Greetings everyone. Each day has beginnings and endings, such are the never to be exactly duplicated interactions. Such is the impermanence and imperfection in life. For those of us who are in formal education settings in the UK, most parts of Europe and for some in other continents, September has particular beginnings. Some things feel very new, others provide continuity and some give us a sense of déjà vu. At times, this can be uplifting, at others, deeply saddening. As somebody working in a university, University of the Arts London (UAL), albeit that many of the projects I work on do not begin or end in September, the preparations for welcoming in and welcoming back students brings a sense of eager anticipation into the air. Many of the organisations that we work with have taken a break and seen great changes over the summer, such as our partners in Paris at the Kering headquarters, where François-Henri Pinault has handed over leadership of Kering to Francois Luca de Meo, whilst remaining by his side as Chairman of the Board of Kering. Deep change and continuity, the navigation of which depends on the relationships that they build.
Others are facing abrupt endings, in their current guise, such as the closure of the ‘Made in Zaatari’ centre, co-developed by Centre for Sustainable Fashion’s (CSF) Prof Helen Storey as UNHCR Designer-in-Residence, UNHCR, Zaatari Refugee Camp (the world’s largest Syrian camp on the Jordan/Syria border), our long-time collaborator Deepa Patel, and others. This is a directly visible example of how stark changes that are taking place in the world politically play out devastatingly in people’s lives. And yet, there is a continued connection, hope and other paths being trodden. It is the inequality in beginnings and endings, in the impermanence of things that CSF grapples, using ecological and social design knowledges to co-create ways to rebalance, redistribute, repair, and seek reparations at project level in what we directly do and in what we influence and support.
In the UK, we are preparing for the autumn and changing clothes, colours and habits. I am back from taking a break, where I spent time with family and friends, walked and cycled a lot, spent long days outside. I am deeply grateful and appreciate the privilege that I have in being able to take deep breaths. I let go of a lot of stuff (physically and mentally) thanks to my daughter who has created space in our home where nearly 20 years of things to finish, to read, to do, had piled up pretty high. I spent time thinking about what, the Centre, as a community, myself as part of that community, and all of us in our wider college and university community, are well placed to contribute to right now. What roles we play in the complexity, vulnerability, uncertainty and ambiguity of things. A place where designers and artists are well placed to experiment as people who stitch things together to make sense of materials, of people, place and time.
I am ready to be back, to sense check the plans and practices we put into place before the summer, to turn our sails, to gather our resources, as the social and political wind appears dramatically changed over the past year. Perceptions, intentions and ambitions relating to environmental and social prosperity are in tension in some places, in suspension in others. Yet as Hannah Gilbert, Advisory Board member of CSF’s Governance for Tomorrow programme, reminds us, whilst we are riding choppy waters, where some are quickly changed in their actions around social and environmental commitments, if we dive deep, we can see those whose commitments continue and we do well to use our strength in swimming there with them.
We have a viewpoint from nearly two decades together as a community of active players, leaders even, in a vibrant fashion, design and sustainability movement. Our exploring of how we might learn to live well together in a more-than-human world, has supported many people, projects and programmes. Fashion is the mediator of our interactions and of our sense-making, its material and symbolic practices shaping what and how we see, what we know and how we are in the world. Our work has enabled ecological and social design practice to gain great traction inside our own university, UAL, in academia more broadly, in the fashion sector, in communities and with wider publics, and governments. As César Rodríguez-Garavito reminded me when we met at NYU Law School earlier this year, where he leads the MOTH initiative, whilst the political will has, in many places turned its back on the critical attention needed to our ecological health, we’ve come a long way in the past decades in social and environmental movement terms. We need to pull up our collars and prepare for the next season, it can’t always be summer.
Creating conditions for care
As in our work, and in our wider lives, we can’t keep fixing things. We have taken off the outfit that says, ‘designers are problem solvers’ and stepped into that of possibility creators and imaginative pragmatists. Roles that are more humble maybe, less ostentatious, of helper, rather than super star designer. This is something that, as a Centre, we have been talking about and demonstrating for a long while now. Last year, we invited Bayo Akomolafe to join us at our Imagining Possibilities Festival in April 2024 and reflect on our work. He talked about the role of stepping back to give space to others. Brian Eno, designer, musician and founder of Earthpercent, when asked who he would like to platform at the World Design Congress recently, said the billions people doing great things every day. He said that rather than starting new projects, we should look for people already doing things that we can help with. Dr Laura Premack, in her Substack The Hard Prune, reminds us of ways in which we can be attentive to what is needed. There is a lot of focus in the western world, on rehab. Laura spoke to me recently about the idea of prehab, a nourishing of the body, mind and spirit. A gathering and building, a creating of space or shelter, of care that starts at the beginning of things, not just when it is injured or in need of repair. These and other thoughts give me direction for this year.
Expanding roles of design(ers)
In 2015, I wrote about ideas of expanding the scope of designing that I had been exploring for a while. I referenced three stances, not as definitive roles, but as modes of designing, beyond what felt like a tight spot into which designers were being tasked to problem solve through switching materials as a sustainability solution. I wrote about designers of boundary objects and learning objects, referencing Schön’s (1983) work on The Reflective Practitioner. It describes the things you can change and shape, as collection designers. The actions you can take in more open conditions, as co-creators, in commercial settings, community and other social situations, the things you can bring together and make together. A third mode, that of condition creators, is where the designer steps out of the limelight, to pay attention to creating environments of conviviality, where people come together and what emerges is beyond the control of the designer. This mode was further articulated and tested through the project, I Stood UP and in describing this mode as designer as host in ‘Fashion, the City and the Spectacle’, in the Routledge Handbook of Sustainability and Fashion.
In response to increased awareness and incentives, the discourse, initiatives, job roles and courses naming sustainability in relation to fashion is now huge. A massive professionalising of fashion and sustainability. And indeed, it’s vital that all of fashion rises to stop using processes, materials and conditions that have been already been agreed as illegal or socially unacceptable. There is a vital role for policy making that raises this bar much much higher. Many are working incredibly hard, often with very limited resources themselves in doing this work. But it’s not making enough change. It is not possible to achieve enough change by making change within a broken system. It is giving the illusion of change and that is dangerous. Looking at the realities of the trajectory of fashion and the continuation of exploitation extraction and imbalance – we need to focus on the change of that system that is needed. This is difficult work, it is not necessarily being welcomed. Our job is to find ways to welcome the unwelcomed. We can only do this through empathic, imaginative, ideating, prototyping, testing and amplifying imagination practices. A project that you will see more of this year.
A responsibility for reciprocity
What all of this tells me, is that our instinct, at the Centre, to foster and nourish ecological thinking, social practice, reciprocity, conviviality, humility, is more vital than ever right now. That we must hold our nerve. That measuring the difference that we make is difficult, but not impossible. That we have a duty to imagine and realise new possibilities of what it means to be a researcher, a designer, an educator. To explore our interbeing in the world. To do so through practice, material facilitators and through helping. This is how we make sense of being researchers and educators. This is not the same as relinquishing responsibility — indeed responsiveness, reciprocity, taking part gives us more responsibility than ever. It’s about wearing our titles lightly, carefully, attentively. It might be gruelling work, but if we truly want to bring new knowledge into the world, maybe the most ‘innovative’ way to do that is to be in service to life. And for that to be joyful and powered by hope, something that we can feel every time we see one of our amazing students, community members and each other, doing something that contributes to ways of getting on together, in and through fashion. The most obvious, yet challenging of aims, one that needs all of our contributions.
