Becky Earley wrote: It's Day 1 of the 'Masterclass in Sustainable Textile Design', Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, Tel Aviv. I've had a lively session with students discussing the Textile Lifecycle lecture in the morning, followed by 6 hours of the interconnected design thinking workshop in the afternoon. Twenty students worked through ideas about fast and slow, ethical production, new technologies, multifunction, and systems and services design, to come up with concepts for new upcycled textile buisnesses.The group worked in 3 teams and generated ideas about: upcycling and loaning umbrellas in Tel Aviv for the tourist industry (it has been raining here a lot lately!); a new website representing a collective of designers working with upcycling but also co-ordinating local waste streams for local industry; and a city centre project about re-designing business parking spaces to be multifunctional and to become urban garden spaces at the weekends where festivals for swishing could take place. I did have time for lunch - the head of textiles, Uri Tzaig, took me for lunch to Tel Aviv's new port, to see the Israel fashion design label comme il faut and their design centre which plays host to a number of stylish and enterprising businesses.
More to follow on Becky's time in Tel Aviv shortly.
