PEDAGOGY
Fashion Recipes for the Future is an out-of-this-world educational toolkit and playful pedagogical approach
towards sustainability*-focused fashion education for children and young people, as well as adults.
It encompasses creative, playful learning methods, exploring how dress-ups, imaginative play, and speculative design
can be used as tools to engage young people in alternative ways of experiencing and owning fashion.
This pedagogical methodology embraces experimental
play with clothing and imagination to critically and implicitly challenge Fashion’s harmful capitalist model of extraction
and consumption.
Aiming to instil a deeper relationship with clothing
and fashion, this approach explores ways in which
we interact with fashion that are overlooked and excluded
from the dominant capitalist, trend-based model.
Purpose
Mission
These methods aim to nurture more thoughtful
interactions and joyful experiences with fashion.
Through an enhanced understanding of materiality,
this approach encourages a reevaluation of the usefulness of fashion and clothing to us, emotionally and physically.
It tacitly asks us what role fashion plays in our lives and what role we want it to play in society, both now and in the future.
Through adult’s facilitation of and participation in these methods and activities, they too become engaged in reexperiencing their wardrobes, challenging their relationship with fashion, while learning from young people’s openness and curiosity.
Rather than encouraging materialism through dress-ups, dressing-up is used as a vehicle for sustainability education and somatic method for exploring alternative ideas and imaginary worlds, shifting our relationship with clothing from valuing quantity to quality, material qualities and experience.
Method
Sustainable & Sustainability
*
are used as umbrella terms to describe a...
transformed, revitalised, inclusive & collaborative future of fashion...
where community & practices of care are nurtured so all human,
non-human & more-than-human beings flourish...
PHILOSOPHY
'Fashion Recipes For The Future' strives to move towards a
rebalancing of both Fashion and educational systems.
In fashion, this transition values revitalisation, joy, inclusivity, collaboration and care.
In education, this involves shifting from a binary dynamic in learning to a
fluid dynamic of knowledge exchange and engagement between adults and young people.
The Fashion Industry, as it exists currently, likewise needs to embark in a fluid learning dynamic,
dismantling its hierarchical, colonial, exploitative power structures between and within people and planet.
Paradigm Shift in Learning & Education
Student
(Young
Person)
Teacher
(Adult)
=
Shifting from a
binary dynamic to
a fluid dynamic of
knowledge exchange
& engagement
How can we practice a fluid learning dynamic, especially when using these recipes? As adults, we can:
-
View children and young people as equal to us.
-
Value children and young people’s perspectives, ideas and voices, considering them as important as our own.
-
Understand that as adults, we learn just as much from children and young people as they do from us.
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Consider children and young people as active participants in shaping both the present and the future.
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Play with children (& other adults), engaging collaboratively and collectively.
-
Foster playfulness, imagination, experimentation and ideation.
Engaging in a fluid learning dynamic between adults and young people doesn't remove the need for guidance
and structure from adults. It is instead a shift in thinking, engaging and learning.
How can we practice a transition to an inclusive, revitalised and joyful fashion system?
-
We can engage with our clothing in alternative ways.
-
We can imagine alternative worlds and stories.
-
We can continually critique the messaging of society, media and industry.
-
We can care about where our clothes come from, what they’re made of, who made them & where they end up.
Adopting an ‘out-of-this-world’ approach to education and embracing radical participatory and collaborative engagement, these learning methods see young people as valuable critiques of and active participants in shaping the future of fashion.
Through utilising young people’s interrogation and perspectives, we can reform and rebuild the Fashion system into one built on joy, revitalisation and inclusion for all forms of life.
‘Fashion Recipes For the Future’ seeks to contribute towards transitioning to a positive future of fashion and education for and as sustainability.