fashioning education is a collaborative research initiative to open, facilitate and formalise the debate on fashion education against the backdrop of global social transformations.

It brings together experts and creatives from different fields of fashion related education, research and practice into critical conversation and exploration of the transformative potential of fashion education.

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from 30 May 2024
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The Digital Multilogue on Fashion Education
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fashioning education
15 & 16 September 2023
Berlin I Hybrid

DE-FASHIONING EDUCATION

A critical thinking and making conference
Visit conference website here
hosted at Berlin University of the Arts
supported by Einstein Foundation, Berlin University of the Arts, The American University of Paris and InKüLe

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conference I hybrid

De-Fashioning Education

‘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…’
[1] bell hooks, 1994

De-Fashioning Education was 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.[2] De-Fashioning Education explored 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.[3] De-Fashioning Education was an open access conference, a collaborative contemplative space to consider contradictions and develop shared action. It invited to re-imagine how we can learn for interexistence and interbeing – fashion education for the pluriverse.[4]

[1] hooks, bell (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge, p. 12

[2] 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.
[3] 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.
[4] Escobar, Arturo (2017) Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the making of Worlds, Durham & London: Duke University Press, p. 175.

19 05 2022
6-7:30 pm (CEST)

Transformation
through fashion education ?→Towards Systemic Change

online

project presentations by
Laya Chirravuru (India): Roots Studio
Lesiba Mabitsela (South Africa): The Cutting Room Project
Stephanie Barker-Fry(UK): ReGo

and long table contributions by
fashion students Timisola Shasanya (CSM, UK) & Melchior Rasch (UdK, Germany) and members offashioning education Dilys Williams (CSF, UK), Oliver Ibert (IRS, Germany), Tanveer Ahmed (CSM, UK) et.al.

hosted at the Berlin University of the Arts
funded by Einstein Foundation Berlin

In the modernist logic of the global west fashion was constructed as the favorite child of capitalism. Fashion was defined as essentially transient, modern, urban – thus western. Fashion Education has fed a system based on this narrative. Ever faster. Ever more. One of the fastest growing educational sectors. To contribute to regenerative formation, fashion education has to become unfashionable. It has to disrupt itself, to re-configure itself – to be disruptive.

“Transformation through fashion education? Towards Systemic Change”

project presentations by

Laya Chirravuru (India): Roots Studio
Lesiba Mabitsela (South Africa): The Cutting Room Project
Stephanie Barker-Fry(UK): ReGo

and long table contributions by

fashion students Timisola Shasanya (CSM, UK) & Melchior Rasch (UdK, Germany)
and members of fashioning education
Dilys Williams (CSF, UK),
Oliver Ibert (IRS, Germany),
Tanveer Ahmed (CSM, UK) et.al.

With its second public event fashioning education continued to explore the transformative potentials of different fashion educational settings. It debated the extent to which fashion education can contribute to regeneration – from within. It invited opposing positions to a long table discussion supplemented by showcases of social fashion educational projects dedicated to new ecologies of community based on principles of collectivity, collaboration and care – proposing transformative tactics.

Enjoy the full recording here.

24 05 2021
6-7 pm (CET)

The End of Fashion Education ?→Towards New Beginnings

talk & discussion
online

What can fashion education do?

With its first public event fashioning education explored the potentials of fashion education beyond the tertiary level. Against the backdrop of some of the fundamental shifts and challenges in fashion education “The End of Fashion Education? Towards New Beginnings” acknowledged the need for reform and re-orientation in the way fashion is learnt and taught. It invited different perspectives on the positive educational impact: more humane, more social and more collaborative/collective. Nadine Gonzalez of CASA 93 (Paris, France), Mikele Goitom & Arabella Stewart of ARAKELE (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) and Kim Hou of ABOUT A WORKER (Paris, France) shared their respective works framed by an introduction of Franziska Schreiber & Renate Stauss of FASHION IS A GREAT TEACHER (Berlin, Germany).

Enjoy the recordings!

Get more information and see all recordings here.