Constructive disruption: A proposal for a planet-centred curriculum to enable circular systems thinking in fashion and textiles education

Abstract

Traditional fashion and textiles education is predominantly based on processes that inform a linear fashion industry which contributes to global, significant environmental and societal challenges. Thus, universities share governments’ accountability for sustaining a flawed system. As a response, this study proposes a planet-centred and community-focused fashion and textile curriculum, equipping students with competencies required for cultural change that enables a prosperous future for all. This curriculum proposal explores how an environment at Birmingham City University to observe nature (Growth Garden) and to explore materials (MAT_er.LAB) can be a place where artistic, scientific and technical perspectives thrive through collaborative and reflective practice. As a STEAM approach, it embeds art within the STEM agenda through a four-layered pedagogical structure that feeds into a curriculum framework mimicking the seasonal calendar to allow several entry points and lifelong learning. Designed to form an inclusive and equal learning system for ‘constructive disruption’, strategies aim to dismantle the existing knowledge-accruing focused learning structures that currently prevail. Seeking change beyond education, this proposal also questions dominating point-based application systems as irrelevant for cultural change. By embedding community-driven assessment forms, it shifts evaluation from grades to impact providing real change that serves nature and society.