E-co textiles

DIY mania was in action last weekend at the Future Everything Craft event in Manchester, with Mel Bowles and Jen Ballie introducing audiences to their co-design textile/fashion projects.

Also at the event were projects including Pics to Knits a web based project which allows a user to convert any image to a knitting pattern which forms a blanket or throw and David Littler's sampler-cultureclash an international collective of sound artists, DJ’s, embroiderers, textile designers, performance poets, machine hackers and dancers who are exploring the connections between textiles and sound and the cultures of embroidery and DJ-ing.

Textiles & Co Design at TED

TED member Mel Bowles and PhD student Jen Ballie are both going to be at the Future Everything event this weekend in Manchester.

Mel will be running her workshop 'The Peoples Print: the empowerment of the consumer through Digital Textile Design', where participants will be encouraged to create their own digital textile print.

Jen Ballie will be presenting her interactive workshop called The Scarf Project, where you will be encouraged to rip and mix past and present fashion trends to make and style your own bespoke scarf.

Calling all future design innovators!

Are you a textile or fashion design student or recent graduate who is interested in the exciting ideas being explored around sustainability and innovation within textiles and fashion?

TED PhD student Jen Ballie is organising the first in a series of workshops exploring co-design for textile and fashion design and she needs some participants.

If you were born between 1977 and 1997 (Generation Y!), are familiar with the latest digital tools such as Twitter, blogging and Facebook and you are available from February 7th - 18th in central London, then Jen would like to hear from you.

The selected participants will be invited to a design meeting where the project will be pitched and they will play an active role in defining the overall brief. You will leave with a goodie bag of design tools, tips and tricks to get started on your design research and development. The following week we will meet again and get to work collectively designing a collection of fashion fabrics and accessories.

This is an exciting opportunity for you to participate in a live research project and play an active role in defining new design approaches, and an excellent CV opportunity!

Visit http://thetextilesampler.blogspot.com/ for updates and further information.

Ethical Fashion Forum’s SOURCE EXPO 2010

Last week two of TED’s PhD students (Jen Ballie and Matilda Aspinall) attended the Ethical Fashion Forum’s SOURCE EXPO 2010.

The SOURCE EXPO aimed to promote sustainable fashion practices and facilitate sustainable sourcing amongst fashion professionals. The exhibition showcased a selection of work from suppliers and manufacturers from all over the world, working to promote fair trade and ethical standards, linking them with hundreds of designers, retailers and brands.

A series of seminars were also scheduled throughout the day, and we attended the ‘Innovation’ seminar to learn about the latest inspirational products and processes in the sourcing sector. This was chaired by Emily Pearce, EFF’s Ethical Fashion Project Manager, with speakers from Initiate Design, Bag it Don’t Bin It and Pants to Poverty. The work of Susanne Lee (Biocouture) and PUMA SAFE - Clever Little Bag was also introduced.

Each speaker introduced their innovativion by explaining their design concept, how their product was made and any additional services. We were impressed at the range of challenging design approaches adopted by each speaker. The subjects discussed explored local production and cottage industries, cradle to cradle design through closed loop methodologies and crowdfunding.

The session explored how design could be coupled with innovation to create desirable products that were both useable and engaging. The end user played a central focus through each strategy and they tried to engage users by encouraging participation, supporting well-being and promoting social values.

This event has scaled up since last year and attracted a massive audience. It was exciting to see designer’s working in new ways to scale up sustainable design.

Co-design workshops

TED has continued to run several workshops with the new MA group here at Chelsea and the latest one was by Jennifer Ballie, the TFRG PhD student who explored co-design with the MA group.

Jen developed a series of garment case studies and students were asked to develop scenarios for customisation which consider co-design methods, involving the consumer and a designer.

A summary of Jen's recent lecture here at Chelsea Co-Everything: Defining Co-design for Fashion and Textiles is available here.

Conversations on (a) Slow Craft

The TED team recently took part in a small research project devised by Becky Earley, to coincide with the Taking Time: Craft and the Slow Revolution exhibition which is opening at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery in October.

The idea behind Conversations on (a) Slow Craft was to take a group of textile designers and send them on a barge trip along a canal, while they discussed Slow and what it means to them and their practice as textile designers. The TED group were also joined by wallpaper designer Linda Florence, furniture maker David Gates and the whole conversation was audio recorded by artist Russell Martin.

The group were then led through a workshop in Japanese Sashiko embroidery by Emma Neuberg, which is part of her Extended Life textile workshop series.

The idea is for the format to be repeated at the different cities where the Taking Time exhibit tours to. A group of jewellers may all travel together on a horse and cart and talk about Slow or a group of ceramicists on bikes.

The audio recordings and transcriptions of the conversation will be available soon. In the meantime, there are some previous audio recordings of conversations between artists about Slow on the Taking Time website.

New PhD student starts

The new Textiles Futures Research Group (TFRG) PhD student Jennifer Ballie has started her research and is based at the TED Project. Jennifer will be exploring the potential for a participatory design model which would allow consumers to upcycle fashion in their own homes thereby adding meaning and value to their wardrobes.

Jennifer will be looking at the ideas around co-design and experience design for inspiration and will also be running workshops with students from the University to explore the ways in which fashion consumers relate to their garments to help inform her research.