This paper explores the concept of the circular economy within the context of fashion and textile design in the UK, and does so from the textile and fashion perspectives to explore how this might be achieved. Within the UK alone, we dispose of approximately 10,000 garments every ten minutes (Kerr & Foster, 2011). This project focuses specifically on the practice of textile and fashion design in the UK to consider a more holistic approach for designing and manufacturing within these sectors. Our research aims are to explore the contribution open design can make in implementing the circular economy and thus a more sustainable material future. We ask what are the new models and systems of production that will support a circular economy in textiles? In this work we propose a vision for circular economic models of production in fashion and textiles that adopt open design approaches.
Design-led innovation interventions are predicated on the importance of establishing complex disciplinary collaborations. This paper reflects on the effects of different co-design methods to support knowledge exchange and the co-creation of new business ideas with multidisciplinary participants. It draws on data collected from sandpit style events entitled Chiasma, undertaken as part of the knowledge exchange hub, Design in Action (DiA) in which co-design methods were used to bring designers, entrepreneurs, and academics together to develop innovative business ideas in Scotland. Employing a thematic analysis of idea generation, team formation, and idea development, we suggest that a more nuanced range of methods, tools, and techniques can strengthen multidisciplinary engagement and participation. We argue that such approaches can be enhanced by designers and researchers' shifting focus from co-design methods to supporting collaborative mindsets in knowledge exchange towards innovation.
Until recently, the Western biomedical paradigm has been effective in delivering health care, however this model is not positioned to tackle complex societal challenges or solve the current problems facing health care and delivery. The future of medicine requires a shift to a patient-centric model and in so doing the Internet has a significant role to play. The disciplines of Health Web Science and Medicine 2.0 are pivotal to this approach. This viewpoint paper argues that these disciplines, together with the field of design, can tackle these challenges. Drawing together ideas from design practice and research, complexity theory, and participatory action research we depict design as an approach that is fundamentally social and linked to concepts of person-centered care. We discuss the role of design, specifically co-design, in understanding the social, psychological, and behavioral dimensions of illness and the implications for the design of future care towards transforming the patient experience. This paper builds on the presentations and subsequent interdisciplinary dialogue that developed from the panel session "Transforming Patient Experience: Health Web Science Meets Web 2.0" at the 2013 Medicine 2.0 conference in London.
This article explores design innovation approaches in the creative economy in the Northern Isles of Scotland, specifically, the Shetland archipelago, focusing on the textiles sector. Shetland has a rich history of craft work, including Fair Isle knitting and lace making. We contend that the value of cultural assets in contributing to the creative economy is underexamined and that there is a paucity of understanding of the innovative potential of craft and creative practitioners in the region. The insights presented are derived from Innovation from Tradition workshops, which aimed to reframe the creative economy within an island context, elicit knowledge surrounding local cultural assets and explore the innovative capabilities of creative practitioners. We reflect on how a design innovation approach allowed us to garner the collective wisdom held in communities and foreground the focal themes of practice, place and people.
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) encounter specific barriers in engaging in innovation. This paper explores the concept of open innovation and how best conditions conducive to this can be created to support SMEs to engage in innovation. It presents chiasma -innovation workshops -as a method towards a collaborative approach that brings together SMEs, designers and academics. Design in action (DiA) is a knowledge exchange hub, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which draws together six universities and art schools across Scotland. Adopting a qualitative approach, the paper presents an ongoing process, whereby the approach emerges from action research in conversation with the actors involved.
This paper explores the work in the area of Material Futuresundertaken by researchers at The Glasgow School of Art (GSA). We begin by presenting current debates within the textile sector and outline the challenges of the circular economy. The Scottish Government have established a £17 million fund to catalyse innovative approaches for the circular economy, which support closed-loop systems including collaboration, evaluation of different methods and future material ecologies. We discuss future material ecologies in two case studies in order to extrapolate the ways in which creative and participatory design approaches can be used to stimulate dialogue around the circular economy, broader environmental and economic issues and the socio-cultural implications. We identify six design principles for researchers and practitioners to consider when facilitating circular conversations and the evolving role of the textile designer. We go on to highlight the significance of design-led approaches in strengthening communication, promoting creative action and embedding collaborative ways of working. We conclude by making recommendations for future research and practice and how the insights might be expanded upon to support ethical, responsible and sustainable material futures.
National creative and cultural industries policy agendas tend to focus on the economic impact of the sector often favouring scalable digital activities based in global clusters, which underpin notions of growth. There has, however, been a re-emergence of craft, which may not be scalable in the same way, into public debate, but which is increasingly recognised as part of a growing industrial sector, with benefits linked to educational, cultural and economic policy agendas. Accordingly, policymakers have begun to view craft as a stimulus to develop local and regional economies, skills and materials in relation to wider networks. Within this push towards craft-driven creative place making and economic growth, it has been argued that more sophisticated understandings of the "local" are needed that go beyond those which are inward and parochial. Based on AHRC-funded empirical research undertaken in the Northern Isles of Scotland with craft practitioners, this article attempts to provide evidence of the place-based nature of craft work highlighting both opportunities as well as constraints linked to contexts that are often referred to as remote and peripheral when contrasted with urban locations. This article argues that there is a dissonance between high-profile creative-economy policies and the political economy of the "lived experience" of craft work in non-metropolitan settings. We argue for future investigation into, what we term, fractal growthgrowth and development that considers multiple dimensionsas being a valid and valuable outcome of creative practice, which cannot be easily scaled.
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