A Long-Time Approach to Promote Sustainability Awareness

Environmental activism and the widespread acknowledgement of the impact of pollution from Fashion and Textiles industries has driven an educational sustainability directive that promotes designer, buyer and consumer awareness.

Centred on a long-time approach that encourages cathedral style thinking and the concept of being a good ancestor (Krznaric, 2020), contrasts sharply with current fast fashion practices. Long-time advocates Saltmarshe and Pembroke (2018) state, “Short termism is rapidly becoming an existential threat to humanity” while Fletcher (2010) suggests that developing systems change for the fashion sector provides an opportunity to promote a slower culture.

At De Montfort University, the School of Fashion and Textiles has been acknowledged as a leader in sustainability education, with a “Green Gown Award for Next Generation Learning and Skills”, (Sustainability Exchange, 2021), and recognises that it is the responsibility of educators to ensure future designers and buyers are aware of the criticality of their professional decisions over their careers and the impact these decisions can have on consumers.

Based on long time thinking, this chapter outlines a sustainability awareness case study that was initiated as a co-creation opportunity with buying and design staff and students. Launched in 2019 as T-Extinction, the project was a provocation to think ahead to the year 2090, a time when the current students would be in their elder years and able to reflect on their careers. The first iteration involved Fashion Buying academics and students who set themselves the challenge to identify products or processes that would be extinct or taboo by 2090, (Hardaker et al, 2022). This negative premise led to positive thinking for the next iteration, where treasured textiles and associated craft skills are considered as heirlooms (Mignosa and Kotipalli, 2019) and has an immediate synergy with long time thinking. Textile Design students and academics developed this further to consider the fate of endangered crafts and developed innovative methods to revitalise them to ensure they would still be in existence in the year 2090.

The co-creation of responses and the promotion of the project, across social media platforms and through physical exhibitions in Leicester showed that the thought provoking memorable visual statements created and resonated not only with the student and academic audience but with fashion consumers. First this chapter sets the environmental and industry contexts, followed by a review of current academic pedagogy and the philosophy of long-time thinking and its influence on education. The paper concludes with an educational case study that argues the value of a long-time thinking as a means of developing both industry professionals and consumer awareness of the environmental challenges posed by current Fashion and Textiles industry practices.