Student projects | TED Research Blog

Manifesto for Creative Innovation

10 December 2012

Print Room at Konstfack

Weave Room at Konstfack

TED has recently launched a new elective program at Konstfack in Stockholm, Sweden, encouraging students to create their own Manifesto for Creative Innovation following a five-week course designed by TED. This new course proposal is shaped by the outcomes of 14 sessions on sustainable design led by TED with Chelsea MA Textile Design between October 2011 and April 2012.

The team will deliver this course between February and March 2013 to an inter-disciplinary group of students and the outcomes might be documented in an exhibition or in a report. The educational purpose of the course is to offer the students design-led and practice-based approaches for sustainability that they can incorporate and build upon throughout their studies.

Guest Professors: Professor Kay Politowicz & Becky Earley

New BA Textile Design course website

7 November 2012

BA Textile Design course director Caryn Simonson and senior lecturer Melanie Bowles have set up a new website for the BA Textile Design course at Chelsea College of Art & Design. Acting as a newsletter for the course’s projects, collaborations and external events, the new website houses a blog for news on exhibitions, alumni and also the degree shows and stage two shows, plus links to other online resources. For a full view on the BA Textile Design Course please follow this link.

Openwear collaboration

24 July 2012

As part of our Impact lecture series this year, the BA first year textiles students were introduced to Zoe Romano, founder of Open Wear, a collaborative clothing platform, where people upload clothing patterns they have created to be shared by anyone.

While initially, Zoe was going to be offering the students a template pattern for a project they were working on, this didn’t eventuate, but this didn’t stop Alexandra Brinck, one of the textile students from sharing with OpenWear.

Alexandra designed a bag that turns into a shirt and contacted Zoe for uploading it on to the Open Wear website. Alexandra initiated this collaboration inspired by the talk and wanted to challenge ‘sustainability through multi-functionality’

‘ I have been in touch with Zoe, and will be sharing one of my own patterns on OpenWear – this way we are still collaborating with them, it’s just that the pattern contribution is going in the other direction! I felt it would have been a shame after the great talk Zoe delivered not to strike while the iron was hot and get a collaboration going between Chelsea and OpenWear.’

Introducing Design Thinking

20 July 2012

Kay Politowicz with the MA Textiles during the final students workshop

Kate Goldsworthy and the principal investigators of TED's 'Design to Explore Clean/Better Technologies'

Between October 2011 and April 2012, TED has been organising weekly Research Focus Groups around the TED’s TEN sustainable design strategies with the MA Textiles at Chelsea, led by Prof. Kay Politowicz.

For each strategy, a guest speaker was invited and the students were also assigned one strategy that they had to research and present back to the group. From new technologies to zero waste and up cycling, the students were also asked to reflect on how the seminars and new information has been integrated into their studio work.

TED has given them a blog space to share their most important findings and upload images of their work in the run up to their final show in September. Watch this space for further findings from the students.

This project is part of MISTRA Future Fashion and TED’s Textile Toolbox, to be launched soon.

Every print tells a story

26 June 2012

The People’s Print are engaging with BA Textile Design students at Chelsea to spread the word about their designs and inspirations. ‘Every print tells a story’ is developed to create insight behind print designer’s work.

The first of a series of interviews is with Naomi Whitehead. She is inspired by the motoring industry, chemistry labs and crystal structures. With her interest in new scientific textiles, she has explored BioResins for being an eco-friendly material already used in the automotive industry. We loved her work at the degree show and wish her well as she graduates.

Check out TED member Melanie Bowles‘s website.

MA Research Focus Group update

12 December 2011

The TED MA Research Focus Group continues and this week saw two students, Min Taek Oh and Chia-Hsing Ho present their findings on TED’s TEN Strategy ‘Design to Reduce Chemical Impacts’.

The TED/Mistra PhD student Clara Vuletich then presented her view on the strategy, which explored the debates around natural versus synthetic dyes, the cotton debate and whether cotton will become a luxury fibre in the next few decades, and a lively discussion around measuring outcomes and the importance for us as designers to be able to prove our design decisions have reduced chemical or environmental impacts.

The students were shown a whole array of emerging tools and techniques around the idea of ‘radical transparency’, and how to measure and communicate impacts – from the open platform of Sourcemap, to Footprinted.org, and Amee.

MA Textiles Research Focus Group explores Recycling / Upcycling

23 November 2011

Last week saw the beginnings of the Research Focus Group for the MA Textiles students, a series of seminars based around TED’s TEN. Becky Earley led the first seminar on ‘Design for Recycling / Upcycling’, which included presentations from student groups on this design strategy.

The main themes that emerged were linking the ideas to personal, historical and geographical backgrounds and narratives, and the difficulty in identifying the difference between recycling and upcycling.

If you would like to tell us your story about something that you have recycled or upcycled, email us at ted@chelsea.arts.ac.uk with a picture, and the most interesting stories may be published on our blog or on our new website coming soon: www.textiletoolbox.com

Transition fashion

19 April 2011

Stage 2 BA students held their Fashion Show last week in Brixton Market. The project was called ‘Transition’ and was inspired by the Transiton Town concept of low carbon, resilient communiites and approaches. A whole host of different creative textile reponses to the theme of transition were paraded through the wonderful indoor market.

We will be trying to capture some of the projects and their themes being explored by some of the students.

More images are on Mel Bowles’ flikr site

Images: Mel Bowles

Transition Student Project

22 February 2011

Here at TED we have been very interested in the Transition Town movements that have been emerging all around the world, where local communities are working together to build a low energy future to live and work in and to encourage a more sustainable life. The second year textile students here at Chelsea are working on their next project which is titled Transition.

The first Transition Town was founded in Totnes in Devon and there are now several London boroughs that have also joined up. Brixton has now become a Transition Town and several TED members have been involved in initiatives there including Clara Vuletich, and the textile collective she is part of bricolage, who had a temporary space in Brxiton Market last year.

The historic indoor market in Brixton has been transformed over the last year and had a ‘community facelift’. Artists and small businesses were given empty shops for two months and there is now a thriving market of restaurants, cafes, theatre groups and independent boutiques.

The project will end with a fashion show of the textiles and garments produced and the show will take place in Brixton Market on Thursday March 31st. We will be following the progress of the project, which will also be documented on the Chelsea Textile Student blog.