Sign in NDSM by artist Sharon Lockhart
Part 1: Why hope?
During the pandemic, it was painfully clear that students were in pain from the state of the world. They didn’t yet have the privilege of time to know one can survive drastic events. They also (and understandably) felt left down by adults for bringing the world to the place it was one where they do shooter drills in schools, where climate change makes their future look bleak, and one where hate is spewed in order to gain power. No matter your politics, it is emotionally devastating. They often see the adult world as having let them down. On top of it, they are often told “you are the generation who can fix it!” and while it is often meant as empowering, it certainly doesn’t feel just.
They aren’t always taught or shown that people have been effecting change all along. It’s not a dominate narrative. I have thoughts about why, but that is another post or ten.
While studying Social Design* in the Netherlands, I saw people creating designs to address these ills. They didn’t assume just because it’s been a certain way it had to stay that way. Experimentation, exploration, and even play become effective tools in moving ideas forward to a place showing care for the planet and it’s inhabitants. Since then, I design my courses aiming to make students aware of the artists, designers, architects, and other thinkers who have been challenging the harmful standards of making a profit at the cost of the planet we inhabit.
I have seen the word “changemakers” used in writings about people forging new and less harmful paths, and it’s one I like. The verb, the action of changing, is the defining element. When the U.S. news focuses on politics and large corporations, it’s easy to believe that nothing has or can be done. But those of us who have lived a while, know that history is not such a straight line. I hoped by showing examples of change makers, students would be inspired to join them, and to see that changes have been and can be made.
When looking back, I can break the introduction of hope via several methods. I have divided them into the following categories, and will go into them as I discuss the work:
Hope from Knowing What Came Before
Hope from Autonomy: The Power of Handwork
Hope from the Ethics of Care
Hope through a Community of Minds
Hope through Doing: the Future is Now
Why Fashion and Textiles?
In 2017, I brought students to the Netherlands to look at practitioners of social design, as well as to create work using tenets of social design, using Amsterdam as a classroom. I had been wanting to bring students again, especially after the failed attempt of March 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic.
Students heard about previous Amsterdam trips (or attempts thereof) and wanted the chance to go to the Netherlands on a learning trip. When I proposed this to the administration, they were supportive. Lise Charlier, the head of my institution, suggested I focus on fashion as there was a keen interest in the student community. At first I was uncertain, but the more I thought about, the more the potential of teaching about change through the fashion and textile industry became apparent.
Another inspiration was my grant work on social design, when I met Marcelo Horacio Maquieira Piriz, a fashion writer and curator based in the Netherlands. He gave me an overview of fashion in the Netherlands, including many of the young designers he saw as leading the way forward in sustainable fashion. These designers didn’t take old paradigms as unavoidable, but as fodder for play.
Rietveld Academy Fashion Show 2024: work about play and movement
The fashion and textile industry is the second most polluting industry on the planet, after fossil fuels. Unlike fossil fuels, individuals, consumers, and designers can work outside of the greater system. In other words, we don’t have to participate in a system whose values we don’t support. Students were already doing this through buying/trading vintage and repairing clothes. They have been eager to learn how to repair clothing, upcycle fashion waste, and become more ethical consumers. Some have even played with creating alternate materials. Having done smaller projects on repair and upcycling in Wearable Art for a few years, the hunger for this knowledge was apparent.
Course proposal for Fashion and Textiles: Design Solutions in a Circular World
Design of the recent past is based on a linear model: start with unused resources, wear, return to the earth when we are done using it; “take, make, waste”. But what if we looked at fashion and textiles in a mindful way, considering where they come from before we wear it, and where it’s going after we wear it? In this course we will create materials, wearable art, and more considering these questions, and using clothing design to examine and potentially solve problems. This course will be an experimental laboratory where we look at what clothing has been, and what it can be, and use those ideas to inform our designs and ways of making. This course may include natural dying, bioplastics, garment creation, possibly electronics, and so much more. Experiments, hands on, and research are all key to this course.
Some of the questions we will be asking in this course are:
· How do we think beyond the past traditions?
· What is the role of research in moving design forward?
· Who is design for?
· What are the societal implications of clothing? Communal implications?
· What core concepts do we want to begin with? What morals do we want to begin with?
· What role does equality have in our designs?
· How do we experience collaboration as a strength, and not a battle?
· What is the role of consumerism in our designing process?
· What is an economy of passion?
· What is the role of hope, and the future in design?
· What is the role of non-industrial technologies?
· Can our designs change human behaviors? Can it address cultural imbalances?
The administration worked to make it more than a spring break trip, and helped to morph it into a two-block course with a co-teacher on campus. Initially it was to be two separate blocks, one more focused on history, one on the design and hands-on element, but due to pragmatics it evolved into a two block co-taught course. Having a co-teacher would allow for more students, and the co-teacher would be the anchor on campus for students who chose to not go on the trip. The theater department costumer, Calin Duke was my on-campus co-teacher, having a passion for upcycling. She focused on fast fashion and its dangers, the processing of fibers from farm/lab to garment, and upcycling in its many forms. Since that is not my curriculum and she does a good job addressing it in social media, I will not cover it here. (link)
Coming up: Parts 2 and 3
Resources
I've shared this before, but this book is a sweet little book full of examples of those who don't think things have to be there way they were:
I am currently finishing up this book by Bregman, which speaks to the notion that we can't do anything, and most people are awful. Gross simplification, but really good and great book for these times:
Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman
This essay has been helpful in dark times:
Hope is an Embrace of the Unknown, by Rebecca Solnit
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