Call for students to participate in the Sustainable Challenge 2023

The Sustainable Challenge is an annual project committed to generating knowledge and proposals to favour sustainability in the fashion industry.

In the 5th edition, under the title “Gender perspective in fashion”, and in the context of a marathon of creation, 30 fashion students from schools in Spain, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands will accept the challenge of designing clothes using the methodology of participatory design, with the aim of understanding other perspectives beyond your own, with the support of experts and mentors in the sector.

The event will take place in person at Disseny Hub Barcelona from November 2 to 5, 2023. The call to participate will be open until October 2.

The Sustainable Challenge is organized by MODA-FAD with the participation of Design Manchester, thanks to the promotion of Barcelona City Council and the Design Hub and the support of the British Council and the Embassy of the Netherlands as a collaborationg institutions.

What is the challenge?

The challenge consists of questioning any decision taken during the fashion design process, which mostly adopts a privileged view of the world; it therefore means achieving a shared attitude towards the meaning of the body and of apparel in our modern western context. The decolonial gender perspective allows us to break with that normative view of the white and cisgender body to actively listen to other experiences outside that socially constructed framework. In this experimental exercise we will not focus on what, in diversity, is denominated “the others”; instead we will hear, from the groups themselves, what their diversities are within the framework of the intersectional in order to avoid falling into preconceived stereotypes or images of diversity, whether it be functional, neurodivergent or related to sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity or culture, among others.

At the Sustainable Challenge 2023 we face the task of meeting this and other needs relating to the body diversity that millions of people have to deal with on a daily basis across the world. Because serving diversity enriches us as a society and we want to do it in a differentiating style, one that learns to place the focus on actively listening to difference.

Participation

The Sustainable Challenge is a non-formal, non-regulated training project aimed at fashion students. It is open to the participation of fashion students in Spanish, Dutch and UK schools in educational cycles studying university degrees, postgraduate degrees and master’s degrees in any discipline: design, pattern design, styling, communication, etc. From among all the applicants, the organisation will select thirty students who will work in different teams comprising members from different specialities and nationalities.

The goal is to generate the knowledge and life experience in the students that will allow them, once they are professionals, to meet the demands for social inclusion and sustainability required in the fashion industry.

Participation is free of charge and the organisation provides and funds the accommodation and subsistence costs of the participants during the days of the Challenge as well as the flight tickets.

The format is intensive and is based on the practice of sharing. In this regard, participation entails coexistence within the group, community dynamics and the use of shared resources (accommodation, meals, material resources, etc.).