Joint Symposium between Parsons School of Fashion (New York, USA), London College of Fashion (London, UK), COLEGIATURA (Medellín, Colombia) and PolyU (Hong Kong SAR, China)
Based on the success of last year’s ‘Transformative Fashion Pedagogies’ Symposium, we are organising a further opportunity to come together and share the progressive and inclusive pedagogies we are implementing at London College of Fashion (LCF) and Parsons School of Fashion.
The symposium will once again foreground fashion pedagogy as critical research, asserting the interconnectedness of research, teaching, and industry and/or community organisations and the role we play as educators in enacting impactful social and political change with our students. A selection of papers will be published in a special issue The Fashion Studies Journal , focused on Fashion Pedagogy.
This year, we will focus around four themes emerging from our previous discussions and presentations:
- Design Justice
- Can empathy be employed as a powerful tool for change?
- Within the context of academia and social justice, how do we examine our positionality as designers, students and educators?
- How can institutions engage in amplifying voices of under-represented and unheard perspectives to engage critically in dissemination of knowledge through the expertise of marginalised bodies and minds?
- Defining Fashion
- What is fashion?
- How are we evolving the definition of fashion in response to current times?
- What must change for a definition of fashion to be considered inclusive?
- By defining fashion for students are we really only defining ourselves?
- How do we define what a quality fashion education is?
- How do we define/ascertain a framework for measuring the quality of fashion education within the current context?
- Undoing Fashion
- How can/do we encourage students to challenge, or undo established ideas about fashion?
- How can/do we develop new fashion pedagogies that foreground climate change and social justice?
- How can educators reconcile the drive for and interest in the image of glamour with current damaging and exploitative elements of the fashion system?
- Industry Impact
- What tensions and gaps exist between the fashion industry and academia?
- How do we preserve and/or invent generative fashion systems within the context of current industry?
- How can/do we collaborate with the fashion industry to drive change within fashion practices?
The symposium will take place on 26 April and 3 May via Zoom and will take the form of parallel panels, based on these themes. One panel will be offered in Spanish.
We encourage proposals for diverse formats, including short ten-minute presentations , panels and collaborative group projects. The types of presentations might include:
- Single faculty presentation
- Pair or group faculty panel
- Faculty and student collaborative presentation or panel
- Workshops on teaching methods
- Examples of decolonial approaches and curricula
- Approaches to inclusive teaching
- Case studies of specific courses
Submission
Please send a 150-word abstract, outlining your proposed presentation and format to Ms Sharon Cheung (sharon-sw.cheung@polyu.edu.hk) on or before by 13 Feb 2024 for the initial screening. All abstracts will be double anonymous peer reviewed. We aim to send you feedback by 8 March and the final symposium schedule will be published by 20 March.
*Please indicate your interest in having your submission considered for the special journal issue based on the symposium
The organising committee
- Caroline Stevenson (Programme Director of Cultural and Historical Studies and Fashion Studies, London College of Fashion)
- Liza Betts (Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Historical Studies, London College of Fashion)
- Ben Barry (Dean, Parsons School of Fashion)
- Fiona Dieffenbacher (Associate Dean, Parsons School of Fashion)
- Natalia Ramírez Gutiérrez (Professor, COLEGIATURA)
- Mung Lar Lam (Professor of Practice, PolyU)
- Ryan Houlton (Programme Director, MA Fashion & Textiles Design, PolyU)
