Postgraduate Course: Textile Revolution: Unstitching the Linear (EFIE11428)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh Futures Institute |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| 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 current textile and fashion models.
- Determining how an ex-novative approach may be employed.
- Exploring material value through community considerations.
- Working with textiles physically; with a hands-on approach to reveal hidden clues, patinas and facts about their heritage, life, provenance and possible futures.
- Working with mending techniques 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, 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.
Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) - Hybrid Course Delivery Information:
The Edinburgh Futures Institute delivers many of its courses in hybrid mode. This means that you may have some online students joining sessions for this course. 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 be aware that:
- Classrooms used in this course will have additional technology in place: in some cases, students might not be able to sit in areas away from microphones or outside the field of view of all cameras.
- All presentations, and whole class discussions will be recorded (see the Lecture Recording and Virtual Classroom policies for more details).
- You will need access to a personal computing device for this course. Most activities will take place in a web browser, unless otherwise stated. We recommend using a device with a screen, physical keyboard, and internet access.
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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 |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2026/27, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 30 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 5,
Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 15,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
The course will be assessed by means of the following summative assessment components:
1) Individual Sketchbook with Annotation (70%)
Students will complete a fully annotated sketchbook style journal (minimum size A4). Individual responses to the workshops and teaching activities to be included, with photographs/sketches and research findings associated with the course. The journal/sketchbook will be compiled throughout the course.
Learning Outcomes Assessed by Component: 1, 2, 3
2) Group Blog (30%)
Students will produce a group blog posting approximately 300 words each evidencing student findings, including the journey and process with visuals and reflections. Group formation will allow for synchronous and asynchronous student collaborations.
Students will produce a minimum of 3 blog posts of approx. 300 words evidencing student findings, including the journey and process with visuals and reflections.
Learning Outcomes Assessed by Component: 1, 2, 4 |
| Feedback |
Feedback on any formative assessment may be provided in various formats, for example, to include written, oral, video, face-to-face, whole class, or individual. The Course Organiser will decide which format is most appropriate in relation to the nature of the assessment.
Feedback on both formative and summative in-course assessed work will be provided in time to be of use in subsequent assessments within the course.
Feedback on the summative assessment will be provided in written form via Learn, the University of Edinburgh's Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).
Formative Feedback Opportunity:
Formative feedback is ongoing feedback which monitors learning and is intended to improve performance in the same course, in future courses, and also beyond study.
Formative feedback will be given to the students throughout the course in response to the teaching 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
Recommended Reading:
Barber, A. (2021) Consumed: The need for collective change - colonialism, climate change and consumerism. London: New Internationalist.
Braungart, M. and McDonough, W. (2013) The upcycle: Beyond sustainability - designing for abundance. New York: North Point Press.
Burgess, R. (2019) Fibershed: Growing a movement of farmers, fashion activists, and makers for a new textile economy. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing.
Clarke, A. (2016) Design anthropology: Object culture in the 21st century. London: Bloomsbury.
de Castro, O. (2021) Loved clothes last: How the joy of rewearing and repairing your clothes can be a revolutionary act. London: Penguin Life.
Earley, R. and Goldsworthy, K. (2015) Circular textile design. London: The Textile Institute.
Fletcher, K. and Grimstad Klepp, I. (2017) Opening up the wardrobe: A methods book. Oslo: Novus Press.
Fletcher, K. and Grose, L. (2012) Fashion & Sustainability: Design for change. London: Laurence King.
Fletcher, K. and Tham, M. (2019) Earth logic: Fashion action research plan. London: The J.J. Charitable Trust.
Gwilt, A. (2014) A practical guide to sustainable fashion. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Minney, S. (2023) Regenerative fashion: A nature-based approach to fibres, livelihoods and leadership. London: Kogan Page.
Niinimäki, K. et al. (2020) 'The environmental price of fast fashion', Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 1, pp. 189-200.
Raworth, K. (2017) Doughnut economics: Seven ways to think like a 21st-century economist. London: Random House.
Twigger Holroyd, A. (2025) Fashion Fictions: Imagining sustainable worlds. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Rissanen, T. and McQuillan, H. (2016) Zero waste fashion design. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Thompson, H. (2016) Remake it: Clothes: The essential guide to resourceful fashion. London: Pavilion.
Tlostanova, M. (2017) 'On decolonizing design', Design Philosophy Papers, 15(1).
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) (2023) Sustainability and circularity in the textile value chain: A global roadmap. Nairobi: UNEP.
Films & Documentaries:
Bali, D. and Blum, R. (2016) RiverBlue. Film. Canada:
Brown, B. (2022) Fashion reimagined. Documentary film. UK.
Mitra, M. (2018) Unravelled. Documentary film. UK: BBC.
Morgan, A. (2015) The true cost. Documentary film. USA. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Value,Restorative,Regenerative Systems,Community,Materials,Exnovation,EFI,PG,Circular Econ |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Miss Collette Paterson
Tel: (0131 6)51 5812
Email: cpaters5@exseed.ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Abby Gleave
Tel: (0131 6)51 1337
Email: abby.gleave@ed.ac.uk |
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