Designing a Sensibility for Sustainable Clothing (S4S)

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The Designing a Sensibility for Sustainable Clothing project represents a significant attempt to seek to understand how creative activities might shape individuals' sensibility for sustainability (that is the way in which they think through, imagine and practice sustainability) in relation to clothing. Our interdisciplinary approach provides a novel methodology that promises to push forward the boundaries of work on pro-environmental behaviour change. It also makes a significant contribution to the emergent field of sustainable fashion and to research on the relationship between craft processes, creative making and material affect. The project is grounded in 'social design' and co-production methodologies, which means that we are not interested in just producing knowledge, but also in working with others in the process of generating knowledge. This approach is important because fashion industries, cultures and imaginaries are multi-faceted and complex issues with significant personal (i.e. emotional) social and environmental implications. We argue that participatory arts and craft practices are potentially an important tool for generating a sensibility of sustainability and therefore for informing policy on behaviour change. Arts and crafts therefore require a serious test bed as a behavioural intervention, not least because political scientists have, now for a number of decades, recommended that multiple knowledges be drawn together to solve policy problems.The project consists of five interrelated work strands:Work strand 1. Individual research participants and experts (including our local community textiles / fashion partners and national and international policy -making and -shaping actors) come together to discuss the social and environmental problems associated clothing, and to inform and shape the workshops that follow through exposing the challenges of making fashion sustainable and engaging in asset mapping to address these challenges.Work strand 2. Throughout a series of workshops (8 series of 5 half day workshop), groups of 6-10 participants explore different elements of the clothing life-cycle in a participatory manner. They are encouraged to share knowledge and be reflexive and interactive by passing creative outputs (see Case for Support for details of these) artefacts and written and self-evaluative films on to a group of similar peers in a different part of the country.Work strand 3. Clothing practices are assessed before and after the workshop series to identify any changes in clothing sensibilities and choices using a survey, interviews and a wardrobe audit. A smaller group of key volunteers will keep a reflective clothes-purchasing diary throughout the life of the project, recording clothing purchases as well as reflecting on any changes in their feelings, attitudes and behaviours. They will record their perceptions about the role of engagement with material processes in shaping any changes.Work strand 4. We adopt a 'politics of affect' by exploring in-depth the way people feel about clothing and the material processes involved in making fabric and clothes explored in the workshops. We do this through inductively analysing talk during the workshops, interviews and participants' blogs and the reflective films. Work strand 5. Our findings are assembled carefully after liaison with our extensive network of project partners, consultants and participants into a policy brief that will help policy-makers work towards promoting pro-environmental behaviour change. In liaison with our project partner Fashion Revolution, we will arrange meetings with DEFRA and the All Party Parliamentary Design and Innovation Group at which we will share the policy brief and some creative output from the project (e.g. reflective videos and artefacts). A small select group of 2-3 participants from each location, some key partners, the investigators and project researchers will attend.