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Angela McRobbie, Professor of Communications at Goldsmiths since 1998, is an expert on urban fashion start-ups. Her research chimes with government interest in self-employment among `young creatives'. It has shaped policy and thinking at the DCMS and London Fashion Week, and the Centre for Fashion Enterprise in East London. She has played a direct role in the development of start-ups in Germany, Austria and Italy across the full range of creative industries. Many of her now classic articles are key references in policy debate, and her original work has `handbook status' for young independent fashion designers. She has shaped thinking on newcomers and start-ups in the context of high youth unemployment across Europe, on the rise of 'new fashion cities' and on urban cultural policies including Fashion Weeks.
University of the Arts London (UAL) is a pioneer of research into both design-led practice and the theoretical concepts underpinning sustainability across the fashion and textile sectors. Work focuses on design strategies for sustainability, textile recycling and upcycling, new manufacturing practices, systems and processes, greater understanding of consumer behaviours, and how to develop informed consumer engagement with fashion and textile products and their use. Research aims to empower designers through education and innovative best practice to make better informed decisions and choices, to question the status quo, create significant improvements and foster radical changes to the existing system. Publications and collaborative projects have impacted on industry, influenced policy debate and practice within Government, and enhanced public understanding of issues surrounding fashion and textiles sustainability.
Dr. Miller, Professor Owen and Professor Wilks' research underpins Cultural Memory studies. It spans several decades and has engaged with and impacted upon academia and society via numerous forms of dissemination such as monographs, chapters in books, journal articles, broadcasts, exhibitions, websites, conference papers and public talks. Cultural Memory is a relatively new area of study that examines, and seeks to raise awareness of, the way in which society, the individual and cultural production is reconstructed via the remaining material evidence. Hence it focuses equally on material evidence and the problematical way in which it is often distorted by contemporary filters.
Ulinka Rublack's research focuses on the history of Renaissance dress. Her work has enhanced public awareness that social groups beyond courtly elites created fashion in the past. It led to a re-creation of one of the most significant outfits recorded in the wardrobe of a sixteenth-century accountant. Rublack's work has reached beyond academic audiences by influencing theatre practices and education and has been disseminated through broadcasting, filming and print media. Most recently, it has led to collaboration with a fashion designer and an artist to create contemporary fashion and photography in connection with the story of the Renaissance accountant.
The two-year ROTOЯ programme of exhibitions and events has been a cornerstone of the University of Huddersfield's efforts to introduce new audiences to contemporary art and design, as encouraged by successive Arts Council policies for enhancing public engagement. As well as raising awareness, inspiring curiosity and providing cultural enrichment, it has initiated changes to local authority policies on providing cost-effective, high-quality cultural services and has functioned as a vehicle for research into how the impact of such programmes can be captured. As such, it has served as a model partnership for local authority and university sectors in offering cultural leadership, generating and measuring engagement and delivering public services.
Emma Tarlo's research on modest dress and Islamic fashion plays a substantial role in combatting social prejudice and promoting understanding of religious minority groups in Britain and Europe. Addressing issues of the rights to religious expression and the need for socially inclusive design, it has attracted widespread coverage in British and international media, including religious and ethnic minority and fashion media, stimulating public debate on-line and off. Professor Tarlo has engaged with diverse publics in the context of museums, Islamic societies, inter-faith events, schools conferences, and through interviews on radio and film. Her research has been taken up in new educational curricula and by artists and designers seeking to combat social prejudice through design.
`Threads of Feeling', a major exhibition of the textile tokens left with abandoned infants at the London Foundling Hospital in the mid-eighteenth century, was curated and based on original research by Professor John Styles. Displayed at the London Foundling Museum in 2010-11, it received 19,132 visitors in six months. A permanent online presence from 2011 extended its reach, and when it travelled to the USA in 2013, a further 46,619 people saw it over two months. Its public popularity, enthusiastic critical reception and role in inspiring textile practitioners in particular have all ensured significant public awareness of this previously little known aspect of social history.
This case study focuses on three Science/Art collaborations Primitive Streak, Wonderland and Catalytic Clothing (CatClo) undertaken since 1997 by Professor Helen Storey. Storey's work is genuinely collaborative, spanning arts, sciences and new technology fields, and produces projects which illuminate aspects of science and well-being in ways that engage with the public, communicate complicated concepts, and demonstrate the potential of science in an innovative and accessible manner. The projects have reached huge audiences and have made a significant contribution to raising public awareness of science and issues faced by society.