Unlock your potential as a design change-maker

PRS Australia October 2024 Workshop

In this interactive session, Dr Francesco Mazzarella will deliver a brief talk on fashion activism for social change, with references to his own practice research projects and other work from Centre for Sustainable Fashion, UAL. He will then facilitate a workshop activity to aid the participants in reflecting on the activist potential of their creative practice in response to our age of polycrisis, outlining what they would like to change in the current – social, economic, environmental, and cultural – system. The participants will be encouraged to reflect on their personal values and skills, and explore a variety of methods and outputs of their doctoral practice research and potential future design activist interventions. To conclude, a collective discussion will be facilitated on design activists’ challenges and opportunities for change, within themselves and in the system in which they intervene.

Refreshments will be provided during the workshop.

Presenter 

Dr Francesco Mazzarella is a design researcher, educator, and activist, striving to plant seeds of hope and change, especially working with marginalised communities. He is Reader in Design for Social Change at London College of Fashion, UAL. His research at Centre for Sustainable Fashion, UAL spans the fields of design activism, textile craftsmanship, decolonising fashion, design for sustainability, social innovation, and place-making. Francesco is a member of the Design Council Experts Network, Fellow of Advance HE, Co-founder of the DESIS Cluster on 'Design from the Margins' and of the Cumulus Working Group on 'Design Education for Social Change'.