Find the brief of the challenge here: Fast Fashion & Climate Change Choice Board by Natalie Pang
For this challenge, I connect it with a recent volunteering experience that involved fast fashion and sustainability at Science World.
The other day my friend K texted me to ask if I could volunteer last minute with their organization Threading Change, a fashion and sustainability non-profit based in Vancouver, BC. This organization addresses the systemic injustices and inequities that persist in the global fashion industry through education, collaboration with innovative ethical brands, and consultation with stakeholders to advocate for a just fashion future and circular economy.
They were one of the participating organizations for the Girls in STEAM Summit held at Science World, focusing on bringing learners from ages 12-14 to expand their interest and explore potential career fields in STEAM.
For our table, K had come up with the activity idea. We asked learners to think about the environmental impact that fast fashion has, while sharing some current potential solutions and innovations that directly tackle this issue, from biodegradable fabrics made from kelp to ethical lab-grown leather. We invited the learners to invent a type of fabric they would like to see in the future that can be sustainable and eco-friendly. They would write down their ideas on a square patch of scrap fabric that they would sew together to create a quilt.
Some of the ideas they came up with were rather funny and creative :
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- Fabric that stretches as you grow so it can be one-size-fits-all.
- Fabric that does not stain easily so that it saves water and helps out mothers around the world
- Fabric that is invisible
- Fabric that changes color under the sun
- Fabric with built-in deodorant
It was rather interesting chatting to the various learners and seeing their reaction. Some of them were super engaged with the activity, and seemed rather practiced with sewing; some were inexperienced but excited to learn; some seemed more disenchanted by the activity and just wanted a stamp on their activity passport.
Through chatting with the learners, those who were engaged and actively participating usually expressed artistic interest of their own accord, had someone in their family had taught them how to sew, or other crafting experience in DIY maker culture.
Reflecting back on this activity at Science World, I think it would be beneficial to incorporate aspects of understanding labour exploitation and unsafe working conditions of underpaid workers disproportionally located in the Global South, as labour concerns are also deeply intertwined with environmental impacts when it comes to discussion on sustainability. Through actual experiencing of sewing the quilt squares together, learners can have an idea of how laborious it actually is to create clothing that we wear day-to-day.
Human.Touch.Clothing is a clothing brand that visualizes the human labour essential to clothing manufacturing by using paint in the sewing process to show the handling process. It is a rather simple but powerful way to envision the invisible labour that consumers often overlook when they buy fast fashion.
Reflecting back on to the maker challenge as a whole, though it encourages learners to reflect on the environmental impacts and to create an action plan, I believe it was a missed opportunity to engage with the subject matter in a more tactile, embodied way when it comes to thinking about fast fashion and climate change, and create a more impactful exercise on reflecting on sustainability on a multi-faceted level.