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Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)

Course content related to sustainable development

The goal with the course is that sustainability is embedded and that it is the norm that the planet, other people, and where our clothes are made is considered throughout. Becoming global citizens and changing the world to make it better is a core ethos of the programme and from day one students are encouraged to be ethically and socially aware, and are expected to take on board that there are practical solutions that they can take to address sustainability issues. 

The programme includes Intended Learning Outcomes relating to sustainability: ‘Demonstrate specialist knowledge and a sophisticated understanding of the relationship between individual fashion image making & styling practice and cultural drivers within our society (e.g. business, environmental, ethical, historical, political and economic)’ and ‘Articulate how fashion image making and styling can be used as a medium to affect positive change.’, but commitment to sustainability goes further with the FIMS Sustainability Policy, which is incorporated into every FIMS module and includes facts, values, and actions and solutions that students can take, such as:

• “We are custodians of this beautiful planet - we have to take this seriously - this is on our watch and our responsibility”
• “In the face of climate crisis, one thing is clear, we will only get to an equally just future by way of working together”
• “Empower and elevate your voice as a young creative sustainable change maker”.
• “In a world that is speeding up, slowing down is nothing short of radical”
• “We push all sorts of boundaries - artistically, creatively, politically and institutionally but one boundary we all need to honour is nature” 
• “Embed sustainable thinking at the start of all creative and decision making processes”

Competencies for sustainability

A key element of ESD is supporting learners to develop competencies that will help them to tackle and cope with sustainability challenges. Within the BA Fashion Image Making Styling the key competencies developed are: 

• Empathy: Students are encouraged to care about humanity and to care about the planet and are taught to look at bigger pictures, to look at everything as our problem. It will affect us all. We're all part of one. We're humanity.
• Critical thinking: Ethical and social issues affecting fashion image making & styling and its wider contexts (such as diversity, sustainability, size, gender, appropriation and identity politics) are directly addressed through critical modules where the subject-specific, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary contexts and related debates are discussed in group tutorials and seminars. Dialogic approaches to discussion are applied in order to challenge students and encourage them to question received ideas relating to lifestyle, systems and structures with a view to enabling students to develop and apply informed perspectives. 
• Intercultural competence: Cross-cultural competence and respect are developed through learning from each other in inclusive group tutorials and peer crit settings, as well as through exploring topics such as cultural appropriation. 

Pedagogical approaches

ESD uses action-orientated and transformative pedagogical approaches to facilitate taking sustainability knowledge and competencies into practice. Teaching methods and pedagogical practices used in the BA Fashion Image Making Styling include:

• Group based work
• Case studies
• Experiential project work 
• Stimulus activities

Questions to Christine Ratcliff

Is ESD is embedded in any assessments in the module?

Sustainability is incorporated into most assessments, and is a key element of some. All students undertake a project called ‘Good Taste, Bad Taste’ where they work with clothes that would otherwise have gone to landfill, from brands such as Patagonia and PrettyLittleThing. They restyle them, repurpose them and run fashion shows with these clothes.

Students are given a live brief from partner Atmos magazine to create a 5-minute presentation about sustainability and fashion. They also write an essay about how they are embedding sustainability into their practice and create an eight-page shoot.

There have also been live briefs set by Selfridges that encourage students to address the real-world issue of denim and toxic dyes. Students are required to develop styling outcomes that engage with sustainable options such as second-hand clothes, natural dyes, re-cycled garments and vintage.

There is also a 6-week environmental brief called CARING SHARING, where students collaborate in groups to consider ethical environmental consciousness and how to progress sustainable solutions to fashion industry waste, creating responses with a zero-waste anchor.

Do you have any future plans for ESD?

In the Comparative Shoot module for Level 5 students, they do two fashion shoots around a single concept, but applying it to two different industry clients. After taking the University’s Carbon Literacy training, I have made the decision to use sustainability as the main driver – working with More or Less ethical fashion magazine and HTSI magazine.

Students will explore zero waste and low impact clothing and will be supported to monitor their carbon footprint when undertaking fashion shoots.