Re-Fashioning the Future

Overview

‘Re-Fashioning the Future’, supported by Creative Ireland and Waterford City & County Council, brings together a community of traditional textile craft practitioners with technical driven experts from Walton Institute’s new E-Textiles Lab. Through peer-to-peer knowledge sharing workshops, the core group actively engage in a collaborative exploration and investigation of electronic textiles, carried out utilising a sewable range of electronic components, conductive fabrics, and threads.

Implementation

The exploratory workshop participants included VTOS Fashion Design and Interior Design tutors and students; Caroline O’Toole of Speak in Stitches and Waterford Women’s Shed; and MJ Jacob of Mad Jessie, Network Ireland’s Waterford Creative Professional Businesswoman of the Year 2021.

In keeping alive the old traditional craft methods, all the while embracing new methods of e-textile making for smart textiles, the workshop participants will extend their newly acquired skills through an additional series of workshops to wider community groups in the Autumn of 2022. Re-Fashioning the Future aims to foster a network of e-textile practitioners and provide traditional craft/textile makers with the technical skills and know-how to embed electronic circuitry in textiles for creative outputs with added functionality.

Key Objectives

• Peer-to-peer knowledge sharing in creative and experimental smart traditional textile craft applications
• Upskilling VTOS Waterford Fashion Design and Interior Design tutors with skills and resources to deliver etextile content to new cohorts of students.
• Foster the potential for meaningful collaborations and the development of new Creative and Cultural Industries (CCI’s) in Waterford.