Postgraduate Course: Textile Revolution: Unstitching the Linear (fusion online) (EFIE11228)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh Futures Institute |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
| Course type | Online Distance Learning |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 10 |
ECTS Credits | 5 |
| Summary | This course offers an opportunity and place to examine a more considered approach to how and what we design through the lens of fashion and textiles. Students will deconstruct and question opportunities beyond sustainability, to build a more circular, regenerative system in fashion and textiles. This will include exploring systems of care, repair and wellbeing.
The course will critically examine the creation of fibre and textiles within the context of its impact on people, place and planet. The course places emphasis on traceability and transparency, community and conversation, and how we determine and place value on the materials we utilise, employ, create, wear, discard and keep. |
| Course description |
This course encourages critical and creative approaches to more regenerative, circular, and restorative ways of designing and thinking in fashion and textile practices. It offers a place to explore and reimagine a world where textile and fashion value is not only measured by monetary and marketing success.
Students will be guided to explore regenerative approaches towards design through:
- Analysis of textile and fashion models
- Determining how a design ex-novation approach may be employed
- Exploring material value through community considerations
- Working with textiles through their hands-on deconstruction to reveal hidden clues, patinas and facts about their heritage, life, provenance and possible futures
- Working with mending techniques and approached as a mode to explore longevity, inbuilt lifetimes and future aesthetics
Materials, systems and communities play an important role for the future and in how we explore value within the fashion and textiles industries. These industries are hugely exploitative and polluting to our environment. With the climate in crisis, we need new ways to restore and regenerate the future health of both people and planet.
Fashion heralds itself as being at the forefront of change but is struggling with the scale and complexity of its systems, models and attitudes towards the climate crisis. How can we unlearn and unstitch, in order to relearn: harnessing ancient wisdoms to create a more circular system that adds value, restoratively and regeneratively.
The course introduces the concept of putting nature and community at the forefront of textile design choices. Accepted fashion and textile business models where the focus is on speed and cost, we will deconstruct marketing within this structure, exploring a slower, more hands-on and considered approach to design. Paying attention to product quality, longevity and post-consumer waste. This course will encourage critical and creative approaches to a more regenerative and restorative way of designing and thinking through a sustainable textile practice.
Course Delivery Outline:
This course places an emphasis on practical learning through creative workshops and reflective discussions. 'Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I may remember. Involve me and I will learn'. (Benjamin Franklin)
Student Learning Experience:
- Pre-workshop reading listening/watching short pre-recorded lecture giving background context.
- Introduction to the course, discussing the basic concept of regenerative systems in relation to materials.
- Two-day Intensive sessions with practical activities.
- Post-intensive: A reflective learning period to capture ideas, feedback, critique and discussion on questions around regenerative thinking. Students to work in small groups, sharing process, ideas, design thinking, and material understanding collectively via visual community blogs.
- Students will work individually on a reflective visual journal/sketchbook to collate a personal investigation.
Industry experts and regenerative systems thinkers will add to the course through a series of interviews and discussions, recorded to provide a deeper context, experiences and understanding.
Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) - Online Fusion Course Delivery Information:
The Edinburgh Futures Institute will teach this course in a way that enables online and on-campus students to study together. This approach (our 'fusion' teaching model) offers students flexible and inclusive ways to study, and the ability to choose whether to be on-campus or online at the level of the individual course. It also opens up ways for diverse groups of students to study together regardless of geographical location. To enable this, the course will use technologies to record and live-stream student and staff participation during their teaching and learning activities. Students should note that their interactions may be recorded and live-streamed. There will, however, be options to control whether or not your video and audio are enabled.
As part of your course, you will need access to a personal computing device. Unless otherwise stated activities will be web browser based and as a minimum we recommend a device with a physical keyboard and screen that can access the internet.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2023/24, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 4 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
100
(
Lecture Hours 3,
Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 11,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 2,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
84 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Summative Assessment:
The course will be assessed by means of the following assessment components:
1) Individual Sketchbook with Annotation (80%)
Students will complete a fully annotated sketchbook style journal (minimum size A4). Individual responses to the workshops and intensives to be included, with photographs/sketches and research findings associated with the course. The journal/sketchbook will be compiled throughout the course and completed 4 weeks after the 2-day intensive.
2) Group Blog Posts (20%)
Students will produce a minimum of 3 group blog posts of approximately 500 words each evidencing student findings, including the journey and process with visuals and reflections. Group formation will allow for synchronous and asynchronous student collaborations. |
| Feedback |
Formative feedback will be given to the students throughout the course in response to the 2-day intensive activities and online discussion forums. Peer and course organiser feedback (informal) will be given. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate a critical understanding of the key concepts and principles of regenerative design.
- Develop original and creative responses to problems and issues related to current linear fashion and textile systems.
- Critically evaluate the appropriate uses and limitations of a more restorative approach to design.
- Ability to work as part of a team to digest, discuss and disseminate thinking and propositions.
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Reading List
Indicative Reading List:
Sustainability and Circularity in the Textile Value Chain: A Global Roadmap, United Nations Environment Programme (March 2023)
Fibreshed, Rebecca Burgess
Earthlogic, Kate Fletcher and Matilda Tham
Regenerative Fashion, A Nature-based Approach to Fibres, Livelihoods and Leadership by Minney, Safia
Consumed, The need for collective change; colonialism, climate change & consumerism, Barber, Aja
Loved Clothes Last, How the Joy of Rewearing and Repairing Your Clothes Can Be a Revolutionary Act by de Castro, Orsola
A Practical Guide to Sustainable Fashion, by Alison Gwilt
ReFashioned - Cutting-Edge Clothing from Upcycled Materials by Sass Brown and Natalie Chanin
Remake It Clothes - The Essential Guide to Resourceful Fashion- With over 500 tricks, tips and inspirational designs by Henrietta Thompson
Shaping Sustainable Fashion- Changing the Way We Make and Use Clothes by Alison Gwilt and Timo Rissanen
Sustainable Fashion and Textiles- Design Journeys by Kate Fletcher
The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability - Designing for Abundance by Michael Braungart and William Mcdonough
Zero Waste Fashion Design by Timo Rissanen and Holly McQuillan
Films/Documentaries:
- The River Blue
- The True Cost
- Fashion Reimagined
- Unravelled |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
- Research and Enquiry (problem solving): Identify and evaluate options to solve complex problems.
- Communication (verbal and written): Be able to communicate complex ideas and critiques visually and written.
- Personal Effectiveness (team working): Ability to demonstrate an innovative approach, creativity, collaboration and risk taking. |
| Keywords | Value,Restorative,Regenerative,Community,Exnovation,EFI,PG,Circular Economy |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Miss Collette Paterson
Tel: (0131 6)51 5812
Email: cpaters5@exseed.ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Veronica Silvestre
Tel:
Email: Veronica.Silvestre@ed.ac.uk |
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