Listening for the Echoes: heritage knowledges to shape fashion & design futures

A SYMPOSIUM HOSTED BY

ISTITUTO MARANGONI LONDON

Thursday 1st and Friday 2nd May 2025, online

FULL PROGRAMME HERE

Presentations

PANEL 1: Listening and Learning - video

Moderator: Dr Kirsten Scott, Head of Research at Istituto Marangoni London.

  • Sow to Sew, Seed to Stitch - Mitchell Vassie. (Vietnam)

    MITCHELL VASSIE recently returned to university to pursue a Master’s in Sustainable Fashion, driven by a desire to truly understand sustainability’s impact on people, culture, and the environment. He is drawn to garments that evolve with time. Denim, at the heart of his current research, embodies this philosophy. Its journey mirrors our own, carrying the scars and imprints of experience. Like people, garments bear imperfections, each mark telling a story. He sees this as a rejection of imposed perfection—an embrace of authenticity, where beauty is found not in flawlessness but in the poetry of wear and time.

    Mitchell holds close a Vietnamese saying a student once shared: “Thất bại là mẹ thành công”—failure is the mother of success. Learning, like clothing, is an ongoing process of adaptation, resilience, and transformation.

  • Beyond Objectification: Reciprocity and Agency in Digitally Preserving Vietnam's Ethnic Textile Heritage Corinna Joyce et al. (Vietnam)

    CORINNA JOYCE is Manager of the Bachelor of Fashion at RMIT Vietnam, with a background in higher education teaching in the Middle East and Asia. Her research focuses on the preservation and transmission of traditional knowledge and making skills and their impact on societal resilience, showcasing her commitment to exploring the interplay between tradition and innovation through methodologies of co-design and practice research. In addition to her academic practice, Corinna brings valuable experience from the start-up landscape in the Middle East and Europe, further enriching her understanding of the industry.

  • Decolonising Fashion – Weaving Care in Designers’ Collaborations with Indigenous Communities. Francesco Mazzarella (UK)

    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 Expert 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'.

  • Songs of the Loom: Understanding Meaning, Metaphor and Memory through Indigenous Weaving Practices. Prerana Anjali Choudhury (India)

    PRERANA ANJALI CHOUDHURY belongs to Assam. Her micro-handloom initiative called House of Noorie was founded in 2019, inspired by her grandmother's weaving that she grew up watching. She completed her studies in literature, arts and aesthetics and now works extensively across rural Assam in an effort to preserve and sustain the domestic loom tradition of Assam. Along with textile development, Prerana also conducts independent research related to her community work. She is also an embroidery artist, interested in exploring the embroidery tradition of Assam. 

PANEL 2: Listening and Learning - video

Moderator: Dr Sandra Niessen, cultural anthropologist and founding member of the Research Collective for Decoloniality and Fashion (RCDF) and Fashion Act Now (FAN).

  • Weaving Futures, Bridging Generations: Engaging Indian Youth with Textile Traditions to Shape Sustainable Design Futures. Sakshi Mundada (India)

    SAKSHI MUNDADA is a textile designer, researcher, and cultural storyteller specializing in heritage narratives and youth engagement. A graduate of the Textile Design Programme at NIFT Gandhinagar, she has conducted extensive research on Indian textile traditions, mapping generational perspectives and their evolving relevance. With a proven academic record, her work with Cultre (Cultech Wave Pvt Ltd) and her current role at Inherit focus on documenting and interpreting cultural histories through innovative storytelling methods. Passionate about bridging the past and present, she seeks to make traditional knowledge more accessible and engaging for modern audiences.

  • Reclaiming myths and legends through traditional making.

    Dr Jules Findley (UK)

    DR JULES FINDLEY Embodied materiality in my research is used as an investigation into the relationships between affect and the creative, embodied encounters with textile materials. My research integrates creative practice, working with fibre-based materials, scholarly exploration of the literature and theory of materials in fashion and textiles. Paper and textiles become the metaphor that connects affect and the body that inputs Cartesian culture. This work is exhibited internationally, mostly through open calls and biennales. From these roots, sustainable practices in fashion and textiles together with an extensive knowledge of materials and practice extend my research in academia and consultancy.

  • Heirlooms: heritage aesthetics, fibres, colours and textiles for regenerative, local fashion futures. Kirsten Scott, Emma D’Arcey, Clare Lopeman (UK)

    DR KIRSTEN SCOTT is Head of Research at Istituto Marangoni London., where she was previously Programme Leader for MA Fashion Design. Her PhD (RCA) explored cross-cultural communication through craft and her subsequent research has investigated and promoted the contemporary value of indigenous knowledge systems that reflect harmonious collaboration with nature, and decolonized approaches to fashion education. She is founder of the Barkcloth Research Network, a cross-disciplinary research group of designers, artists, environmentalists, farmers and scientists across the UK, US and Uganda. Her focus as a designer and researcher has become increasingly holistic, multi-disciplinary, and activist, now working to excavate and reimagine indigenous clothing vernaculars within the UK and their potential in post-growth clothing systems.

  • Planetary Pedagogies: Six terrains of being for design education. Tom Crisp (UK)

    TOM CRISP is an RCA-trained designer, educator and researcher working to develop new pedagogic ecologies for designers to fashion new pathways to sustainable systems of human and planetary health. He is the Course Leader of MA Sustainable Fashion at Falmouth University and an education consultant working on digital transformation projects. His recent research, titled, Planetary Pedagogies, explores six terrains of knowing that underpin the teaching on MA Sustainable Fashion, infusing the course with a pluriverse of ecological living systems design practice. He is also a keen food grower and sits on the Loveland Community Growing Project Steering Group and is part of the Hospicing Modernity group and Research Collective Hyphae.

PANEL 3: Responding - video

Moderator: Dr Mi Medrado, anthropologist and decolonial researcher and activist, interim chair of the Research Collective for Decoloniality and Fashion (RCDF).

  • Decolonial Sustainability and Ethical Creativity. Dr Kat Sark (Canada)

    DR KAT SARK is the founder of the Canadian Fashion Scholars Network, and the co-founder of the Urban Chic book series, including Copenhagen Chic: A Locational History of Copenhagen Fashion (2023). Her other publications include Branding Berlin (2023), Social Justice Pedagogies (2023), a special issue on Creativity, Craft, Fashion, and Gender  (2025) and a special issue on Ethical Fashion and Empowerment in Clothing Cultures (2021). For over eighteen years, she has taught at different universities across Canada, Denmark, Germany, and Austria, developing programs and many interdisciplinary courses in Fashion and Design Studies, History, Theory, Cultural Studies, Media Studies, Gender Studies, and Creativity Studies. 

  • Too Much Clothing and Nothing to Wear: Home Sewing, Material Engagement, and Reimagining Fashion’s Future. Patricia Kelly Spurles (Canada)

    PATRICIA KELLY SPURLES is Associate Professor of Visual and Material Culture Studies at Mount Allison University. Her research explores how everyday practices shape broader social systems, drawing on feminist new materialisms and affect theory to challenge narratives of obsolescence and disposability. She also investigates home sewing as an intervention in fast fashion, examining how sewists develop qualitatively distinct relationships with clothing through ongoing material negotiations. Her current research extends these concerns into more-than-human story-making, considering how textiles act as narrative co-creators through processes of making, wear, and repair.

  • Rediscovery, recovery, and dreaming: the caring practices of artisan designers in Kutch communities. Jacqueline Morris, Prof. Fiona Hackney, Lokesh Ghai (UK)

    JACQUELINE MORRIS is a doctoral candidate at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. She is currently researching connections to rural place and care for nature through collaborative arts-based explorations with her community. These are using a combination of embodied methods and participatory textiles. Her interests lie in social injustice, women’s history, communities of practice, ecology, heritage, poetry, sculpture and textiles. She was research assistant on the RAV project, Crafting Futures India, British Council.

     

    PROF. FIONA HACKNEY is Professor of Fashion Cultures at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. Her research focuses on sustainability, memory and dress, slow fashion, crafts, heritage, co-creation, participatory research methods, and social design. Recent publications include ‘Maker-centricity and ‘edge-places of creativity’: CARE-full Making in a CARE-less World’ European Journal of Cultural Studies and ‘Changing the World Not Just our Wardrobes: A Sensibility for Sustainable Clothing, Care and Quiet Activism’, Routledge Fashion Companion. She has led many Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded projects about the wider value of participatory making and was research lead on the RAV project, Crafting Futures India, British Council.

     

    LOKESH GHAI is a researcher and design educator working with traditional Indian craft practices and under-represented communities. He has exhibited his work internationally including the Museum of Childhood, London; Gallery of Costume, Manchester, Harris Museum, Tramway Gallery, Glasgow and Conflictorum, Ahmedabad. In 2022 Ghai received The Karun Thakar research grant award by V&A Museum, London to work with tailors in remote Himalayas. This was followed by a research grant from the Indian Foundation for Arts to study the shoemakers of Doon Valley. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD from Manchester Metropolitan University on an AHRC grant. His recent publications includes a chapter in The Routledge Handbook of Craft and Sustainability in India. And in Reading the Thread, by Bloomsbury.

FILM SCREENINGS: introduced by Sandra Niessen speaking about the Sacrifice Zones of Fashion - video

DR SANDRA NIESSEN is a Canadian/Dutch cultural anthropologist, whose fieldwork has focused primarily on the clothing culture of the Batak people inhabiting the region around Lake Toba in North Sumatra, Indonesia. Her research on the handwoven textile repertory over a period of 45 years has resulted in numerous books, articles and films. 

The Batak tradition and other indigenous clothing traditions throughout the world are in sharp decline. Since 2003, Sandra has been writing to raise awareness of how clothing cultures are sacrificed by coloniality and fashion. She is a founding member of both the Research Collective for Decoloniality and Fashion (RCDF) and Fashion Act Now (FAN), activist organizations invested in breaking the dominance of growth-based, industrial fashion and nurturing indigenous, small-scale, sustainable clothing cultures: clothing commons.

After Sandra’s powerful talk, three short films were screened. Each introduced and discussed in a very lively and interactive session.

Producer: Fashion Act Now Director: Sandra Niessen and MJA Nashir

Filming and Editing: MJA Nashir

Weavers: Uli Panggabean and Ompu Rode br. Panjaitan

Spinning wheel makers: Jesral Tambun and Paul Manahara Tambunan

General assistence: Agustina Sitanggang and Baja Panggabean

On location: Pansur na Pitu, Silingdung Valley, North Sumatra, Indonesia, 2022

  • The Kotpad Project - a film about the dyers and weavers of traditional textiles in Kotpad, Odisha, India

Producers: Mevin Murden and Istituto Marangoni Mumbai

Filming and editing: Tanvi G. Vora, Sushant Gawad, Pranav Dhage, Manoj Patil

Kotpad artisans: Purushottam Samrath, Purneema Samrath, Jagabandu Samrath, Lalita Samrath, Baskar Samrath, Bhuvaneswari Samrath, Tulasi Samarath, Padma Nayak, Dhananjoa Komede, Hiramani Kamudi, Jashada Panika, Rubendra Samarath

On location: Kotpad Village, Odisha, India, 2024

  • Chola-dora and The Sewing Needle - a film celebrating the identity clothing of the Gaddi community and honoring tailoring as a heritage craft

    A film by: Lokesh & Jaymin

    Artists featured: Dheeraj Singh and Kenchno Devi

    On location: Himalayas of Himachal Pradesh

    Contact: creativelokesh@yhaoo.com for screening/ viewing request. 

Responding: Case Studies of TEK in artistic practices - video

  • The Flocks are Back – The Collective Tornen les Esquelles and the new forms of collaborating in Textile Arts and Design. Daniela Duarte (Spain)

    DANIELA DUARTE is a Brazilian textile artist and designer based in Barcelona, where she researches contemporary textile arts. She holds degrees in Social Communication (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil) and Fashion Design (UNA, Brazil), a Master’s in Textile and Surface Design (IED Madrid), and a Master’s in Art and Design Research (EINA/UAB, Barcelona), focusing on “Textile Artivism, Political Claim and Mutual Care.” Currently a doctoral candidate in Philosophy at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, specializing in Contemporary Aesthetics, with research on textile art collectives and their role in urban feminist political movements.

  • Kalahasti in Brooklyn: a return to Kalamkari’s storytelling. Nikita Shah (US)

    NIKITA SHAH (b. Mumbai, India) is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, and educator based in Brooklyn, New York. She is best known for her work in Kalamkari, a 3,000-year-old textile art, wearing saris in everyday life and Fursat, a pedagogy centered on building community through textile crafts—drawing from the South Asian concept of leisure, reflection, and wisdom. Her practice exists at the intersection of decolonizing fashion and healing through textile traditions.

    Her work has been featured in institutions such as Amherst College, Tufts University, the Fashion Institute of Technology, the Textile Society of America, Asia Society, Bloomberg, Shopify, New York Textile Month, and Paper Magazine, among others. In 2024, she was awarded the Brooklyn Arts Fund for At Home in Brooklyn, the first-ever communal Kalamkari Story-Cloth. Learn more: www.un-title.com/about

CONTEXT TO THE SYMPOSIUM

The Listening for the Echoes: heritage knowledges to shape fashion and design futures symposium offered a vital space to reflect upon a pluriverse of local knowledges and traditions, to gain insights into the ways that humanity has walked (and in some places continues to walk) more lightly on the Earth, to create the clothing, products and artefacts that we need, sustainably. These approaches offer a stimulus to learn, dream, experiment and reimagine how, why and for whom we design and make, holding the potential to reconnect us to a natural world and to a distant past whose echoes we must listen for urgently.

The symposium raised philosophical and practical questions about the value of local and global cultural wisdom to creative possibility-finding – while respecting cultural, intellectual property and avoiding cynical extraction. It reflected on the contemporary importance of traditional ecological knowledge: TEK rather than Tech. With six out of nine planetary boundaries already crossed and global warming on course to exceed agreed limits, it is vital to break away from the logic of growth and scale fed by neoliberalism and to revisit those very human technologies that may previously have been dismissed as primitive but which are in fact highly sophisticated.

Presenters from all over the world shared their research, case studies, projects and calls to action that foster resourcefulness and creativity, framed by notions of sufficiency, use-value rather than exchange-value, and formed through care for people and planet.

Keywords: heritage, indigenous, TEK, regenerative fashion and design futures, sustainability, craft, community, making, place making, decolonised practices