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Entanglements of wastelands of fashion: A curricula re-vision
Get PDFThe prevailing fast fashion model operates at a rapid tempo and prioritises speed-to-market, with each stage of the global supply chain exerting detrimental effects on society and the environment. Education is a critical field in which to start re-visioning the discipline, offering alternative ways of educating fashion designers, and transforming the status quo of the fashion industry. This exploratory paper sets out to establish the teaching and learning of the environmental and social implications of the intricate fashion system through a transformative pedagogy at the MA Fashion at the Royal College of Art (RCA). The programme is already undergoing a reform period, moving away from the singular iconic designer role, seasonal collections, and fossil-fuel derivatives to transformative social action. Through critical, unbounded imagination, the RCA's Fashion MA is conceived as a catalytic transformative practice committed to a long-term systemic transformation of fashion's vision, production and consumption. This paper advocates for a pivotal transition towards a critical systems curriculum, integrating the significance of ancestral practices, the concept of waste colonisation, and fundamental principles grounded in regenerative cultures. We aim to inspire and equip students to be initiators of change, so we ask: How might fashion education through critical experimentation offer a new way of reconfiguring our relationship with the earth and its inhabitants
Development and initial qualitative evaluation of a novel school-based nutrition intervention – COOKKIT (Cooking Kit for Kids)
Get PDFBackground: Excess weight and an unhealthy diet are risk factors for many cancers, and in high income countries, both are more prevalent among low income families. Dietary interventions targeting primary-school aged children (under 11) can improve healthy eating behaviours, but most are not designed to support the translation of skills learnt in the classroom to the home setting. This paper assessed attitudes and approaches to cooking and eating at home, and the potential to enhance engagement in healthy eating through the COOKKIT intervention. Methods: COOKKIT is an intervention to deliver weekly cooking classes and supportive materials for low-income families to maintain healthy eating at home. Preliminary qualitative interviews were conducted with teachers and parent–child dyads from a range of primary schools in the UK to explore attitudes, barriers and facilitators for healthy eating and inform the development of COOKKIT. Following implementation, ten children (8–9 y/o) participated in post-intervention focus groups, alongside interviews with teaching staff and parents. Results: Thematic analysis identified five themes under which to discuss the children’s experience of food, cooking and the impact of COOKKIT: Involving children in planning and buying food for the family; Engaging children in preparing meals at home; Trying to eat healthy meals together in the midst of busy lives; Role-modelling; and Balancing practicalities, information and engagement when delivering cooking classes. Conclusions: Results suggest COOKKIT provides engaging and easy to follow in-school resources for children and school staff with take-home kits facilitating continued engagement and reinforcing lessons learned in the home environment. Importantly, participants highlighted the combination of healthy eating information, applied practical skills and low costs could support families to continue following the COOKKIT advice beyond the intervention, suggesting further evaluation of COOKKIT is warranted
Defining ecological citizenship; Case-studies, projects & perspectives; analysed through a design-led lens, positioning ‘preferable future(s)’
Get PDFA ‘citizen’ is a member of society who undertakes duties and obligations. Authors define Ecological Citizenship (EC) as accessible activities and skills which establish sustainable practice(s) and/or address ecological inequalities. Unsustainable practices (and consequences) are not constrained to individual countries, single industries, or discrete societies. Our life-supporting ecosystems (for example, oceans we eat from and the air we breathe) are impacted by contemporary resource exploitation, pollution, material misuse and inadequate protection. We are (all) citizens of the world, with the natural environment sustaining all life on earth. Our human existence is intertwined with our environment; we live in and are ‘citizens’ of our environment. EC fosters positive, ecological behaviours involving and benefiting communities through individual and collective action(s). Infamous author Enzio Manzini advocates that designs' contemporary role and purpose is to ‘create the conditions’ to enact change. This position paper outlines transdisciplinary approaches in addressing environmental challenges that benefit; communities, industry, academia, and other species. EC draws on previous projects, contemporary literature, and multidisciplinary perspectives. The EC position is ‘post sustainability’, exploring practices mitigating consequences and ‘desiloing’ expertise. EC offers; new research topics, supports tangible public roles, all within contemporary sustainable challenges. This position paper offers signposting to enable community and public(s) agency, challenging hegemonies rather than adopting conventional practice(s)
Microbiopolitics of milk
No full textIn the context of INLAND’s Academy at documenta fifteen, Microbiopolitics of Milk presents the grounding basis for a research project around Milk as a bio-cultural substance, through its implications in the regimes of contemporary biopolitics, economics and representation. Featuring texts by Heather Paxson, Esther Leslie & Melanie Jackson, Harry G. West, Vinciane Despret, Chris Fite-Wassilak and Richie Nimmo, reflecting the different dimensions of milk in a variety of research fields
Specifications of standards in systems and synthetic biology: Status and developments in 2022 and the COMBINE meeting 2022
Get PDFThis special issue of the Journal of Integrative Bioinformatics contains updated specifications of COMBINE standards in systems and synthetic biology. The 2022 special issue presents three updates to the standards: CellML 2.0.1, SBML Level 3 Package: Spatial Processes, Version 1, Release 1, and Synthetic Biology Open Language (SBOL) Version 3.1.0. This document can also be used to identify the latest specifications for all COMBINE standards. In addition, this editorial provides a brief overview of the COMBINE 2022 meeting in Berlin
Making mercury’s histories: Mercury in gold mining’s past and present
Get PDFThis article considers the presence and absence of mercury, and why in different social arenas where gold features, mercury can become either pervasive or elusive. To substantiate this argument, the article offers two contrasting examples: (1) presentation strategies at Pacific Seaboard gold rush heritage sites, and (2) the background to the Minamata Bay tragedy and the Minamata Convention’s subsequent framing of mercury use in artisanal and small-scale gold mining in the Global South. By unpacking these divergent social histories of mercury use and its consequences, the article identifies the current disconnect between different histories of mercury, and the problematic consequences of this disengagement
Ophelia
Get PDFOphelia (1851-2) is the title of a Pre-Raphaelite painting by John Everett Millais narrating the final moments of Shakespeare’s heroine in Hamlet (1599-1601): the former is considered the best-known picture in all Victorian art and the latter, the greatest work in English literature. Nonetheless, Ophelia owes its significance and enduring popularity to these monumental artworks, as well as the fantasies of “Woman” she embodies in successive discourses, and the material, semantic, and social networks she progressively integrates. The eight-hundred years span of such networks, their size and complexity across media and cultures, seem proof enough to consider Ophelia a “hyperobject.” Although Timothy Morton introduced it as a philosophical and ecological concept to deal with “things that are massively distributed in time and space relative to humans,” Ophelia shows the same characteristic properties (viscosity, nonlocality, temporal undularity, phasing, interobjectivity) and ontological structure, a mesh constituted by a dynamic mixture of strands in which component objects interact, and gaps in which they withdraw remaining unknowable. The reconceptualization constructs Ophelia as a new object of transdisciplinary research, overcoming limitations of previous studies that focused on character analysis, historical period, or discipline. Further, the hyperobject provides an ideal medium in which Ophelia arises, develops, and is resolved or abandoned as problem, and of which the answers to that problem are also part. The chapters that follow will address three questions about Millais’ Ophelia: What is Millais’ answer to Ophelia? Where does Ophelia fit in art history and modernity? What did Millais want from Ophelia and what does Ophelia want from the public
Mexico City manifesto
Get PDFThis Globally We Design manifesto represents contributions of over 50 design educators and practitioners from five continents who met over two days in April 2023 at the National Autonomous University of Mexico – UNAM in Mexico City. This manifesto is an evolving document that reflects our current perspectives. We aspire to involve all in the design community, including learners, educators, and professionals. This goes beyond those directly engaged in design and encompasses our wider communities and societies. We encourage all to leverage this document, its commitments, and its demands
Evaluating the usability of a prototype gesture-controlled illuminative textile
Get PDFIn the field of human-computer interaction (HCI), recent years have witnessed an increasing interest in smart textiles with gesture recognition functions. This paper reports usability evaluations of a prototype gesture-controlled illuminative textile developed by the authors. This is an interactive woven POF textile system with computer vision-enabled mid-air gesture recognition. For the usability test, 25 participants (11 males and 14 females) aged between 19 and 56 (M = 30.85, SD = 10.8) were randomly recruited. The study was conducted by the means of the user experience questionnaire (UEQ) and the system usability scale (SUS). Results show that participants responded positively to our gesture-controlled illuminative textile in terms of its attractiveness, perspicuity and stimulation but were less positive about its efficiency. The results will be used to make targeted improvements to the existing product design