Weaving sustainability into education
Lenzing at their Application Innovation Center
With 100+ educational institutions around the world now onboard as partners for the Redress Design Award, we are ramping up our engagement with educators in a bid to challenge curriculums in higher education, whilst providing additional critical learning materials on the environmental and social challenges facing the industry today to the next generation of the fashion industry.
Redress is not only passionate about inspiring emerging designers but also about creating lasting change in institutions. This cycle we have expanded our teaching resources, adding a new chapter on Fibres to our Sustainable Fashion Educator Pack, along with added project briefs contributed by educational experts across the world including Jo Lau of Hong Kong Design Institute, Jay Quek of Raffles Design Institute Singapore, Dr. Alice Payne and Lauren Solomon of Queensland University of Technology, and Holly McQuillan.
The Educator Pack, complete with ready-to-use lectures, exercises and project briefs on up-cycling, reconstruction, zero-waste and more, has been created for educators to effortlessly weave sustainable fashion into their current curriculums and has already seen more than 500 downloads from our online Learn platform.
Our ongoing Educator Workshops are integral in fuelling the development of our work with tertiary institutions. Earlier in May, we co-hosted our Redress Design Award 2018 Educator Workshop with competition sponsor Lenzing at their Application Innovation Center in Hong Kong. Teachers in higher education and their students were invited to gain insight into sustainable developments in the industry via Lenzing’s latest fibre innovations (also featured in our Educator Pack). The group then took part in an exclusive tour of the centre’s facilities where Lenzing fibres are developed and tested, among them, Refibra™ branded lyocell fibre and the EcoVero™ branded viscose fibre.
Critically, educators then joined us for exploratory workshops specially designed by Redress in collaboration with Dr. Alana James (Heriot-Watt University) and Dr. Alison Gwilt (Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, University of South Australia) in which they reflected on the integration of sustainability into their curriculums and identified areas of required support and specific action points for their own academic year plans.
Other workshops held this year have included Sheffield, UK and Shanghai, China. Upcoming sessions will be held in Adelaide, Australia later this year with plans in progress for Paris, France. Do get in touch if you are an educator interested in joining. Those elsewhere - register now for your free pack at www.redressdesignaward.com/educatorpack