Changing the world, not just our wardrobes: a sensibility for sustainable clothing, care, and quiet activism

Hackney, Fiona; Hill, Katie; Saunders, Clare; Willett, Joanie

doi:10.4324/9780429264405-11

Cited by 4 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Drawing on Fletcher and Klepp's (2017) wardrobe research methodology, we conducted wardrobe audits at the beginning and end of the workshop series (in Cornwall) and mid-series in the West Midlands (Hackney et al, 2021). Participants were invited to estimate the number of items in their wardrobes, before making an accurate count of the number of them.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Next, audio-recorded interviews were conducted with individual participants as they introduced a researcher to their wardrobe. The interview schedule was designed to understand how people felt about their clothing, the turnover of items in their possession, and how they made their purchases (Hackney et al, 2022). Although this might have been imagined as an invasion of participants' privacy, those who engaged did so in an enthusiastic and engaged manner, enjoying the opportunity to talk in-depth about their clothing choices.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The West Midlands group engaged in visible mending, which inspired the Cornwall group to upcycle and reinvent otherwise useless charity shop discards. Conversations over the course of the workshops were recorded, and further discussion was facilitated by the research team, both individually and in groups (Hackney et al, 2021). Participants also kept reflective diaries and participated in short reflective videos.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This strand emerged predominantly through the wardrobe audits, during which participants tended to be surprised at the number of clothes they owned (Hackney et al, 2022). Clothing choices were assembled around a wide range of factors, including practicality, comfort, how the clothing made individuals feel about themselves, peer pressure, culture, and decoration.…”

Section: The Affective Economy and Fast Fashionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The affective economy and fast fashion: Materiality, embodied learning and developing a sensibility for sustainable clothing

Willett

Saunders

Hackney

et al. 2022

Journal of Material Culture

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Many commentators recognise the need to make clothing more sustainable due to its deleterious environmental and social ramifications. However, it is challenging to change the consumer behaviour that drives fast fashion markets because people have complex relationships with clothing. In this study, we illustrate how the relationships that people have with clothing can be shaped by workshops that immerse them in making, mending, and modifying garments. Such experiential learning can encourage adoption of more sustainable clothing choices, such as reducing consumption of new garments and prolonging the life of already owned items of clothing. We present findings on a strand of work from the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded S4S: Designing a Sensibility for Sustainable Clothing project, which explored the affective economy around clothing, and considered how emotive affects around garments operate as a conduit to self-sustain particular practices. Our significant contribution brings political analysis firmly into the debate about sustainable clothing by merging literatures on behaviour change and affect, through exploration of a novel longitudinal (9-months) qualitative data set. At the start of the project, participants generally thought of clothes as being low-cost (and therefore disposable) items. The workshops, in contrast, presented garments and the materials from which they are made as precious, complex and fluid – in a process of continual possibility. For pro-environmental behavioural change, we find that immersion in the materiality of clothing mobilised affective processes, enabling potentially transformative affective encounters. Further, we found that group learning environments need to do more than simply teach approved normative values and behaviours. Pro-environmental behaviour change initiatives need to provide people with the space to create and situate their own knowledges, enabling affect to be mobilised, activated and supported by appropriate cultural milieu.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Affective Economy and Fast Fashionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The affective economy and fast fashion: Materiality, embodied learning and developing a sensibility for sustainable clothing

Willett

Saunders

Hackney

et al. 2022

Journal of Material Culture

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“…Both projects employed practice-based, co-produced research methods informed by notions of social making and quiet activism (Hackney, 2013). This requires increased awareness of the social and political agencies embedded in collective making and everyday creativity, and their ability to engender change by, for instance, promoting pro-environmental activities associated with slow fashion through home-sewing, repurposing and repair (Hackney et al, 2021). Recognising the messy processes of interaction that collective creative making involves, we began to see the craft group as a metaphor and model for wider society, and a place that, with the correct protocols in place, can become a powerful space for mutual cooperation, dialogue and learning (Hackney et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Maker-centricity and ‘edge-places of creativity’: CARE-full making in a CARE-less world

Hackney

Onions²,

Rogers

et al. 2022

European Journal of Cultural Studies

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Susan Luckman, citing Katherine Gibson’s call for a return to ‘the grass-roots work of engaging the community and being open to developing new economies’, advocates a vision of creative industries that builds the affordances of ‘edge-places of creativity’. Luckman’s focus is non-urban localities. Her proposal, nevertheless, could equally apply to the amateur craft groups, community organisations and independent businesspeople that the Arts and Humanities Research Council–funded projects Co-Producing CARE: Community Asset-based Research and Enterprise, and Maker-Centric: Building Place-based, Co-making Communities worked with in deprived inner-city areas in the British Midlands. Both projects were undertaken with Craftspace and other stakeholder organisations, worked collaboratively with community groups, employed co-production processes and combined hand-making with digital fabrication. The aim of each project was to prototype a method with communities that builds agencies (cultural, social, economic, skills-based) through making and could be applied by other groups. While the CARE method was concerned with the affordances of collaborative making, Maker-Centric looked at these through a heritage and placed-based lens. This article examines the potential for local, collaborative, purposeful, social making as an ‘edge-place’ activity for creative enterprise that is inclusive and supportive.

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Well-making in social design: Opening the potential for makerspaces in social design projects

Gant

Hill

2022

Journal of Applied Arts &Amp; Health

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This article highlights well-being outcomes reported by participants in three social design projects where making has featured as a community engagement and research tool. The spaces created through the projects are framed as makerspaces, a well-documented model of physical locations designed purposefully to support people making and mending together, often in a community setting. Using reflections from the perspectives of two practitioner researchers on co-designing, making and using these spaces, the article is part of ongoing research on developing ideas about well-being and making. We call these spaces well-maker-spaces. The aim of this article is to expand understanding of how makerspaces as a social design tool benefit participants and communities. Drawing on evidence generated through art-based research of ways that making with others contributes to well-being, we propose that makerspaces in social design projects can proactively support well-being alongside other social and environmental outcomes.

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Changing the world, not just our wardrobes: a sensibility for sustainable clothing, care, and quiet activism

Cited by 4 publications

References 11 publications

The affective economy and fast fashion: Materiality, embodied learning and developing a sensibility for sustainable clothing

The affective economy and fast fashion: Materiality, embodied learning and developing a sensibility for sustainable clothing

Maker-centricity and ‘edge-places of creativity’: CARE-full making in a CARE-less world

Well-making in social design: Opening the potential for makerspaces in social design projects

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