Collaboration and group work are increasingly recognized as essential formoving the textile and fashion sector towards a more sustainable future.Despite this awareness, many fashion and textile design educationscontinue to emphasize individual design processes in courses andprogram curricula. This research explores the possibilities and implicationsof collaboration for creative processes and developments in higher designeducation in a case study. The ongoing case-study examines an electivecourse in higher (fashion) design education where a real-life designassignment is implemented as the course task. The course “StudentManaged Design Project: Collaborative Project” aims to give studentsknowledge and skills in collaborative processes from a design perspective,where the collaborative content in the course syllabus is both collaborationwith an external part and collaboration with peers. The design assignment,conducted in partnership with a global organization, aims to design abusiness workwear collection based on a preexisting brief, and should alsofunction as an educational material in terms of sustainable solutions.Participants are a mixed group of undergraduate and graduate studentsand two facilitators who together form the design team that will conduct thedesign task. To facilitate the students’ collaborative processes throughoutsignificant phases such as brainstorming, ideation, sketching,prototyping, and refining, a framework for collaboration has beenestablished. Aspects such as design sensitivities, flexibility,communication, willingness of compromise and empathywere trained through the complexity of the collaborative designassignment.Opportunities, challenges, and limitations of the collaborative methods andstructure in the course are reflected upon. The data was collected throughobservations, visual documentation, recordings and a questionnaire. In thisongoing case study, significant notions and situations to enhancecollaboration were identified as re-aligning of groups, decision makingand actions and interactions. These will be subject to future research.

The UN Tour Guide Collection by the Swedish School of Textiles presents a contemporary, sustainable uniform concept that reflects the values of the United Nations. Combining functional design with refined design innovation, the collection supports tour guides’ professional presence while emphasizing comfort, durability, and environmental responsibility. Through a clean, modern aesthetic rooted in cultural inclusivity, the project demonstrates how institutional attire can strengthen identity and communicate the organisation’s core values. This initiative was enabled by the UN Department of Global Communications and the UN Office for Partnerships, in collaboration with Sofia Hedström de Leo, an advisory board member of the UN's Fashion and Lifestyle Network and former Head of Sustainability at the Swedish Consulate in New York. The project was funded by the Paul Frankenius Foundation and the University of Borås with additional support by the Swedish Government. 

The artistic outputs focus on similarities between cultures, explorations of artefacts with connotations of cultural translation involving active processes of identification in terms of how materials and expressions are used to create relational aesthetics, and alternative approaches to modernity.  Any further information? : Expressions of Discarded Design Decisions #6_Diluted Rolling consists of post-consumer waste garments selected through the lens of diverse geographic origins of textile patterns. With a majority of the garments being produced by fast fashion companies they are characterized by low quality materials and production methods. But also on a design level, the design decisions taken reflect that of a rapid production approach where expressions of textile patterns are worked in a compromising way and the outcome represents a diluted version of the original pattern. In the video sequence the pattern origins start to blend whilst showcasing similarities through the act of rolling them together. The relations between the diluted expressions of the design materials become apparent. Rather than designing, this work suggests a viewing of post-consumer materials as an act of non-designing. In this moment of pause a space for new streams of thoughts that opens up, inviting for alternative perspectives of reflection.

Exhibited at Drafts 4.

Exhibited at Drafts 4.