As part of the Fashion Fictions project, we invite people to devise and run their own affiliated activities. Many of the affiliated activities take place in educational institutions, as outlined on this page.
You can find out how to run your own activity on the Organise page.
Those interested in Fashion Fictions in education settings may like to watch ‘Fashion Fictions: learning to challenge the status quo‘, a presentation at The Future of International Fashion Design Education, Istituto Marangoni London, 29 September 2022 (starts around 1 hour in).
Nottingham Trent University, UK
First-year students from the Fashion, Textiles and Knitwear Design department at Nottingham Trent University undertake a short Stage 2 Fashion Fictions project. The project, which spans three 2-hour workshops, is part of a Future Thinking toolkit within a module that aims to develop students’ intellectual curiosity and appreciation of the future as something that can be shaped and questioned.
Working in groups of 4-6, students are given a specified Stage 1 World and asked to create a visual or material prototype to represent everyday life there, presented via 1-5 images and a short written ‘exhibition label’. In the final session these outcomes are shared and discussed with other groups. Students are encouraged to develop their work into a submission for the university’s Sustainability in Practice certificate.
A selection of the 2021 NTU Explorations are also featured in Atlas of the Future’s FutureFashionMedia exhibition.
LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore
Students on two second-year BA (Hons) programmes – Fashion Media and Industries (FMI) and Fashion Design and Textiles (FDT) – at LASALLE College of the Arts work on a Fashion Fictions project that includes Stages 1, 2 and 3 during the 14 week semester.
Students work in groups of up to 4/5 within a research cluster – Future Identities, Fashion Ecologies and Heritage and Luxury – to focus and generate a body of work from a 360° lens questioning the context of fashion today. This project requires students to combine both theoretical knowledge and technical skills within their creative practice while exploring and questioning the global context of fashion. For the framework of this project, the students’ work should consider the geographical region of Southeast Asian territories that share similar particularities, such as: Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos, Philippines, in the context of a global fashion system. Students will respond to international fashion trends while addressing the local climatic, socio-cultural, economic and political conditions.
EDU Africa
EDU Africa, an international education partner on the African continent, collaborated with Elgin Community College (USA) to create a virtual exchange program for a first year English Writing course. Professor Ginger Alms proposed the theme “The Effects of Consumer Capitalism in Africa” and approached EDU Africa to organise and facilitate a virtual exchange program where students could engage in stories and critical discussions with experts in Africa, as well as a cohort of students from various higher education institutions in South Africa.
African Fashion Research Institute co-founder, Dr Erica de Greef, was one of the guest speakers in the virtual exchange. In her presentation Fast Fashion and the Global Climate Crisis, Erica introduced the Fashion Fictions concept and the team tasked the students with writing collaborative Stage 1 sketches as part of the course.
The students at Elgin collaborated in small groups with students in South Africa to write the 100-word sketch as a cross-cultural activity to consider new perspectives and decolonise the imagination. Because the synchronous time together was limited – the groups had only 30 minutes to produce the first draft of their Stage 1 sketch – the students were briefed in advance and came prepared with ideas to discuss. After the session the Elgin students refined the fictions for submission.
RMIT University, Australia
RMIT University ran a two-hour Stage 1 Fashion Fictions workshop within Fashion Design Strategies and Environments, a core year three subject within the Bachelor of Fashion (Design). Involving close to 120 students working in six groups, the workshop was part of a theoretical module and was run entirely online. Three groups drafted their worlds using the Fashion Fictions generator, while the other three groups took the longer route (as described in Step 4 of the ‘Contribute a World’ guide). A short follow up session was run three weeks later to encourage completion and submission of the worlds generated.
Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation
Students at the Dubai Institute for Design and Innovation worked on Stages 1 and 2 of Fashion Fictions as their semester’s main project within their third-year fashion lecture module. The students were given 4 weeks for Stage 1 to create their world and 5 weeks for Stage 2 to develop their prototype.
All students were undertaking the second or third year of their B(des) Design degree and are following the Fashion Design concentration and another, either Product Design, Multimedia or Strategic Design Management. They worked remotely online in groups of 3-4. During the course, the students were introduced to the current challenges within the fashion industry and the impacts from a social, ethical, environmental and economic perspective and explored alternatives to the prevalent linear fashion system. The students are taught throughout their courses at DIDI to creatively challenge the status quo so the Fashion Fictions project was the perfect culmination of their theoretical design thinking before they enter their final year.
Italian secondary schools
Over two successive years, Aniko Gal has run a series of lessons dedicated to sustainable fashion in Italian high schools and included Fashion Fictions as part of the class activities.
In 2021 she selected three worlds to share with the group and each student chose one to work with as a Stage 2 activity. The students then presented their work to the class: a paragraph of thoughts on the everyday life in the world they selected and a moodboard. The activity inspired the students and started discussions about the future.
In 2022, as part of a short course on Sustainable Fashion for 17-18 year olds in a Technical Institute, Aniko again incorporated a Stage 2 activity. She asked students to reflect on a world and create a moodboard about it (two hours in class, plus time working at home), then to discuss their moodboards (one hour in class).
Aniko says: “Once we arrived at the lessons that integrated Fashion Fictions, after some introductory lessons about sustainability, I found that the class started to actually understand the many implications of potential changes on a large scale when we discussed some randomly- selected worlds.”
University of Delaware, USA
Forty students in the Department of Fashion and Apparel Studies took part in Stage 1 and Stage 2 Fashion Fictions activities. The activities, each lasting one week, book-ended a required entry-level ‘Sustainability in Fashion’ course. The students worked individually to create and explore their worlds, in connection with one of the course objectives: “Empower students to become change agents who cultivate ecological, economic and cultural conditions that will support human well-being indefinitely.”
London College of Fashion, UK
Fashion Fictions has been used with multiple groups of students at LCF:
A combined Stage 1 and Stage 2 activity was set as part of the Cultural and Historical Studies undergraduate Year 2 Sensory Fashion Project, which involved students from all School of Design and Technology courses. Most chose to work individually. The brief was adjusted slightly as the students were asked to create worlds that had a Sensory aspect and draw on some of the themes from the Sensory Fashion Project. Students had 2 weeks (working independently) to come up with their worlds, which they then presented to the whole cohort. Most chose to work individually, with one group.
A 3-hour Stage 1 workshop was run for Post Graduate Diploma students, many of whom are expecting to go on to MA courses within Fashion. Students were free to work in groups of about three, or individually. The workshop took place during a Sustainability Week where a variety of approaches were being explored.