenges Western conceptions of fashion design, expanding notions of development, power and politics, and social change.
This presentation describes the main challenges and opportunities in developing a progressive fashion education curriculum that introduces students not only to region-specific design systems but to an non-western theoretical frameworks and cultural practices, de-centering fashion education and expanding critical debates on the politics of design and representation in fashion and textile practices today.
Marie Geneviève Cyr is the Director of the BFA Fashion Design program and an Associate Professor of Fashion Design at Parsons School of Design. She has an MA in Visual Culture from New York University and a BA in Design and Applied Arts from the Edinburgh College of Art. Her research examines the politics of abstract desire, hyper-consumption, the Internet, multimodal AI for fashion research, and collaborative fashion ecosystems.
She/Her
Instagram: @marie_genevieve_cyr
Teaching can foster meaningful interdisciplinary collaborative projects. By encouraging students to not only collaborate with their peers but externally, we can teach and build important professional and meaningful relationships. Over the past few years, I noticed the potential of new forms of learning via Independent Study courses and Research Mentorships. For the Transformative Fashion Pedagogies symposium, I would like to present the following case studies.
Case Studies:
Provost's Office of Research Support: Student Research Award (SRA) - AY21-22
“Artesaní” by Constanza Orlowski, Elle Jackson, and Jade To, Parsons School of Design
By combining their skills and knowledge, their project, Artesaní, explores cultural exchange and collaboration with the weaver artisan community in Jujuy, Argentina. This research project investigated fashion design as part of a system of interrelated parts which may include but is not limited to: raw materials, sourcing, labor, production practices and methods, design, garment development and making, business aspects of fashion.
Independent Study: Special Research Project, Spring 2022
“Foraging Fashion: How Do You Source Your Material? An international exchange of methodology and practices from selected designers that exclusively upcycle” by Giannina Gomez, Parsons School of Design.
This Symposium presented an international discussion of designers and artists from Latin America who are upcycling, using discarded or damaged fabric as their primary method of creating garments. Speakers included Stephanie Bezarra Rodrigues & Edgar Alejandro Garrido, co-founders of Tiempo De Zafra (Dominican Republic); Daniela Fabrizi, co-founders of Feria Calle & ReHecho the ReMade Project (Puerto Rico, Mexico, New York, Buenos Aires); and Mechi Martinez & Mariano Breccia, founder of Docena (Chile).
Provost's Office of Research Support: Student Research Award (SRA) - AY22-23
“Thought We Were Writing the Blues, But They Called it Rock and Roll” by Yetunde Sapp, Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts and Parsons School of Design.
This research project follows the journeys of her ancestors Debby Moore and Rose Marie Mccoy, two black women who traveled to New York City to pursue musical careers in the early 50s/60s. Through interviews, photographs, and found documents this project captures what it was like to be a black woman in the music industry back then. Research consisted of written documents (diaries, correspondence, legal documents, newspapers), artifacts (clothing, vinyls, photographs, scans, private collections, homes) and interviews.
Cian works at UCL's Department of Science and Technology Studies where he investigates who benefits from innovation and who decides.
He/Him
Fit But You Know It addresses the challenge of decolonising fashion education by exploring a core fashion concept: fit. Industrially-produced clothing has fit ‘built-in’ using pattern-cutting techniques of darts and seam shaping. By contrast, pre-industrial or contemporary examples of non-western garments, rely on fitting techniques deployed by wearers’ hands when wrapping, knotting, or rolling. The standardisation and simplification of fit is critical to fashion's ability to sell, ship and scale products globally. Informed by Enlightenment values of universalism underpinning global trade, Fashion commits ‘episitemicide’ - the destruction of existing knowledge. In this case, that’s the tacit embodied knowledge of how to fit fabric to our bodies. Art schools are ideal settings to challenge deeply embedded industrial-colonial practices and shift epistemic power relations.
In this presentation, we will share the workshopping methods developed for this ongoing research project, alongside initial findings from a range of participants, including design educators and students. The workshops are intended to pilot pluriversal design methods for future fashion practice and education.
Steven Faerm is an Associate Professor of Fashion. His third book, Introduction to Design Education: Theory, Research, and Practical Applications for Educators (Routledge), was released in 2023. His research examines design education, teaching and learning, young adult development, and the complex connections between these subject areas.
He/Him
In the studio classroom, a teacher’s efficacy plays a vital role in the success of transformative pedagogies. This level of teaching effectiveness, in turn, often correlates with the level of training and mentorship the teacher receives at their institution. Yet, too often, design educators are left alone to self-develop and sustain effective teaching methods and, thus, must “sink or swim” in the academy. Accordingly, all constituents’ opportunities for success—teachers, students, and the institution itself —are placed at undue risk, which can be alleviated and potentially eliminated altogether by adopting faculty mentorship programs that support teachers’ and students’ development, our alumni’ success, and thus the global design industries. This presentation discusses the role of faculty mentorship in design higher education. The types and functions of mentorship, responsibilities shared by participants, and activities performed in the mentor-mentee relationship are examined. Focus is given to the ways in which teacher-mentees, particularly those who are new to academia, can be socialized into both the profession and the institution. In conclusion, frameworks for developing robust mentorship programs that bolster transformative pedagogies are presented.
Preethi Gopinath is Associate Professor of Textiles and founding Director of MFA Textiles at Parsons in New York. Preethi’s pedagogical innovations foster a community where students combine traditional craft with technology to develop groundbreaking, hybrid textiles that authentically address issues of sustainability, social justice, beauty and wellbeing through conscious making.
She/Her
IG: @preethigopinathnyc
Linked in: https://www.linkedin.com/in/preethi-gopinath-22913a3
The MFA Textiles program at Parsons is a studio-based, hands-on making program where students combine traditional craft with 21st century technology to innovate groundbreaking textiles through conscious making. To do this successfully, students are equipped with contextualized liberal studies courses including the study of the History, Anthropology and Philosophy of textiles. These courses are deliberately designed to expose students to historical ways of textile-making, their impact on society and the environment, and their symbolism in the various contexts of colonialism, casteism, appropriation, racism, patriarchy, self-reliance and civil disobedience. These courses are core to the program and provide students with an epistemological foundation to make artistic and design choices with integrity in their own practice. By raising their awareness with concrete examples from cultures all over the world, students are thus able to situate their own textiles in the context of human civilization’s development the world over through Time (history), Place (anthropology) and Meaning (philosophy). Gandhi's "Satyagraha" movement, Emerson's essay on Self Reliance and Thoreau's essay on Civil Disobedience are referenced to provide contextual examples.
Olivia is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Pattern Cutting at LCF. Her areas of specialism in education are 3D experimentation, sustainability and values-led design. She has experience teaching internationally and advising on curriculum design in HE. She is also a design practitioner and consultant in industry across menswear and womenswear.
She/Her
Fit But You Know It addresses the challenge of decolonising fashion education by exploring a core fashion concept: fit. Industrially-produced clothing has fit ‘built-in’ using pattern-cutting techniques of darts and seam shaping. By contrast, pre-industrial or contemporary examples of non-western garments, rely on fitting techniques deployed by wearers’ hands when wrapping, knotting, or rolling. The standardisation and simplification of fit is critical to fashion's ability to sell, ship and scale products globally. Informed by Enlightenment values of universalism underpinning global trade, Fashion commits ‘episitemicide’ - the destruction of existing knowledge. In this case, that’s the tacit embodied knowledge of how to fit fabric to our bodies. Art schools are ideal settings to challenge deeply embedded industrial-colonial practices and shift epistemic power relations.
In this presentation, we will share the workshopping methods developed for this ongoing research project, alongside initial findings from a range of participants, including design educators and students. The workshops are intended to pilot pluriversal design methods for future fashion practice and education.
Fenella Hitchcock is a lecturer in Cultural and Historical Studies at London College of Fashion. She also works as a consultant, researcher, writer and archivist specialising in queer history and theory and critical fashion practice. She is also the project leader of Queering Fashion at LCF.
She/Her
Using the level 5 project ‘Queering Fashion’ as a case study, this presentation discusses recent work towards the development of queer and trans* pedagogies in Cultural and Historical Studies (CHS) at London College of Fashion.
Drawing on autoethnographic reflection alongside interviews with current students, it discusses the joys and challenges of developing and teaching this elective with particular attention its unique affective dimensions for all participants. It critically reflects on the positionality of the project leader in efforts to centre both queer and trans knowledges through the project’s design, and to avoid exceptionalising frameworks. It outlines the ways in which students were encouraged to move from ‘queer’ and ‘trans’ as identity categories and towards active verbs and sets of practices which overlap and diverge at various points.
The work is also contextualised within the current landscape of ongoing and intensifying transphobia within British media and politics and uses student testimony to articulate some of the ways that this impacts on the student experience at LCF. It asks how the Fashion Studies classroom might seek to resist this by fostering care and solidarity among its participants, using insights from ‘Queering Fashion’ to generate a series of further questions for discussion.
Emily Huggard is an Assistant Professor of Fashion Communication at Parsons School of Design, and author of the book Communicating Fashion Brands: Theoretical and Practical Perspectives. Her research explores the definition of brand experience in the epoch of digital fashion and post-consumerism, the changing ideologies of luxury, and the use of installation art as a brand experience tool. Emily continues her practice as a brand consultant, strengthened by her experience developing strategic fashion communication, marketing and brand strategies.
She/Her
This course positions fashion brand communication as a cultural process that has the potential to re-frame ideologies and cultural attitudes, and create social change. It explores fashion brand collaboration (cross-brand collaborations, inter-industry projects) from both theoretical and practice-based perspectives by considering the creative, functional, and symbolic benefits of collaboration.
Theory is introduced (new interdisciplinary aesthetics of art, cultural and social capital, brand image transfer) as a way for students to understand the prevalence of collaboration. Additionally, theories—such as the Fat Liberation movement and queer theory—are used to problematize the norms that inform heteronormativity in branding and marketing, and circularity and regenerative practices are used as a lens to explore how strategic partnerships, and the sharing of resources between brands/organizations, are now used to foster activism, drive innovation, and support sustainability and social justice across the fashion industry. Industry speakers such as Marimekko, Dover Street Market and Veja, as well as field visits are used to understand product level sustainability (regenerative farming, new gen materials) as well as how collaboration can be an opportunity for traditionally marginalized people to feel less alienated by brands (Rodarte x Universal Standard).
Dr Leila Kelleher is Assistant Professor of Fashion Design and Social Justice at Parsons School of Design. She works at the intersection of fashion and biomechanics centering large bodies that are often excluded by the fashion industry. Her forthcoming book on plus sized patternmaking will be published in 2024.
She/Her
Traditionally, fashion education has centered thin, white, non-disabled bodies from both a technical and aesthetic perspective. Recent calls to action from educational leaders, students, and consumers have prompted fashion schools to address the under-representation of larger bodies in theory, however there are a lack of resources and pedagogical examples for faculty to support the diversification of their teaching practices. This session will present approaches for fully integrated size inclusivity throughout the fashion curriculum. In this model, students would work on a variety of sizes in core classes – design, production, and visual communication. Additionally, we will discuss the delivery of a current undergraduate elective – Fat Fashion – which is part of a larger research project on Fat-identifying makers/sewers with respect to their lived experience and relationship to fashion and dress.
Anette Millington is an artist and designer focused on pattern, ornamentation and communication. Anette’s work includes textile sculptures and collaborative design projects that link craft and technology. Anette is Associate Director of the MFA Textiles Program and Assistant Professor of Fashion Systems and Materiality at Parsons School of Design.
She/Her
w: www.anettemillington.com
i: anettemillington
“Collective Teaching as Transformation” will present the pedagogy of the Parsons MFA Textiles program which has developed a unique method of team teaching, rare in higher education, and grounded in principles of ontological design and transition design. The presentation will diagram how an interdisciplinary faculty with complementary expertise teach the Major Studio Course collectively. Together, we deliver an education that is a harmonious whole - much greater than the sum of its parts. The collaboration enables us to customize our teaching to nurture each individual student's potentiality and further promote creations that value humanity and the environment through conscious making and innovation.
Diego Ortega (he/they) is a BFA Fashion Design student at Parsons. His work focuses on silhouette exploration across gender lines.
He/They
@diegxrtega
Co-design as a pedological approach benefits fashion students by centering lived experiences in bodies and, particularly, those that do not align with fashion’s normative beauty standards. However, co-design has been critiqued for fostering transactional and exploitative encounters with communities. This presentation explores strategies for engaging in co-design in the fashion classroom through the lens of equity. Delivered from the perspectives of a faculty member and student, we explore our experiences in the course Fashion and Disability Justice. The course introduced students to concepts at the intersection of fashion and disability. Students then collaborated with D/disabled people to deconstruct and redesign one of their existing garments to better support their physical, emotional and spiritual needs. The faculty member will discuss the course structure and co-design project brief. The student will reflect on their co-design process and outcome. Together, they explore how grounding co-design in a Disability Justice framework generates practices to more equitably share benefits between student designers and community members, while illuminating systemic challenges to be addressed in the future.
Born in Cali, Colombia, Liliana studied BA architecture in Bogota
and Dublin before settling in London to study Fashion at LCF and
Central Saint Martins. She began work as an academic in 2008
leaving her final UK post as course Leader for the MFA and MA
Menswear, University of Westminster, to join Parsons as Associate
Professor in Fashion Design and Social Justice in January 2023.
Liliana holds an MA in CPD Academic Practice in Art, Design and
Communication, University of the Arts London, 2016 and is
currently a PhD candidate (practice based) at Glasgow School of
Art, redefining fashion curation and collaborations with an emphasis
on indigenous, subaltern communities.
Liliana has an extensive academic track record in fashion design,
with course leadership experience in menswear and womenswear
across undergraduate and postgraduate levels. She has worked as
an academic consultant for Beijing Institute of Fashion &
Technology, with International experience as a external examiner,
delivering lectures in Paris,
China,Turkey, Mexico, Colombia and Finland.
Knowledge comes from different places, if we want a radical approach toward education, it needs to begin with a more inclusive learning space. Inclusive meaning; the recognition that knowledge also comes from beyond the formalised modes and institutions followed in Western Education.
In the course of my academic research I have formed an ongoing collaboration titled: Millones de Maneras. At the heart of this is a community of Trans Women, part of my native Colombia’s indigenous ‘Embera’ people, who have been supplying traditional bead weaving for the designs of Laura Lauren’s eponymous fashion label in the country’s capital, Bogota.
Since 2008 I have worked in Higher Education, lecturing in Fashion design, a role which requires formalised credentials to prove that I am capable. They demonstrate my experience, and skills in this area. However in this collaboration I have come to recognise knowledge which is irrespective of diplomas or any formal education, one which is exchanged without documentation, it not delivered via an institution - these women did not finish in high school.
As part of the collaboration, in march 2023, we held a fashion show - in the Museodel Traje in Bogota. To prepare for this we held a number of workshops, aimed at providing a place to experiment and explore and work “live, producing garments, accessories, finessing the final outcome, in readiness for the show,
Ultimately, however, it was this process, more so than the show, which yielded most. The workshops, in a design studio, beyond the institution, facilitated a network of exchange and creativity. Questions, introductions, affirmations flowedfreely, as the work was produced. Knowledge can be weaved socially, it should come from a collaborative place and I believe this may represent the beginnings of a transformative pedagogy.
Luciana Scrutchen, Associate Professor of Fashion and Associate Dean of Parsons School of Fashion at The New School University. Ms. Scrutchen received her MFA in Design & Technology from Parsons School of Design and BFA in Weaving & Textile Design from Rochester Institute of Technology.
Her teaching and research centers the voices, experiences, and vantage points of Black women across lines of sexuality, gender identity, color/complexion, and class. As well as, investigates textiles and technology’s role in subsistence cultures, focusing on sustainable materials, new processes, and methodologies that support global health.
Case Study + The Converge of Decolonial Approaches and Curricula
Authored Parsons graduate elective course titled African-American Women’s Subsistence in Blackness Through Dress.
Case study course: African-American Women's Subsistence in Blackness Through Dress (SP21, FA21, SP23):
This course aims to interrogate ideologies and structures linked to historical oppression and resistive practices while centering the voices, experiences, and vantage points that cross lines of race, sexuality, gender identity, and class. Examining imperial canonical fashion trends and Black women's aesthetic practices by integrating the following disciplines: African American History, Women's, Gender, Queer and Trans Studies, Cultural History, Carceral Studies. In addition to the histories of film, print media, and fashion and design—all through the lens of intersectionality theories.
Informed by my course case study, my objective for the session is to facilitate a conversation, exploring the intersections of lived realities for the marginalized students in our community paired with the crucial steps toward decolonization and respect for multiculturalism.
While we as educators inspire and mobilize decolonization curricular engagement to foster agency for students to become global leaders, the ever-present systemic marginalization plays out on multiple fronts impacting everyday lived realities targeting vulnerable students in our communities. Including 1) violent assault on Black and Brown bodies, and 2) cultural assault, the demoralization of Critical Race Theory (CRT) to promote anti-intellectualism and silence multicultural ways of knowing, understating, and belonging. Foremost targeting, Trans-identified, Queer-identified, BIPOC-identified referring to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, or PGM-identified referring to people of the global majority—racialized as ethnic minorities, Dual-heritage, Indigenous to the global south, Asian, Black, Brown.
Luke Stevens is the co-founder and designer of RANRA_Studio. The studio engages in multifaceted projects operating at a range of scales from textile development and fashion design to knowledge production and systems-level interventions. These projects act as a space for poetic yet pragmatic experimentation that challenges existing industry practices and continually questions how and why something is made.
He/Him
Fit But You Know It addresses the challenge of decolonising fashion education by exploring a core fashion concept: fit. Industrially-produced clothing has fit ‘built-in’ using pattern-cutting techniques of darts and seam shaping. By contrast, pre-industrial or contemporary examples of non-western garments, rely on fitting techniques deployed by wearers’ hands when wrapping, knotting, or rolling. The standardisation and simplification of fit is critical to fashion's ability to sell, ship and scale products globally. Informed by Enlightenment values of universalism underpinning global trade, Fashion commits ‘episitemicide’ - the destruction of existing knowledge. In this case, that’s the tacit embodied knowledge of how to fit fabric to our bodies. Art schools are ideal settings to challenge deeply embedded industrial-colonial practices and shift epistemic power relations.
In this presentation, we will share the workshopping methods developed for this ongoing research project, alongside initial findings from a range of participants, including design educators and students. The workshops are intended to pilot pluriversal design methods for future fashion practice and education.
Caroline Stevenson is a London-based curator, academic and writer, working across the fields of contemporary art and fashion. Her curatorial practice focuses on economies of exchange and has been recognised through several grants from the Arts Council of England and the British Council. Caroline is a member of the Center for Fashion Curation at the University of the Arts London and co-founder of Modus–an international network and curatorial platform for expanded fashion practice. She is the Programme Director of Fashion and Cultural Studies at the London College of Fashion and an editor of Fashion Practice: The Journal for Design, Creative Process and the Fashion Industry.
She/Her
https://researchers.arts.ac.uk/943-caroline-stevenson @_cazzamatazza_
My presentation concerns a project I am currently running with MA Fashion Cultures and Histories students at LCF that situates us (students and teaching team) as a collective of researchers. Together, we are exploring trajectories of garments in East London street markets as a way to visualise clothing’s value as it moves from one commodity form to another, and as a way to trace cartographies of garments as they travel through various geographies, both seen and unseen, formal and informal, local and global.
The brief is intentionally open and over the course of the project we are collecting resources and developing research methodologies to help us interrogate the questions raised through our weekly observations of the markets. With recourse to Lawrence Grossberg’s notion of ‘a pedagogy of possibilities’ (1994) my presentation locates this project at the intersection of Cultural Studies and Critical Pedagogy through two points:
• Prioritising the assembly of intellectual resources (Hall, 1992) through empiricism and unexpected experiences, rather than assuming or applying theoretical knowledge in advance.
• Enabling students to locate and experience the possibilities and constraints on agency as it intersects with everyday life and social formations.
In my presentation, I will address both the pragmatics and ethics of working with students in this context, and highlights from the project itself.
Dr Lara Torres is a Senior Lecturer for Fashion Artefact at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London. Her research sits at the intersection of fashion, fine arts, and film practices, exploring an expanded field of fashion, critical fashion and fashion film practices in the Twenty-First Century.
She/Her
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6364-2188
https://twitter.com/laragtorres
instagram: @lara.torres_studio
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-lara-torres
Through auto-ethnographic methods, I prioritise qualitative methods of reflection starting with myself. As a teacher and researcher faced with structural academic expectations, this paper offers critical discussions of potential changes to established teaching models.
My intention here is to make myself the object of analysis in the context of a self-reflexive practice. By drawing on my experience, this paper explores the ramifications of my current educational experiments utilising video as media, suggesting an educational programme based on dialogue and questioning at the centre of its practice-based pedagogies.
Professor Dilys Williams is the founder and Director of Centre for Sustainable Fashion and Professor of Fashion Design for Sustainability at London College of Fashion.
Dilys' research, design and teaching practice explores participatory and transformation design to realise fashion as sustainability in action. Dilys is the founder and Director of Centre for Sustainable Fashion. Dilys' research and teaching practice draws on long-held design practices that connect fashion’s relational ecological, social, economic and cultural dimensions. Engaging participatory and transformation design practices, her work shapes and contributes to the field of Fashion Design for Sustainability.
https://www.sustainable-fashion.com/meet-the-team/professor-dilys-williams
Fashion as Sustainability in Action: Teaching sustainable prosperity in culture, society, environment, and economy
Since 2018, we have been working with micro and small fashion businesses who have proven that fashion can be a reciprocal, mutually supportive process whose core foci are people, empathy, and well-being of all, within the environmental limits of our planet. This collaborative research project, underpinned by 100 in-depth interviews with UK creatives and support organizations has been translated into an interactive guide, Fashion as Sustainability in Action. The guide introduces the concept of sustainable prosperity in fashion, with examples of best practice from the designers that we have been working with.
This contribution presents the guide and the workshop format developed to stimulate discussion and reflection on prosperity across its cultural, social, environmental, and economic dimensions. These methods can be used in teaching and they are also adaptable to a range of non-academic audiences to facilitate a better understanding of the interconnected nature of sustainability in fashion and beyond.
Tim Williams is a senior lecturer at London College of Fashion, he runs a Graduate Diploma at the Fashion Business School.
His background is in fashion design and manufacturing, having worked for Hardy Amies, Chelsea girl, Conran design group and Debenhams as well as later specialist production for Agent Provocateur
He/Him
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-williams-609a4511/
This presentation will show the use of digital platforms and the consequent outcomes for the students of a course that is taught as a 'Low residency’ delivery at London College of Fashion.
This text-based Graduate Diploma teaches Fashion Management at UK level six. The aim of the course is to take mainly overseas students from a diversity of academic backgrounds and introduce them to self directed transformative learning.
All students are interviewed online during the selection and offer process, this is seen as a necessary process, to help the students make an informed decision and establish a connection to the course.
Our low residency model means the students are in London for the autumn term only, the teaching during this period is facilitated through digital tools in the classroom, live supportive teaching online and Friday walks around London .
The digital platforms used include Moodle, MS Teams, Padlet, and Panopto. Resources include the e-library with video guides. Teaching makes use of shared documents during live online lectures. Teamwork is also incorporated into the teaching and assessment.
After the winter break all students return to their home county and continue the course online, there is no face-to-face interaction, the teaching continues using the familiar digital tools the have been using in class.
The pedagogical aim of this course has been to facilitate dialogue in the classroom and online, the students have space to exchange ideas with fellow students and present those ideas to the tutors to be accountable to themselves and their peers.
The creation of public and private spaces online together with live feedback and exchange on shared documents will be shown and discussed during this presentation.
The pedagogy emphasises the human side of working with digital technology, valuing ‘presence’ in teaching from the staff and the students.