As Harry Morrison, Director of Sustainability Services at Accenture states,
"To really capture the prize of sustainable business, you can't just do business as usual... Successful sustainable businesses put social goals and environmental frameworks at the heart of their strategy, the heart of their engagement with strategies and the heart of their supply chains..”
Fortune Favours the Brave Report, 2013.
What does the artist's material evoke?
What does the resin block represent?
What does the convergence of material and immaterial look like?
How does divergence and convergence relate to breaking and folding?
What is manifest in Han touch?
How does 'spatial behaviour' relate to emotional lives?
What is fanaticism an expression of?
What is Qi energy an expression of - for the individual and the group?
What are the 'sounds of fashion' an expression of?
What am I knitting together?
What is pattern-cutting an expression of?
What am I stitching together?
What are the dynamics within craft that keeps the maker engaged?
How does garment making relate to processes of integration and fragmentation?
What is the shoe an expression of?
What is the coded message?
What is being stitched together?
What is the 'manimal' an expression of?
What is sensory perception an expression of?
Over the next 2 months, I'm here to challenge you and get you talking about all the meanings in your work.
When we have done this, as individuals and a research group, your personal and collective professional trajectories will be the most potent in UK textiles research history. You'll be innovating as a group and pioneering a new research model.
Every Wednesday, starting 2pm on 5th Feb 2014, I'll present a short, illustrated, themed talk followed by experiential group and individual exercises to get your research out of your head and into a collective space where co-design, reflection, expansion of insight/vision and more complex design thinking begins. Not only does this extend your reach and impact as an innovator and PhD candidate, it serves to form a collective identity within the Fashion & Textiles Research group that is exclusive, useful, actionable and unique in the world.
There's also the opportunity to create a Fashion & Textiles Research Capsule Collection as a collective, publishable output and artefact (utilising your material) to spearhead cultural change: a co-created outcome of our work that we can present, as a group, as new knowledge. This sets in motion a collective story and platform for exhibition before you have even graduated!
Our 10-week work together has the potential to stimulate interconnected design thinking at its best; it also represents, imparts and promotes a relational structure that is at the heart of sustainable design and sustainable design thinking.
You're invited to be play a central role in this project.
With best wishes,
Emma
#DesignThinkingforSustainableTextiles
Day 1
Is My Research Really New Knowledge?
A Seminar & Workshop on the Relationship between New Knowledge and Individuation
Lecture:
Where Did New Knowledge Take Previous RCA Textiles Research Graduates?
Case Studies of Dr Nigel Marshall, Dr Joan Farrer, Dr Jane Harris, Dr Sharon Baurley and Dr Jenny Tillotson.
This talk covers: what is new knowledge; what is individuation; list the researchers's topics and theses; how have the students referenced them; google them together to see their websites and Google Images page; where is the creative output? where is the New Knowledge now? The complex relationship between researcher/employee/artist/designer/marketeer/fundraiser. Mention institutionalization.
In Jungian psychology[edit]
In Jungian psychology, also called analytical psychology, it expresses the process in which the individual self develops out of an undifferentiated unconscious. It is a developmentalpsychic process during which innate elements of personality, the components of the immature psyche, and the experiences of the person's life become integrated over time into a well-functioning whole.
According to Jungian psychology, individuation is a process of psychological integration. "In general, it is the process by which individual beings are formed and differentiated [from other human beings]; in particular, it is the development of the psychological individual as a being distinct from the general, collective psychology." [3]
Individuation is a process of transformation whereby the personal and collective unconscious are brought into consciousness (e.g., by means of dreams, active imagination, or free association) to be assimilated into the whole personality. It is a completely natural process necessary for the integration of the psyche.[4] Individuation has a holistic healing effect on the person, both mentally and physically.
Experiential Group:
a) What is my New Knowledge? write it down
b) Sit in pairs and ask your partner, "What would you say my New Knowledge is?"
Colour My Mind
Emma gives you a colouring-in exercise
a) Where will my New Knowledge take me? write it down
b) Sit in pairs and ask your partner, "Where would you say my New Knowledge will take me?"
Embroider My Mind
Emma gives you a sewing exercise
DAY 2
The Fabric of Research:
Dr Neuberg's Seminars & Workshops Designed to Make PhD Researchers & Their Work Shine
Day 2
Focus on My Design Thinking, not My Research
A Seminar & Workshop on the Relationship between Research without Design Thinking and Unsustainability
Fill Before Card
Lecture:
Where Did Design Thinking Take Previous RCA Textiles Research Graduates?
Case Studies of Dr Natalie Woolf, Dr Frances Geesin and Dr Julie Behseta
This talk covers: what is design thinking; what is unsustainability; list the predecessors topics and theses; how have the students referenced them; google them together to see their websites and Google Images page; where is the creative output? where is the design thinking? what is the difference between design thinking and research?
Introduce Tim Brown's Design Thinking article, the Harvard Business Review; his account for future business:
"Rather than asking designers to make an already developed idea more attractive to consumers, companies are asking them to create ideas that better meet consumers’ needs and desires. The former role is tactical, and results in limited value creation; the latter is strategic, and leads to dramatic new forms of value.."
"THE POTENTIAL OF THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY"
Group Exercise:
a) How would I develop their Design Thinking? write it down
b) Sit in pairs and ask your partner, "How would you improve their Design Thinking?"
a) What is my Design Thinking? write it down
b) Sit in pairs and ask your partner, "How might I improve my Design Thinking?"
Colouring My Mind
Emma gives you a colouring-in exercise
Introduce the Tetrad Model for Personal and Professional variations:
The tetrad is a means of examining the effects on society of any technology/medium (put another way: a means of explaining the social processes underlying the adoption of a technology/medium[2]) by dividing its effects into four categories and displaying them simultaneously. Marshall McLuhan designed the tetrad as a pedagogical tool in 1988, phrasing his laws as questions with which to consider any medium:
- What does the medium enhance?
- What does the medium make obsolete?
- What does the medium retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier?
- What does the medium flip into when pushed to extremes?
The laws of the tetrad exist simultaneously, not successively or chronologically, and allow the questioner to explore the "grammar and syntax" of the "language" of media. McLuhan departs from his mentor Harold Innis in suggesting that a medium "overheats", or reverses into an opposing form, when taken to its extreme.[3]
By way of example,
- Enhancement (figure): What the medium amplifies or intensifies. For example, radio amplifies news and music via sound.
- Obsolescence (ground): What the medium drives out of prominence. Radio reduces the prominence of print and the visual.
- Retrieval (figure): What the medium recovers which was previously lost. Radio returns the spoken word to the forefront.
- Reversal (ground): What the medium does when pushed to its limits. Acoustic radio flips into audio-visual TV.
Colour my Design Thinking Box
Emma gives you a colouring exercise
After Card
Day 3
Focus on My Most Sustainable Material Choices
A Seminar on Identifying the Most Sustainable Material Choices and How These Affect the Most Sustainable Immaterial Choices
Fill Before card
Lecture:
My Perfect Material and Immaterial Combination
This talk covers: optimal materials to use; mapping out your materials; mapping out your Design Thinking in the way of materials; illustrating what happens when you don't use your perfect combination; what the exponential effects are.
a) What is My Perfect Material Combination? write it down
b) What Are the Tangible Implications of My Perfect Material Combination? write it down
c) What Are the Intangible Implications of My Perfect Material Combination? write it down
Experiential Group:
a) Sit in pairs and ask your partner, "What is your Perfect Material Combination and what might be the implications of these?"
Introduce the Fabric of Research Garment Collection:
Think Print
Write down three flower stories; then, illustrate these.
After Card
Day 4
Focus on My Design and What It Communicates
A Seminar & Workshop on Identifying the Primary Task in Design
Lecture:
The Symbolic in Design
Case Studies from Dior, Courreges and Katrantzou
This talk covers: analysing fabric; symbolic evocations through fashion; articulating the silent back story. What is this an expression of?
Group Exercise where Emma shows images that relate obliquely to the students' work:
a) What is this an expression of? write it down
b) Sit in pairs and ask your partner, "What is this an expression of?"
a) What is this an expression of? write it down
b) Sit in pairs and ask your partner, "What is this an expression of?"
c) Feedback to the group, "What is this an expression of?"
Emma gives you a making exercise
Fill in your hexagons and make a mini patchwork
After Card
Day 5
The Joy of Making
A Seminar & Workshop on Generating Flow in You and Your Clients
Lecture:
An Introduction to Mihaly Csikszantmihaly's Science of Flow
This talk covers: analyzing engaged practice; what are the emotional and neurological structures of making; how to create it.
Experiential Group:
a) How can I create flow for myself? write it down
b) How can I create flow for my clients? write it down
c) Sit in pairs and ask your partner, "How might you create flow for your clients?"
Choose Your Flower Vase and Paint it Filling the WHole Square of Paper
Emma gives you a drawing exercise
Think of a flower that you Might Wear and Draw It With Black Pen
After Card
Day 6
Introduction to the Textile Toolbox
A Seminar & Workshop on More Complex Systems for Your Design Thinking
Lecture:
An Introduction to The Textile Toolbox
This talk covers: an introduction to a new system and examples of early literature around it.
Experiential Group:
a) How might I integrate each one? write it down
b) How might I highlight some? write it down
c) Sit in pairs and ask your partner, "How might you integrate these (for you and your clients)?"
Colour My Mind
Emma gives you a colouring-in exercise
a) Where will my New Knowledge take me? write it down
b) Sit in pairs and ask your partner, "Where would you say my New Knowledge will take me?"
Embroider My Mind
Emma gives you a sewing exercise
After Card
