Time for (S)heroes: fashion, costume design, and art installations for sustainable future
Time for (S)heroes is a capacity building project for prospective fashion and costume designers with an impact for sustainability. We enable designers and artists to co-design digital and tangible fashion.
We promote sustainable design, art installations, drama pedagogy, co-design, and equal representation of people!
Project Summary
Designers and artists are the (S)heroes of the day to lead the green shift, advance sustainability, reduce material waste, and spread best practices for sustainable fashion and costume design. We facilitate an interdisciplinary co-design process through a digital portal, workshops, events, residencies, demos, and exhibitions supported by educational contents and mentoring.
Visualized project framework
Project Framework (Haapaniemi, Kalmakurki & Kumpulainen 2024)
The process begins with co-operating with local schools and drama specialists.
Drama methods enable local youngsters to discuss and reinterpret hero narratives. Devising for design, process drama and performative inquiry are powerful tools to integrate versatile voices from the young generation. This advances their sense of belonging and encourages shared meaning making in forming new (S)hero identities.
We promote inclusion, diversity, and equal representation of people with ecological impact on consumer behavior.
Everyone can be a (S)hero with a positive impact on the climate change!
For greater impact designers and artists are invited to co-design.
Capacity building is provided in digital tools, entrepreneurial skills, interdisciplinary co-design, circular economy, digital costume and fashion design, art installations and character-based (S)hero narratives.
Target groups generate proposals in fashion and costume design products, installation art, (S)hero rethought narratives and recycled materials. (S)hero rethought means reading and reinterpreting hero narratives critically in the framework of sustainable design, inclusion, and diversity. Narratives are reinterpreted together with young audiences via devising to produce material for the co-design process.
Participants work together online, in onsite events and residencies.
Capacity building phase aims to reach 3000 designers. Best proposals are selected, 100 designers are welcomed to the Design Wave Festival and 30 are invited to hone their products in international residences with mentoring followed by a tailored business incubation programme.
The innovative and impactful design artifacts are showcased internationally.
The resulting digital and tangible design and art works are showcased in events and exhibitions in 3 countries and in digital exhibition format to communicate new (S)hero narratives. To offer impactful experiences (up to 25 000 audience) we collaborate with urban spaces, galleries, theaters, and libraries.
This is a genuine opportunity for artists to showcase the results of the design process and impact broad audiences in the realms of sustainable fashion, costume design, and art!
The interdisciplinary experiments are compiled into guidelines.
We are also creating sustainability and circular design guidelines, a co-design model, and building a collective mindscape to enhance sustainability. The co-design portal remains open access platform for interdisciplinary usage.
(S)hero rethought means reading hero narratives critically and reinterpreting them in the frameworks of fight against climate change.
Project Objectives:
Improve fashion, clothes and costume designers’ digital design and business skills.
Increase awareness of sustainable fashion and clothing among creative industries, customers, and wider audience.
Strengthen fashion, design and art industries’ networks and co-operation and connections with technology and business industries.
Formulate new (s)hero narratives that speak to modern audiences.
Engage and participate target groups, wider audience, and stakeholders European-wide in co-creation process: Create a method for (S)hero rethought.
Create a digital portal for capacity building, mentoring, co-design, and design team formation. The portal contains design briefs within categories. Available open source after this project.
Explore methods how leftover and recycled materials can be better utilized in fashion industry and increase understanding of the complicated circular processes at each phase.
Improve interdisciplinary co-creation processes with creative industries, businesses, and users in sustainable development of products, services, and artworks.
Consortium
Time for (S)heroes 6 project partners from different European countries profoundly complement each other in activities in terms of skills. Every partner organization has specific responsibilities during the project. The following introduction provides only the key points regarding our partners’ responsibilities and capabilities.
South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences, Xamk, Creative Industries Research Unit, is the lead partner of the project. Xamk brings in project coordinating competencies, knowledge in digital fashion and costume design, and supports digital development and co-design.
Tallinn Business Incubator, TBI, has fostered the growth of design market in Estonia and showcased products internationally. In this project TBI offers the design participants an incubator program that supports in developing business models from preliminary ideas.
The Northern Dimension Partnership on Culture, NDPC, is a unique cooperation platform that has flexibility to work with public and private organizations. NDPC’s responsibilities in this project are related to communication, dissemination and capacity building.
ESPRONCEDA – Institute of Art & Culture, powered by Lemongrass communications S.L., supports interconnection between art, culture, science, and society. In this project ESPRONCERA facilitates the creation of design especially within the residencies.
Nurogames is an intependent game development and software engineering company that is in charge of the web design process of the digital portal. They will also produce digital contents to the marketing communication of the project.
The Latvian Technological Center, LTC, is a technology and innovation-orientated business support structure, and has a great experience in event organization. LTC is leading the planning and realization of Design Wave Festival in this project.
