De-Fashioning Education

De-Fashioning Education

is a call to action as much as contemplation. A collaborative, critical and creative re-thinking and re-making of fashion education. An exploration of different fashion learning cultures.

Education for essential de-growth calls for radically different educational models and approaches: a community of learners who aim to co-create shared and diverse futures, relationships with nature, and with one another.^[1]

De-Fashioning Education explores how to bring the learning and practices of fashion into balance with nature’s limits and needs and the equality and well-being of all human beings. An education for being, not only for having.^[2]

‘Is the earth’s balance, for which no-growth – or even degrowth – of material production is a necessary condition, compatible with the survival of the capitalist system?’^[3] André Gorz, 1972

‘The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy […] Urging all of us to open our minds and hearts so that we can know beyond the boundaries of what is acceptable, so that we can think and rethink, so that we can create new visions…’^[4] bell hooks, 1994

Fashion has been framed as ‘the favourite child of capitalism’^[5] – particularly in a dominant discourse in the global West. Its industry has aligned itself with the economic system, obscuring and obliterating other fashion systems and clothing cultures^[6]. While fashion is a global, creative and connective force, in its industrialised form it is largely exploitative and imperialist. A deregulated global hyper fast Fashion system presents itself as the necessary other of deregulated hyper capitalism. Just as capitalism, it relies on exploitation and exclusion. Both are incompatible with racial, social, economic and climate justice.

While education has enabled these systems, it has also challenged them. The classroom can be the most radical space of possibility. To change a culture, you change its education. To change a system, you change its education. To change the Fashion system, you change how fashion is learnt and taught, perceived and practiced.

De-Fashioning Education takes the notion of de-fashion^[7] as a provocation to reconsider how, what and why we are learning and teaching fashion. To de-fashion is 'to dismantle the current Fashion system and replace it with a pluriverse of clothing systems that are fair, local, decolonial and profoundly respectful and nurturing'^[8]. What does a de-fashioning of education look like, and what could it do?

De-Fashioning Education aims to provide a space of exchange and collaborative action to explore the relationships between fashion, education and degrowth, a planned green reduction^[9]. We can draw on a wealth of unacknowledged ways of learning fashion, undervalued diverse cultures of learning and leading learning – that are all part of fashion education.

De-Fashioning Education is an open-access conference, a collaborative contemplative space to consider contradictions and develop shared action. It invites us to re-imagine how we can learn for interexistence and interbeing – fashion education for the pluriverse^[10]

1. _{^{Degrowth / Rosa Luxembourg Stiftung (2014) ’Dimensions of learning for a de-growth society’ Degrowth conference Leipzig, 3 September https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iewh1DG2Ug.}}
2. _{^{Fromm, Erich (1976) ‘Introduction: The Great Promise, Its Failure, and New Alternatives’ in: To Have or to Be? New York: Harper & Row, pp. 1–12.}}
3. _{^{Gorz, André (Bosquet, M.) (1972) 'Proceedings from a public debate' in: Nouvel Observateur. Paris, p. 397.}}
4. _{^{hooks, bell (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge, p. 12}}
5. _{^{Sombart, Werner (1902) Wirthschaft und Mode: Ein Beitrag zur Theorie der Modernen Bedarfsgestaltung. Band XII. von: Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens. Loewenfeld, L. & Kurella, H. (ed.) Wiesbaden: Verlag von J.F. Bergmann, p. 23}}
6. _{^{Sandra Niessen in: Frontiers of Commoning (2022) ‘Sara Arnold & Sandra Niessen on Moving Forward Defashion and Degrowth’ podcast hosted by David Bollier, 1 February, https://david-bollier.simplecast.com/episodes/sara-arnold-sandra-nieseen-on-moving-toward-defashion-and-degrowth}}
7. _{^{The activist group Fashion Act Now, which evolved out of Extinction Rebellion, originated the term “defashion” in November 2021, as a ‘provocative term that describes the role that Fashion must play in degrowth.’ https://www.fashionactnow.org/about}}
8. _{^{Niessen, Sandra (2022) 'Defining Defashion: A Manifesto for Degrowth' in: International Journal of Fashion Studies. Vol. 9(2), p. 439.}}
9. _{^{Hermann, Ulrike (2022) Das Ende des Kapitalismus: Warum Wachstum und Klimschutz nicht vereinbar sind – und wie wir in Zukunft leben. Köln:Kiepenheuer & Witsch.}}
10. _{^{Escobar, Arturo (2017) Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the making of Worlds, Durham & London: Duke University Press, p. 175.}}

organisers

The Digital Multilogues on Fashion Education X Fashioning Education

• Franziska Schreiber, Prof, “Fashion I Body I Digitality”, Berlin University of the Arts, The Digital Multilogues on Fashion Education X Fashioning Education

• Renate Stauss, Prof Dr, Fashion Studies, Department of Communications, Media and Culture, The American University of Paris & Associate Lecturer at Berlin University of the Arts, The Digital Multilogues on Fashion Education X Fashioning Education

• Valeska Schmidt-Thomsen, Prof, Fashion Design, Institute of Experimental Fashion & Textiles Design, Berlin University of the Arts, Fashioning Education

_{conference board}

Members of the Einstein Circle (Fashioning Education), Berit Greinke (Dr, Junior Professor in Wearable Computing at Berlin University of the Arts and Einstein Center Digital Future (ECDF)), Britta Bommert (Dr, Curator of the Fashion Image Collection – Lipperheide Costume Library of the Art Library, Berlin), Christina H. Moon (PhD, Associate Professor of Fashion Studies in the School of Art and Design History and Theory, Parsons School of Design New York), Dilys Williams (Prof, Director of Centre for Sustainable Fashion, London College of Fashion, UAL), Lesiba Mabitsela ( Interdisciplinary artist, designer and fashion practitioner, founding member of the African Fashion Research Institute, Johannesburg), Lisa Meier (Prof, Film Costume Design at the Berlin University of the Arts), Melchior Rasch (Student of Fashion Design, Institute of Experimental Fashion & Textiles Design, Berlin University of the Arts), Oliver Ibert (Prof Dr, Director of the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space & Professor of Socio-Spatial Transformation at the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg), Patrick Presch (Curator of Education in the Education and Outreach department of the National Museums Berlin, part of the project management of Haus Bastian, the Centre for Cultural Education & lecturer at the Technical University of Berlin),Tanveer Ahmed ( senior Lecturer, Fashion & Race, Central Saint Martins, London), Wowo Kraus (Prof, Fashion Design at the Berlin University of the Arts), Zowie Broach (Prof, Head of Programme, Fashion, The Royal College of Art, London).

_{contributions}

Come together!

_{^{Please make all contributions collaborative. They should be facilitated by two or more people from different educational, disciplinary or cultural contexts.}}

We invite collaborative contributions in the following formats:

• • 15-minute collaborative papers (in-person)
• • 120-minute collaborative workshops (in-person)
• • 10-minute learning project presentations (in-person)
• • 90-minute local-global fashion walks (hybrid)
• • learning to de-fashion films (hybrid)

_{^{See details below. All submissions will be reviewed in a double-blind process by a scientific committee. A selection of contributions will be published}}.

_^timeline:

• • 15 March 2023: deadline for all proposals (except film)
• • 30 April 2023: publication of selection of papers, workshops, presentations, walks
• • 15 May 2023: submission of learning to de-fashion films
• • 30 May 2023: publication of selection of films
• • 15 June 2023: publication of preliminary programme
• • 15 June 2023: registration opens

_^details:

• • principal language of conference is English
• • all proposals will be reviewed in a double-blind process by a scientific committee. A selection of contributions will be published.
• For all contributions, please submit until 15 March 2023 following submission button above
• • abstract of 250 words with indication of format, title and five keywords
• • collaborators’ information (name, job title, affiliation, contact details, 60-word bio blurb)

_^formats:

15-minute collaborative papers (in-person)

• • share research & practice concerning didactic, pedagogic and epistemological questions around de-fashioning education
• • explore and illustrate the diversity and complexity of the field and practices of learning & leading learning fashion
• • inspire collaborative research and action
• • paper exchanges will be recorded
• • locations: James Simons Gallery Auditorium and Berlin University of the Arts

120-minute collaborative workshops (in-person)

• • interactive small-scale workshops for up to 15 participants – mini-multilogues that enable all voices to sound
• • provide an opportunity for fashion learners of different levels, institutions and specialisms to meet, exchange experience, and develop ideas together around de-fashioning education, and/or consequent pedagogic, didactic and epistemological challenges
• • foster cross-disciplinary and trans-cultural reflection and collaboration through short inputs and different exploratory practices of making, debating, writing, performing, drawing, dancing, crafting etc.
• • workshops will not be recorded
• • locations: Haus Bastian – Centre for Cultural Education and Berlin University of the Arts

10-minute learning project presentations (in-person)

• • foster an exchange on the best, the worst, the most radical, risky, transformative or humorous projects
• • presented as part of a learning laboratory for collegial enrichment
• • provide cross-cultural learning exchanges & inspire future collaborations
• • presentations will not be recorded
• • locations: Haus Bastian – Centre for Cultural Education and Berlin University of the Arts

90-minute global/local fashion walks

• • curate theme-based walks rooted in local practices and knowledges
• • celebrate and showcase local fashion cultures, communities, histories, people and places: introduce the unknown, unusual, unofficial, undervalued, unrecognised – to a global audience
• • walk locally, stream globally – enable cross-cultural connections
• • make people experience local tastes, sounds and sensations
• • walks will be scheduled for 24 consecutive hours across different time zones on the conference days (please suggest a convenient time for your location)
• • local registration required & organized by respective curators/guides
• • online participation unlimited and free
• • livestreams organized by respective local curators/guides, links published in conference program
• • walks will be recorded

Learning to de-fashion films

• • share inspiring, innovative and instructive video tutorials dedicated to the rich plurality of fashion making
• • de-hierarchize fashion learning for an audience of everyone
• • share imitable and adaptable knowledges and skills around acts and techniques of de-fashioning – to inspire active making cultures, self-teaching and -empowerment
• • celebrate the connective, creative potential of opensource co-learning and de-fashioning
• • submission deadline 15 May 2023
• • please submit link to online screener (e.g. You Tube/Vimeo), and video descriptor of 250 words with title, thematic and visual concept, wider relevance, and five keywords
• • screenings will take place on both conference days on location and online for in-person or remote sessions

^{To submit follow submission button in menu bar.}