Preparing for Workshop 2
Emma Östmark, Christian Turbito and Becky Earley have been working hard behind the scenes over the last month, preparing for workshop two (WS2) of the Trash-2-Cash (T2C) project. The two-day workshop will be held at the prestigious Prato Textile Museum in Italy on 24 and 25 November, hosted by Enrico Cozzoni from Grado Zero. At the event we’re aiming to introduce design thinking techniques to inform and influence the science and technology work that follows...
Overall the T2C project aims to develop new high quality fibres with added value functionalised properties. At this workshop we’ll use design thinking to identify the characteristics we want in the new T2C fibres, considering consumer perceptions and limits of the fibres - and the design/manufacturing team will get a better understanding of how it’s possible for the characterisation of the fibres to change so they can work towards specific applications and scenarios during future sessions.
Material ConneXion (MCI) will be facilitating the workshop and bringing along material samples (including textiles based on polyester and cellulosic fibres – prototype 0) to spark brainstorming. UAL and Aalto Arts are supporting the design, facilitation and idea generation, and will be documenting and communicating the process and outcomes from the workshop.
Copenhagen Business School (CBS) will give market insights for our three fields of application [textiles for garment, tech-textiles for garments, composites] and they’ll present useful ‘determinants’ for recycled products, focusing on mapping and analysing perceptions of value, needs of the end user and market trends for eco-products in general and eco-textiles more specifically. CBS will also receive feedback from all partners to help shape the form of qualitative analysis involved in the project. The conclusion of this will be summarised in a draft report [M9 - February 2016] and in a final version [M11 - April 2016] shortly thereafter.
VTT, SP, AaltoChem and SweRea IF willexplain from their perspective where it’s possible in the tech-process to impose ‘changes’ and what the implications are for the final fibres. They’ll also give technical feedback to the primary reasoning of the designers and manufacturers.Van Berlo, Grado Zero Espaces, Reima, Tekstina and Maier and their designers will provide ideas and stimuli during the creative and discussion activities.
Two groups have been created for the workshop – one focusing on recycled polyester fibres and the other on cellulosics – allowing several sessions to operate in parallel. There will be an on-site materials library, derived from homework set for all participants. The selected material can be deemed ‘interesting’ in any way – perhaps it has added value finishing, great touch or hand feeling, superior technical aspects or interesting performance (for example). During the workshop the material researchers will offerperspectives about where we can intervene to enable change in our fibres, and our material library will act as a great reference point for these discussions.
During the process of designing the workshop several opportunities came up. The idea of an ‘Ideas Space’ where things can be logged and saved for future workshops was raised; and also the need to understand how ‘sustainability’ questions can be more directly addressed in all of the workshops. Our recent work has also brought up some interesting questions about how we represent the T2C process – both technically and conceptually – and whether co-developing images and symbols could useful for this. They will hopefully help explain clearly all of the ideas arising out of what is undoubtedly a very complex subject!