Design for a Sustainable Circular Economy
- Level: Short Course
- Starting: July 2020
- Study mode: Short Course (5 days)
- Location: City Centre
Through applying circular design strategies, how do we redesign fashion and textiles without harm for our environment and humankind? How can design thinking help to tackle products going to landfill before they are even expired? Finding innovative ways to develop sustainable products is the challenge we have to solve jointly as creatives, scientists and business people.
Course Description
This five-day short course introduces you to the systems of Circular Economy. It helps you to understand the specific approach to sustainable, circular fashion and business design within the fashion industry, based on the following principles:
- Design out waste and pollution
- Keep products and materials in use
- Regenerate natural systems
You will explore various parts of the production chain including sourcing, product development, sales and (re)use to define opportunities for circular change.
We will provide you with a practice-based challenge (given by a UK firm within the fashion industry) to explore Circular Economy and gain experience in interdisciplinary team work.
We highly welcome participants from different professional backgrounds interested in actionable knowledge in the field of circular fashion.
Duration: 5 days
Dates: 27-31 July 2020
Times: 10.00am - 4.00pm daily
Price: Early Bird price £340 until February 2020 (£400 thereafter)
Venue: City Centre (The Parkside Building)
What will you study?
On the first two days we will introduce you to the challenges of the current fashion industry and guide you through innovative approaches for potential improvement. We will present the impact of circular design on complex difficulties and how it can be a driver for change whilst being economically valuable. Case studies and best practices will show you how Circular Economy can be implemented and inspire you to think differently.
For the following two days, a live fashion project will give you the possibility to research existing problems in mini groups and find solutions that can ignite your cooperation partner to change for the better. On the last day you will present and discuss your individual implementation of circular design strategies.
Tutor description
Johnny Kerkhof is CEO at Start Up Mix in the Netherlands. He has developed educational courses on Circular Economy for different academic institutes since 2014. His work has a focus on fostering an entrepreneurial mindset in students and participants. In the past five years he has designed and run circular business case challenges for different sectors, including the fashion sector where his social enterprise runs the www.circularfashiongames.com.
Sabine Lettmann is a Senior Lecturer specialising in fashion and costume design, currently teaching on the BA Costume Design and Practice course at Birmingham City University. Since finishing her Diploma in Fashion Design at the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg in 2001, she has been working as fashion designer and consultant. Her focus lies on finding sustainable alternatives to common design practices. Within her own circular collection concept she uses transparency, collaboration and open source strategies to approach fashion design from a holistic point of view.
This course is open to International students
Discover the School of Fashion and Textiles
Visit our School site for more student work and extra information.
- UK/EU students
- International students
Award:
Starting: Jul 2020
- Mode
- Duration
- Fees
- Short Course
- 5 days
-
TBC
Award:
Starting: Jul 2020
- Mode
- Duration
- Fees
- Short Course
- 5 days
-
TBC
The University reserves the right to increase fees in line with inflation based on the Retail Prices Index or to reflect changes in Government funding policies or changes agreed by Parliament up to a maximum of five per cent.
Early bird price: £340 (available until February 2020)
Regular price: £400
Our Facilities
You’ll be based in our School of Fashion and Textiles, within The Parkside Building. The Parkside Building is part of our new multi-million pound City Centre Campus development in the heart of Birmingham's Eastside development.
Sabine Lettman
Senior Lecturer
Sabine started teaching Fashion Design in 2015. Since then she taught Design, Concept Development, Dissertation and Sustainable Design Systems. In February 2018 she joined BCU as a VT to teach level 4 to level 6 students. Following this experience Sabine started to work as a part-time Senior Lecturer at BCU in 2019.
With more than 18 years of experience as a freelancer in Fashion Design, Sabine looks back to working for her own label and other brands. She focusses on sustainable systems and designs womens- and knitwear in her Hamburg studio. Collections were presented internationally for example at Paris’ fashion fair Who’s Next”. As not only the place of production plays a main role for her production but also the manner is key to her philosophy, workways include integrative approaches through working with sheltered workshops and migrants since the very beginning.
Enquiries
- Please send all enquiries to beth.white@bcu.ac.uk