On 10th of February, aiforia-colleagues conducted a workshop (1,5h) with 5 students from the United World College, Freiburg. It was part of a self-organized project week that the students used to engage in Upcycling. They were about to plan a fashion show with the upcycled clothes at the end of the week. The workshop itself started with a general introduction where the participants explained why they chose the topic. Then, aiforia-colleagues checked the label of the own clothes and marked it with a dot on a big world map. A video about the journey of a tshirt and the problem of microplastic (from the FASF youtube channel) was shown. The next session was about "The journey of a pair of jeans", in which the different production steps from the cultivation of a pair of jeans to recycling and the related problems (exploitation of workers, lack of water, toxic substances, etc.) were discussed. With a thread, the steps were connected on the world map. Afterwards, the participants thought about possible solutions and measures on their own and then shared them with the others. Aiforia-colleagues also introduced the Slow Fashion Challenge and answered questions. At the end, an exercise was done where the participants had to position themselves on a scale (I agree - I disagree) to different statements.
Many times we do not even realize how much clothes we have accumulated at home, and it only comes up for us when there is no more space to put the new pieces. In the framework of the Fast Art Slow Fashion project, EKO-colleagues highlighted the unsustainable processes of fast fashion and its social, economic and environmental effects and consequences on 3rd February 2022, during an interactive workshop which was held at the József Kőrösy Technical School in Economics in Szeged, Hungary (associated partner in the FASF-project). Students had to count how many pieces of clothing they had. Some had more than 400, others guessed below 100 pieces. EKO-colleagues also talked about the social and environmental impacts of fast fashion, as well as the practice of the currently very popular Shein web store. Where young people make clothes in poor conditions for $ 0.6 and shoppers can buy those items for $ 50. In the second half of the workshop, we dealt with digitization in the fashion industry. The participants could test what they feel if customizable virtual avatars “try on” the selected garments from the webshop. By the end of the workshop, the students mentioned they think over their clothing and the necessity of buying new clothes.
EKO-colleagues held another workshop at the University of Szeged, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration. With the involvement of .. students, the impacts of fast fashion was discussed. We watched together a short documentary on the collapse of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh. Then, students worked in smaller groups and played role games. They represented how the CEO of a fashion producer negotiated with a subsidiary, or what decisions were made in a small shop when buying new clothes.
MASZK-colleagues organized two interactive workshops. The first workshop was about the themes of fast fashion and slow fashion. In the first part of the workshop, the participants thought together about the concept and institution of fast fashion, share their own experiences and thoughts, and then got to know each stage of the industry with the help of flowcharts. They also talked about what they can do for sustainability, what we think about fashion, how fast fashion affects us.
MASZK-colleagues were also really creative with the organization of a pub-quiz about fast fashion. The participants had to create groups with 3-5 people in each and they had to answer fashion-, fast fashion- and slow fashion-related questions. The quiz night was really motivating and funny. It is a great success that a teacher asked for the quiz questions to play the game with her students.
IDEC organised the Fast Art Slow Fashion open event for youth on 30th of May 2022 in Piraeus, Greece. The event was done in collaboration with IIEK ALKFA Piraeus, a private higher vocational institute in Piraeus, that offers a wide variety of courses including business and fashion. The event was heavily promoted through social media in order to attract participants. which worked well as in the end 34 young people, up to 24 years old and interested in learning about sustainability, social justice and creativity, joined us!
The event featured speakers from IDEC, IIEK Alfa Piraeus, Fashion Revolution Greece, the world's largest movement fighting for a safer and fairer fashion industry and Solidarity for Fashion, a youth initiative to raise awareness on sustainable fashion issues.
The workshop started with the introduction to the event and the project FASF and was then followed by speeches on Slow Fashion by Solidarity for Fashion. The participants had the opportunity to watch videos developed by the project and discuss what slow fashion is. We then had a presentation from Fashion Revolution Greece, that explained what they do and how they support circular economy and slow fashion.
In the second part of the event, the participants were divided into groups of their choosing, and were asked to go through the 3 challenges of the project, to create a text/poem, to repurpose jeans and to take interviews. All challenges were accepted with enthusiasm, even though the 2nd one, where they had to create something new out of old jeans was the winner! The participants gave their best effort, were innovative and in collaboration created beautiful works!
At the end of the event, the winning teams received as gifts recycled tote bags and all participants got as gifts an upcycled jean keychain, provided by Fashion Revolution Greece.
