Herewear Community Events

The following is a record of HW Community events that took place during the project.

Co-creation sessions

A monthly series of on-line co-creation sessions aimed to connect Herewear Community members with the experts participating in the project consortium.

  • The first session, held on Friday 21 October, featured Lien van Der Schueren and Willem Uyttendaele of Lead Partner Centexbel with an overview on the issue of Bio-based Fibres. The session was based on the Expert Talk "Bio-based textiles" also posted in the Thematic Area.
  • The second session in the series, "How Local is Local?", was held on Friday 27 January at 11.00-12:30 CET, and featured Jesse Marsh of TCBL, Dieter Stellmach of DITF, and Elvys Sandu of Mai Bine, each proposing a different angle of investigation on the concept of local production ecosystems: digitized micro-production units, local production communities, and local business landscapes. Following a brief presentation of these approaches, participating Community members used a Miro board in a session animated by Rosie Hornbuckle (CCD/UAL) to bring forward their different views on local production and how they would like to work together with the HEREWEAR project to realise their goals, leading to a set of 3-5 local production scenarios as the basis for further development within the project in the coming months.
  • The third session in the series, "Herewear material collection: exploring a full lifecycle approach", Friday 24 March, featured Laetitia Forst and Rosie Hornbuckle of the Center for Circular Design at UAL. The session presents the collection of samples representing innovation in biobased materials collected in the early stages of Herewear, together with a lifecycle map that shows how these materials can be considered through a full lifecycle approach. The aim was to better understand how decisions in early stages can affect design and use phases, given the variety of feedstocks, processes, and end of life trajectories represented.
  • The fourth session - Tuesday September 12th -  was a special webinar to update members about progress in the Herewear project and, above all, present tools for networked manufacturing currently under development in the project. This is a set of complementary digital tools that aid product design, material and component selection, networked manufacturing, and waste handling

Community Meet-ups

Herewear Community Meet-ups were held towards the beginning of the project with three main goals:

  • Present Herewear project activities, planned outputs, and opportunities for engagement to Community members.
  • Provide an opportunity for Community members to present themselves and get to know project partners and each other.
  • Capture community members’ interests, needs and expectations within the three thematic areas of the Community Space.

The results of these sessions feed back into the thematic areas of the Community Space and eventually contributed to the final outputs of the project.

Community Workshops

Community Workshops are hosted by a community or project partner institution and focus on a specific topic of interest. They normally follow a hybrid format mixing on- and offline keynote speakers, pitches from local initiatives, and open discussion. Previous Community Workshops have included:

  • Online. May 17th, 2023. Partner UAL organised an online roundtable to discuss priorities in education for future clothing and textiles eco-systems.
  • Iasi. May 25th/26th 2022 in person. Herewear partners Mai Bine and UAL organised workshops to co-create upcycling solutions as part of the Romanian Creative Week in Iasi.
  • Arles (France, 23 November, 2022. Atelier Luma is the research lab of the Luma Foundation, which is supporting the development of a bio-region model based on the broad range of resources that are locally available in the Camargue area. The workshop explored how to connect the waste resources to the production of pulp for threads and textiles and to reflect upon the sustainable scales for production systems all along this process in order to support the development of a bio-region model.
  • Iasi (Romania), 20-30 May, 2022, during the Romania Creative Week and hosted by HEREWEAR partner Mai Bine. Laetitia Forst from Centre for Circular Design together with Elvys Sandu and Andreea Sofronea from Mai bine presented the project and the HEREWEAR Material Library and organized two workshops, one on Bio-based Materials and one on Garment Scenarios.
  • San Leucio (near Naples, Italy), 29 April, 2022. Hosted by the Design Department of the University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli", engaged in the exploration of the potentials of bio-based fibers. The workshop included presentations by HEREWEAR project partners working in bio-based fibers together with representatives of local LEADER Local Action Groups as well as regional policy makers.