6000 Textiles Graduates: 350 jobs?

Is it ethical to expect undergraduates to invest £12000 in their three year textile course when there are only 350 textile jobs coming up in the UK each year?

Is it ethical to train textiles graduates to Master's level in one year when it takes three months to research, draft, review and write an informed dissertation?

Do these figures point towards an education system that ultimately focuses on training overseas students who take their skills to where the industry is?

If yes, then what does this imply for British tutors and the content of their courses?

Who is mapping the subsequent global picture: the design, production, consumption and post-consumption textile systems?

Where is the training in social entrepreneurship relating to these new scenarios?

If you're interested in joining this dialogue then contact Slow Textiles today at

emma_at_slowtextiles.org

On Waste:

Imitating our biosphere, Biosphere 2, Arizona, USA.

Big thoughts on duplication, biomimicry and provocations on

how the substitute renders the original obsolete:

"Darwin's Artificial Ancestors and the Terroristic Dream of the Transparency of the Good"

Fashion, Textiles and the Environment CCANW Programme

www.fromsomwhere.co.uk

Slow Textiles' next publication takes place at the

Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World

as part of their extensive new

Fashion, Textiles and the Environment Programme.

This includes a Materials Actions Seminar on October 16th 2010 in the

Studio Theatre,

Plymouth College of Art, UK, 10am til 3:30pm.

Free, though booking essential: exhibitions@plymouthart.ac.uk

On Fashion:

On the Fashioning Process:

Elizabeth Wilson's definition in

Adorned in Dreams,

"A new fashion starts from rejection of the old and, often, an eager embracing of what was previously considered ugly; it therefore subtly undercuts its own assertion that the latest thing is somehow the final solution to the problem of how to look."

Note to self:

the substitute renders the original more disposable.

Principles of Sustainable Development

In the United Nations' blueprint for sustainable development, Agenda 21, six principles are laid out. These describe how a sustainable community might interact with other communities and with nature.

They also highlight the main drivers behind Slow Textiles:

Environmental Protection.

The resources and life-support systems needed for continuance of human wellbeing and all life must be protected.

Development.

'Quality of life' should be improved, with economic development as one of the objectives, not the sole objective.

Futurity.

The interests of future generations should be considered in what we leave behind.

Equity.

Sustainability will not work if the world's resources are unfairly distributed or if the the poor pay a disproportionate part of the costs of the transition to sustainability (as everyone has a part to play).

Diversity.

Diverse environmental, social and economic systems are generally more robust and less vulnerable to irreversible or catastrophic damage; diversity also allows individuals to chose more sustainable options.

Participation.

Sustainability cannot be imposed but requires the support and involvement of all sections of the community and all communities; this requires ensuring opportunities for participation in decision-making.

Definitions of Fast Fashion

International definitions of Fast.

If you have an example of branding that needs no language

to describe its inherently fast ethos, please add the link.

Slow Textiles Member's Work Selected for New Design Book

Emma Neuberg's upcycled, embroidered table-linen to feature in a new design book, alongside other exciting fashion and interiors' designers, in 2011.

Attunement, Behaviour and Sustainability: the debate grows

In anticipation of TED's Summer Debate on July 16th 2010.

The End of the World,

1851-3, oil painting on canvas by the English painter John Martin.

According to Frances Carey, Deputy Keeper in the Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum, the painting shows the destruction of Babylon and the material world by natural cataclysm.

A provocation relating to some psychological roots of environmental angst:

"The cultural tragedy is reflected in the personal tragedy of the infant with failed maternal support; the tragedy of the infant is reflected in a cultural wasteland of devastation and despair.

In this way, the deepest internal and widest external forms of disintegration interpenetrate at the point of environmental failure.

At the dark heart of the anti-group is the dread of insufficiency and, beyond that, of extinction."

Morris Nitsun, 1966.