The future of fashion will depend on the industry’s ability to redefine not just how we produce and consume, but also of how - and why - we create. Creativity is not just a productive ability: it is originally a ritual act, through which the maker can establish a direct and personal relation to technology, the territory, and / or the human community. It is from these relations that arises the social imaginary: the series of shared symbols and concepts fundamental to cultural and social cohesiveness. A healthy fashion industry will therefore focus not just on productivity, but on creative relations; generating not just objects, but multiple relations, networks and languages.
Our research aims at defining how the school can foster these dynamics, structuring a system of exchanges between the players (student; producer; community), the places (school; laboratory; territory) and the resources (creative; technical; human) involved in the creative act. We will call this practice relational creativity. Our methodology will be based on workshops and seminars involving the students of the Antwerp Academy Fashion Department, local craftsmen and manufacturers, the public community, and the international fashion ecosystem.
This kind of structure will generate hybrid and elastic networks among the creatives, the public community and the industry, of which the school will be the centre and the promoter.
