In November my lecturer approached me and some others regarding a SEED Grant that DMU had access to, roughly £5000 total to give away to small projects based around the UN’s sustainability goals.
https://sdgs.un.org/goals – Link to UN website regarding sustainable development goals
We discussed which of the 17 goals we would try to address, since the grant is small and our time as 3rd years is limited. However we still wanted to have a significant impact so we chose Goal 12: Sustainable Consumption and Production as our focus.
As a group we then discussed several ideas and notions eventually deciding that the fashion industry was a good target (since people predominantly wear clothes) consumption of fast fashion has increased over the years and new branding and marketing strategies virulently advertise to younger people who are more likely to partake in this fast paced consumer culture.
My lecturer at that point told us that even though charity shops say they recycle unusable clothes that in actual fact they end up being shipped to other countries to become part of their second hand fashion economy, even though they will be sold at high price, also contributing to the decline of smaller native/indigenous clothes making groups/companies.
At this point we settled on this as the focus of our application and brainstormed what sort of action we could take, as fine artist we decided making a creative outcome would be most interesting. I added that if we approached it from a craft based perspective we could make useful objects or mementos that the public could take with them as a way of raising awareness.
The group was interested in this idea and I also pointed out that if we made some sort of instruction or legacy package (that would explain to others how to make creative outcomes from unusable fabric) then our project would have a continued sustainable impact. It would also encourage others to build on our small SEED grant and be even more ambitious to raise awareness of have a positive impact.
We drafted a project proposal including evidence of the issue and of the need to raise awareness around the hidden costs of the fashion we consume, I also at this point suggested the name of our project could be Cheap Trends – Hidden Costs. We also spoke to Hugo in the Leicester gallery regarding using the space to make and display the outcomes over a weekend, this was to coincide with the weekend of DMU’s Teaching Festival.
We also had a meeting with Anna one of the student members of the committee just to clarify that our proposal was along the right lines and to see if our proposal would meet the criteria for the grant. She was enthusiastic about the project and encouraged us to submit an application, also stating that this information on the fashion industry was new information to her as well.