Project ZERO IMPACT
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
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Project Description
Project ZERO IMPACT was as a cooperation of two educational institutions (AFAD Bratislava, SK and FUD UJEP Ustí n. Labem, CZ) as part of the WEARME FASHION DESIGN PROGRAM. It aims to contribute to the development of a sustainable fashion market by involving professionals from the fashion industry to support a future generation of designers. The project aims to connect the creative community with general public to raise awareness and increase knowledge about the.sustainable fashion on local level
Project Region
EU Programme or fund
Description of the project
Summary
Project ZERO IMPACT was realized as a cooperation of two educational institutions (AFAD Bratislava, SK and FUD UJEP Ustí nad Labem, CZ) as part of the WEARME FASHION DESIGN PROGRAM. It aimed to contribute to the development of a sustainable fashion market by involving professionals from the fashion industry who bring their experiences and sustainable resources to support a future generation of designers. With this program, the creative community within local universities and fashion schools was able to experience and practice fashion design according to sustainable principles, processes and resources. This privileged contact with the industrial world supports the education of a new generation of designers, those will be provided by unique knowledge and will build a strong network of like-minded people.
WEARME FASHION has launched the WEARME FASHION DESIGN PROGRAM as an integral part of a training program specifically developed for universities and fashion schools. The aim is to enable collaboration between manufacturers and fashion schools to highlight the importance of high-quality fabrics, heritage and innovation, with a positive outcome for the sustainable fashion market. The students of the two participating universities from SK and CZ also had the opportunity to visit the production facilities (family owned traditional manufacturers in north Italy) of selected manufacturers to experience the production of the textiles straight at the source.
The final designs developed during the semester program have been locally showcased at several Fashion Weeks (CZ: Prague, SK: Bratislava, Kosice, BL: Minsk) and in two design-exhibitions (SK: Bratislava, AT: Vienna). In addition, the projects public presentation (physical and onlibne) aimins to connect the creative community with the general public in order to raise awareness, increasing knowledge about the sustainable fashion market on a local level
Key objectives for sustainability
ieThe project as such was in its idea primarily aimed to deal with sustainability in fashion - in the fashion design stage and particularly in design education. Students were provided with sustainably produced textiles from european manufacturers to work on their fashion collection. An integral part of the project was also an excursion to Italy, where students of both institutions had the opportunity to establish connections with selected manufacturers from the WEARME FASHION network. The participants went on a 2,000 km journey to acquire knowledge of the textiles production cycle and to experiment with textile production directly on-site and learn about the details and characteristics of sustainable textile materials (new and recycled wool, polyamide, cotton...).
In order to maximise student learning and the project value, universities, staff and faculty members have enabled students to cooperate, highlighting the basic values necessary to be successful in a highly competitive fashion marketplace, which include basic ideas of sustainability - cooperation, idea sharing, knowledge and skills, flexibility and adaptability to the uncertainties of the creative field. Each student developed a series of 3garments which were at the end presented all together in a shared presentation and often combined to create outfits in combining the work of different authors. This idea of letting one owns ideas go and stay open for reinterpretation and creating a shared collective collection of garments was an important part of the learning process towards sustainability in fashion - moving form the understanding of individual to collective creation, timelessness, durability and longevity.
The project aimed to encourage students to collaborate with each other in order to develop regionally oriented projects that create local market solutions and enable local citizens to use more high-quality and low-impact fashion garments developed by young fashion designers.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
The project itself was created within the field of fashion design education, the aesthetics and quality of experience (both on the side of the creator and the audience - the user) are one of the projects own inherent qualities, as the goal of creating sustainable fashion models can only be achieved by creating materially, qualitatively and emotionally lasting products. The aesthetic, formal and functional aspects of the created clothing are all important. The project shows both to professionals and the broad public an example of how the aesthetic and functional aspects can be connected to mediate the idea of future sustainable fashion models.
Key objectives for inclusion
The project aims to include and connect different players from the fashion design, manufacture, distribution, education and application field. Within this broad spectrum it aims to create a sustainable co-operation network not only of professionals from the manufacture and creation field, but also to educate the broad public and user. As only by educating on the complex issues and showing the future models will have the chance to create new consumer and usage models of clothing which will be able to provide the function by meeting the desire for self-expression.
By presenting the fashion collection as group work (of students who participated from 2 different universities) combining the garments of different students combined in ever-changing outfits the idea of sharing knowledge and outcomes not only provides an example of good practice, but also showcases a path of inclusion of different partner - designer, user, manufacturer - in a design process.
Results in relation to category
The project can be seen as a kick-off for further educational co-operation of both university project partners - KTT VSVU and AOTD FUD AFAD and the WEAREM FASHION initiative, building a long lasting interdisciplinar educational programme both connecting Universities, manufacturers and distributors.
It has also further served as basis for new Visegrad Fund supported project of V4 sustainable fashion initiative - Budapest FASHION FORWARD CONFERENCE 2021
How Citizens benefit
The groups affected by the project are both students of fashion design and also the general public - not only the ones particularly interested in fashion, as we all wear clothes every day and need them on a daily basis. The participating design students have been actively included in working on the project. As the acquired knowledge has been broadly shared via fashion shows and exhibitions as well as in published project-reports in open source platforms, it can be accessed by any interested design students, professionals or public in the aim to educate, shape and give feedback.
Innovative character
As the educational models within design are leading towards sustainability and open source evolving systems, the projects innovation character lyes mainly in the active participation and collaboration of different project partners - education, manufacturers and designers - with the aim to built and create new models of sustainable fashion production which do not exist yet. To proof them, test and further develop.
The collaboration of industry and university education on creating and testing new models of local economy, production etc are the most innovative project character.
