Over the course of the Decolonising Vogue and Textiles undertaking (DFT), we turned aware of the scarcity of not solely protected areas for refugees and asylum seekers but additionally of areas of belonging and interplay with others whom they may by no means come into direct contact with. We mirrored on the parallel lives that numerous communities within the UK stay alongside each other, the place some interactions that would shift views and create modifications in notion by no means occur. By our intensive workshop programme and a pupil undertaking transient we facilitated at LCF, we learnt that contributors in addition to members of the general public have few alternatives to work together with each other.
“Interplay and expertise with ‘others’ are the foremost precursors of change, creating shifts in notion.”
Again in the Summer season of 2023, we facilitated exterior actions for undertaking contributors with refugee and asylum-seeking backgrounds – to broaden networks and capacities and construct additional connections. This began with a public motion we delivered in Parliament Sq. in London in partnership with Residents UK and Along with Refugees, advocating for the safety of youngsters’s ‘Freedom to Play’. At this occasion, our undertaking contributors confirmed and held up the banners they’d created within the workshops collectively. Three contributors spoke publicly – sharing their collective manifestos for a compassionate future, whereas demonstrating their self-confidence, sense of company and hope.
Subsequent was a personal guided tour of the Vogue Assortment on the V&A with curator Jessica Harpley, who impressed the undertaking contributors with the huge assortment of historic clothes, jewelry, and equipment from everywhere in the world. The tour additionally provoked fascinating debates round decolonising style and cultural sustainability. Some contributors shared with us that they weren’t conscious that the V&A or different London museums and huge galleries had been open to the general public and had free entry. They’ve now found new cultural organisations they’ll begin to join with as they rebuild their lives in London.
A day-long workshop of design and making was organised with the Artwork Staff Guild (AWG) by the guild’s outreach committee. The AWG is a charitable organisation that contains of over 400 designers, makers, artists, and designers who excel of their fields. This workshop supplied a chance to have numerous conversations and mutual studying in areas which might not usually be accessible to contributors. It included craft demonstrations by guild members and an opportunity to attempt a craft for the remainder of the day. The success of this may be underlined by how engaged the contributors turned, asking for extra comparable interactions. It additionally modified views of the demonstrators who may need had preconceived concepts of contributors who are labelled ‘refugees’, as a substitute discovering them so ‘engaged, enthusiastic and keen to be taught’.
In Autumn 2023 we began to ship a collection of seven weekly workshops, the place 22 contributors had been inspired to attract from their cultural heritage, private identification, and future imaginative and prescient to design and make a bespoke style merchandise. The merchandise created by the undertaking contributors (e.g. clothes, t-shirts, trousers, skirts, vests, coats, luggage, footwear, jewelry) manifest life journeys flowing in threads exchanged, calling for social justice. They evoke emotions of loneliness, uncertainty, and hope, and categorical the shifting identities of refugees whereas rebuilding their lives in a brand new place.
“Vogue on this undertaking is about discovering your self, studying new expertise, bringing collectively individuals from completely different cultures”.
– Dr Francesco Mazzarella
To culminate the workshop collection, we hosted a celebratory occasion at the brand new LCF campus in East Financial institution as a part of the cultural programme of the Designed for Life exhibition. The occasion was a chance to rejoice the sense of neighborhood, creativity and pleasure of the superb individuals collaborating within the undertaking. We additionally delivered a style present with the undertaking contributors carrying their creations and strolling down the gorgeous staircase at LCF. What we will loosely outline as a ‘style assortment’ created by our workshop collection is a press release of resilience and empowerment, a quest for democracy, a manifestation of a imaginative and prescient for a freer and fairer society – the place individuals can categorical themselves with out worry or judgment, and reclaim their company and identification by style.
“On this undertaking, I customised my very own jacket, which I’ve been holding for a very long time. Once I arrived within the UK, it was Autumn, the bushes began to take off their leaves. I used the sycamore leaf as a symbolic begin of my asylum declare journey. I represented two faces evoking emotions of uncertainty and loneliness. I drew the prophet Mohamed’s Mosque which represents my identification as a Muslim. Apart from this, I drew European homes. The inexperienced crops are rooted in each buildings; they present {that a} new chapter has been opened in my life”.
– Venture Participant
Such activism interventions, dialogues round cultural sustainability, cross-cultural change and craft expertise constructing, in addition to entry to protected areas the place contributors would possibly discover a sense of belonging and develop artistic concepts, are precisely the type of issues that the Decolonising Vogue and Textiles undertaking hopes to perform.
