S4S: Designing a Sensibility for Sustainable Clothing
Professor Fiona Hackney
'S4S: Designing a Sensibility for Sustainable Clothing’ is an Arts & Humanities Research Council-funded project which examines the quietly activist potential in women’s everyday skills, knowledge, and capacities to address current problems in the fashion system
An interdisciplinary project conducted between fashion and policy researchers, S4S combined participatory arts-based and social science methods. The central aim was to investigate how stitch groups might shape, uncover, or draw out incipient sensibilities – ethics, mind-sets, imaginaries, values, qualities – for sustainable fashion choices and behaviours by engaging in and reflecting on creative making, repurposing, and repair activities.
S4S co-developed a variety of research tools (probes) including wardrobe audits, making workshops, questionnaires, clothing diaries, and films. The project contributed to the UK Government’s Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) reports on Fixing Fashion: Clothing Consumption and Sustainability (2018, 2021). Research findings include qualitative and quantitive evidence of the power of affectual making, material engagement, creative practice, and community in shaping pro-environmental clothing behaviours, subjectivities, and mentalities. Project films show a range of activities from deconstructive knitting to pattern cutting, spinning, dying, and making upcycled leather goods. Findings support the value of participatory fashion and textiles practices for informing policy on behaviour change by contributing to debates about fast fashion and related areas of social making, craftivism, and slow fashion.
Project Lead
Professor Fiona Hackney
Professor of Fashion
Project Researchers
Professor Clare Saunders, Professor of Politics, University of Exeter
Dr Joanie Willett, Senior lecturer in Politics, University of Exeter
Katie Hill, design researcher, University of Wolverhampton
Dr Jodie West, Knowledge and Impact Co-ordinator, University of Exeter
Irene Griffin, Cornwall group Research Assistant, University of Exeter
Anya Barbieri, Cornwall group Associate Research Assistant and workshop co-ordinator, University of Exeter
Collaborative Partners
Workshop Facilitators
Mary Coleman from the Lace Guild Museum
Becky Cotrell-Jury
Nicola Phillips from Daisy Rain Vintage
Claire Dolman from the Black Country Living Museum
Pat Dillon, textile designer from Pad and Paw,
Fiona Griffiths
Pheonix Bird
Jack Roberts creative facilitator from The Hive
Film makers
Nina Constable
R&A Collaborations
Exhibition Designers
Rhys Thomas
Outputs
S4S pop-up exhibition, exhibited in various venues in the SW, Midlands, and in London and a range of other project outputs/materials/images on the project website: https://s4sproject-exeter.uk/films-project-outputs/
Published outputs:
Hackney, F. , C. Saunders, J. Willett, K. Hill (2021) ‘Changing the World Not Just our Wardrobes: A Sensibility for Sustainable Clothing, Care and Quiet Activism’ in V. Manlow et al (eds) Routledge Fashion Companion, London & NY: Routledge
Hackney, F. et al (2020) ‘Stitching a Sensibility for Sustainable Clothing: Quiet activism, affect and community agency’ in eds. E. Shercliff & A. Twigger Holroyd Journal of Arts & Communities Vol 10 Issue 1, pp: 35-52
Hackney, F., C. Saunders, J. Willett, K. Hill (2019) Designing a Sensibility for Sustainable Clothing (S4S): Affective Activism in P. Rodgers (ed) Design Research for Change. Lancaster: Lancaster University Press & Arts & Humanities Research Council pp. 151-167.
Hackney, F., C. Saunders, K. Hill (2019) ‘Jack’s Jumper: Designing a Sensibility for Sustainable Clothing Communities’ IFFTI 2019, Manchester Fashion Institute, Manchester Metropolitan University pp. 1-16. https://fashioninstitute.mmu.ac.uk/iffti2019/papers/
Funding
Arts & Humanities Research Council
Research Led Training
Research Students Manchester Metropolitan University
Manchester Fashion Institute, Fashion Art Direction and Critical Studies undergraduate units (final year)