Fashion Communications students and staff have organised a series of events for the University of Brighton Fashion Revolution Week, running across Grand Parade next week.
This year marks the 10th anniversary for Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh and Fashion Revolution have been campaigning passionately for a clean, safe, fair, transparent and accountable fashion industry.
The theme ‘Fashion Afterwards and Beyond’ considers what happens to fashion afterwards – the leftovers and the disregarded. Questioning what fashion is beyond current narratives of consumption, profit buy culture and capitalist driven economics? What can we do afterwards with the leftovers, how can we rebuild and go beyond – to weave new stories of what exists, in practice and collaboratively? How can we make and live in a way that is in touch with living systems and people? Moving forward to use imagination and creative approaches co-creating alternative economies, post growth cultures, sustainable communities and use communication that inspires action for change in the now.
Highlights include: –
TUESDAY April 25
12.00-2.00pm in the Reading Room in the CCA Gallery
(SFFS) SWAP SHOP
The Sustainable Fashion Futures Society will be holding a follow-up clothes swap – bring your unwanted items to swap. (Even if you don’t have anything to swap, come and check out their items for sale at a negotiated price.) All profits will go to The Green Centre.
WEDNESDAY April 26
10.30-12pm in the Waste House.
‘The 100-year Wardrobe’ – Material Threads | Clothes, Places & Meanings
Daniela Hatfield – Fashion Communication Lecturer, will be discussing a selection of fashion objects and ephemera from her personal archive that explores the longevity of wearing, journeying through familial relationships and garments as markers of time and place. The items presented are still worn and reappraised each year, constantly distilling the meaning and function.
1.00-2.00 in M55
‘Waste Textiles and Clothing’
Jules Findley Principal Lecturer on Fashion Communication will talk about SMICI, an AHRC funded research project she worked on in 2021. This will be about the challenges facing the fashion and textiles industry and looking at ideas for solutions moving forwards.
1.00-3.00 – THE READING ROOM (CCA Gallery)
Craftivist Workshop: Crafting a Quilt for Global Change
Join lecturers and makers Vanessa Marr and Sarah Elwick to contribute your own colourful quilt panel to their growing collaborative Global Challenges Quilt project, inspired by the university’s Global Challenges agenda and the UN Sustainability goals.
THURSDAY April 27
12.30-1.30 IN M55
‘What We Weave We Leave’
Pierangela Manzetti Final Year student from Fashion Communication presents her Final Major Project; a hemp installation that uses AR, to show the wonders of this magnificent weed that has over 25000 end uses. She discusses how as a visual promoter she fuses Photography, Installations, Motion Graphics & Augmented Reality (AR) to display information that is both engaging and informative.
1.30-2.30 IN M55
Communicating Climate Change’
Julie Doyle is a Professor of Media and Communication whose work on climate communications in media and visual culture has been cited in IPCC reports. In this session, Julie will share some of her collaborative research with young people that explored how the principles of effective climate communication can be put into practice through the creation of new climate images and narratives that centre participation and co-creation.
12.00-4.00 ALTRIUM (near the canteen)
FASHION SHOWCASE
A showcase and celebration of a selection of work from Fashion Communication Students in Level 4, Level 5 and Level 6 that links with alternative ways to consider Fashion sustainability and re-use. This also includes work from the second year Collaborative Project across the Fashion courses of Design, Textiles and Communication.
12.00-3.00 in THE READING ROOM (CCA Gallery)
‘THE ALTERNATIVE SHOP’
Come along to the alternative shop experience where you can buy pre-loved or handmade items, swap existing clothing, and have a gift on us from a selection of donated goods that need a new home.
FRIDAY – April 28 WASTE HOUSE
12.30-1.00
ROUND UP ROUNDTABLE: ‘WHATS THE FUTURE NOW?’
A response led by students from Sustainable Fashion Futures Society and Fashion students discussing how to move forward with actions in the now.
1.00-2.00 TALKS – ‘CHANGE STARTS UNDERGROUND’
Olivia Rhind – A final year student from Fashion Communication shares her final major project ‘This is Not a Cookbook’ which connects food, fashion, culture, and lifestyle with an underlying message of sustainability and waste. Olivia will discuss her playful use of visual communication, fashion styling, photography, and storytelling to show the interconnections of food processes from seed to soil, growing and making food and its relationship within our everyday lives.
Rachael Taylor – Course Leader of Fashion Communication and podcast host of Shapers of Society discusses the intervention she delivered at Shangri-la, Glastonbury Festival in 2022. This involved creating a ‘Re-use Lab and Community Art Garden’ to connect clothing and food waste together; helping audiences see creative potential in the leftovers we throwaway. This used playful approaches to communicate change through visual communication whilst promoting alternative zero waste processes in the making – using seed paper and edible paper to engage audiences visually and participatory to connect with concepts such as growth, change and circularity.
2.30-3.30 – ‘PLANTING SEEDS OF HOPE FOR THE FUTURE’
For the closing of the Fashion Revolution week join Rachael Taylor in an intervention reflection to plant messages of change on seed paper in the grounds of the garden – this interventional act represents planting and growing hope for the future now.
More information about BA(Hons) Fashion Communication with Business Studies
