Tracing the social impact of fashion with Designed for Life
- Written byLondon College of Fashion
- Published date 05 September 2023
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LCF is delighted to announce Designed for Life, a new, free, exhibition exploring London College of Fashion’s, and its partners’ and community collaborators’, decades long commitment to harnessing fashion, design and creative practice as a force for positive social change.
Coinciding with the opening of LCF's new campus at East Bank, on Stratford’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, this inaugural exhibition features key themes including east London as home, reciprocal learning as community building, empowerment through making, global emergencies through creative expression and visions of a more sustainable and equitable future.
Presented across five immersive showcase areas in LCF’s new building, visitors will encounter textiles, design, film, photography, artefacts, personal testimonies and community building to discover the transformative power of creative action in shaping our world.
Designed for Life features many pieces never before on display to the public. Featured work includes:
- Notable work from LCF’s Centre for Sustainable Fashion researcher and artist Professor Helen Storey, including ‘Dress for Our Time,’ a decommissioned refugee tent donated by the UNHCR, the Jacket of Wishes, designed as a surface to capture the voices and wishes of the female Syrian refugees in Zaatari Refugee Camp, and the previously unseen project, Messages of Hope, created in collaboration with the TIGER Girls (These Inspiring Girls Enjoy Reading).
- Centre for Sustainable Fashion, LCF researcher and artist Lucy Orta’s project Traces: Stories of Migration, a collaborative series of textile-based artworks portraying images of the array of east London communities with migration experiences
- Work celebrating LCF's Portal Centre for Social Impact and its ten-year anniversary of award-winning programmes including Making for Change; established by the Ministry of Justice and LCF, UAL in 2014.
- Pieces from Centre for Sustainable Fashion LCF’s Decolonising Fashion and Textiles Project; a long-term community-based research workshop project led by Dr Francesco Mazzarella including short films by David Betteridge.
- An interactive Living Room installation reflecting and representing a broad heterogeneity of lives and experiences in East London, co-created by community curators Pallavi Chamarty, Omolara Obanishola, Dave Sohanpal and Anh Tran.
- Works and events by East London Art Prize recipients Woo Jin Joo, Sophie Cunningham and Alaa Alsaraji developed in collaboration with Bow Arts.
- Innovative practices of Toyin Gbomedo and Noemi Gunea; part of SEEDED, an East Bank partner residency programme for east London-based creatives, communities and collectives supported by Foundation for Future London and the City of London Corporation.
“This exhibition serves as a momentous occasion, heralding the inauguration of our East Bank campus situated within the prestigious Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Designed for Life stands as a testament to our mission to change lives through fashion and to lead the charge in cultivating a future where the impact of fashion is embraced and celebrated for its boundless reach and is the perfect way to launch our new Cultural Programme and welcome the public into our new home.
We cannot wait to welcome our new neighbours and visitors to explore the countless stories of decades of collaborations with our partners and community collaborators through an array of textiles, film, photography, and personal narratives. With themes reaffirming our local, regional and global community’s unwavering dedication to harnessing the dynamic force of fashion and creative expression to instigate positive change we hope visitors leave Designed for Life considering all the ways fashion and creativity can forge unity and ignite empowerment through meaningful employment.” - Lindsay Pentelow, Head of Cultural Programming, London College of Fashion, UAL
Open in October 2023 – 19 January 2024.
Tuesday - Saturday, 10am – 5pm.
Free admission with no need to book in advance.
London College of Fashion, UAL, 105 Carpenters Road, Stratford, E20 2AR
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