Fashion Fictions responds to the urgent need for change in the mainstream globalised fashion system by bringing people together to generate, experience and reflect on engaging fictional visions of alternative fashion worlds.

At this free online workshop, you will be guided through a playful and collaborative process to create new outlines of fictional fashion worlds.

We will explore a map of themes that have been generated through analysis of the first 120 fictions. The themes provide insights into the range and scope of contributors’ imagined alternatives and can be used to identify both gaps in the collective set of visions and particular elements of interest.

You will then be encouraged to each select one or more existing worlds, and to rewrite, adapt, combine or otherwise remix the fiction(s) to suit your own interests, priorities and lived experiences.

We'll also share some examples of recent Fashion Fictions Explorations, including workshops in which participants create visual and material prototypes to represent fictional worlds and projects in which practices and events from the fictional fashion systems are performatively enacted.

At the end of the workshop, you will be encouraged to contribute your outline to the project’s repository of worlds. Each new fiction will be credited to both the original contributor(s) and the remixer.

------------------

The workshop will take place from 7.30-9am UK time (yes, breakfast time!) on Zoom and will also be broadcast on the Practicing Solidarity conference live stream. Please note that all those present on the Zoom call will be visible on the live stream.

If you would prefer not to appear on the broadcast, you are invited to follow the workshop by watching the live stream on the conference website rather than joining the Zoom call.

------------------

About the conference

The conference ‘Ways of Caring – Practicing Solidarity’ explores how to practice solidarity in fashion. In response to the Covid-19 outbreak, we’ve heard many calls for solidarity, a more solidary fashion industry and more solidary practices of making and wearing. Curious fashion professionals and creative practitioners from around the world are invited to join a 48-hour hybrid conference to develop deeper knowledge on the topic – beyond the boundaries of the fashion discipline. Through interactive presentations, talks, lectures, demonstrations and workshops you will tune in with relevant thinkers, create with inspiring makers, and interact with like-minded fashion practitioners. Together, we will work towards a more solidary fashion system.

The conference will kick off on June 30 with an inspiring online program curated by 10 fashion platforms and collectives from around the globe. Participants include Sueli Maxakali and Paula Berbert, Rio Ethical Fashion from Brazil, Fashion Revolution, the Union of Concerned Researchers in Fashion, Ricarda Bigolin and Chantal Kirby from Australia, Bhaavya Goenka from India, Fashion Act Now, Amy Twigger Holroyd, House of Re-Fashion and the Research Collective for Decoloniality & Fashion. On July 1, the conference continues live in Arnhem with demonstrations, lectures, workshops and discussions by critical fashion practitioners including Anna Piroshka Tóth, Louise Croff Blake, CAULFIELD-SRIKLAD, Chepkemboi Mang’ira, Ben Barry, TOTON, Schepers Bosman, Patchwork Family, Kate Fletcher & Anna Fitzpatrick, Katherine May, Z O M E R K A M P, Mila Burcikova & Monica Buchan-Ng, amongst many others.

The conference is organized by the ArtEZ fashion professorship and State of Fashion, in collaboration with ArtEZ BA Fashion Design, MA Critical Fashion Practices and Fashion Revolution. Supported by Gemeente Arnhem.

------------------

About the organiser

Dr Amy Twigger Holroyd is Associate Professor of Fashion and Sustainability at Nottingham School of Art & Design, part of Nottingham Trent University. She has explored the emerging field of fashion and sustainability since 2004. Amy is currently undertaking a Research, Development and Engagement Fellowship, funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council. Her Fellowship project, Fashion Fictions, aims to reshape possibilities for sustainable fashion, from incremental changes to the design and manufacture of clothes to radically different ways of fashioning our identities. Other initiatives include Reknit Revolution, a project supporting knitters to rework the items in their wardrobes, and research networks Crafting the Commons and Stitching Together. Amy is the author of Folk Fashion: Understanding Homemade Clothes (I.B. Tauris, 2017). A new co-authored book, Historical Perspectives on Sustainable Fashion, will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2023.

------------------

Header: Exploration by Jade Lord, developed from a World contributed by Katherine Pogson.