Natural Fibre Connect 2022

Online Grower & Herder Conference – 07-09 September 2022

This year the Wool Connect Conference by the Schneider Group turns into the Natural Fibre Connect Conference.

The conference includes 3 live days filled with expert speakers, recorded talks, and roundtable discussions aimed at tackling the common challenges of the alpaca, cashmere, mohair and wool industries. With each talk and panel, we will aim to highlight the perspective of growers and herders around the world.

Ingun and Tone will speak at this event.

PROGRAM

Wednesday, 7 September 2022 7:00-10:00 UTC & 14:00-17:00 UTC

Welcome to Day 1:Emerging Trends

TALKS: Shifting times

The world seems in constant crisis mode as we receive news about the war in Ukraine, high-energy prices, inflation, the ongoing pandemic, supply chain issues and climate change. In this session, we get an overview of how current events are shaping the industry.

PANEL: Stopping Greenwashing – Product Environmental Footprint (PEF)

In this panel, we get an update from various experts concerning Life Cycle Assessment and the European Union’s Product Environmental Footprint. In particular, we explore the small successes natural fibres have achieved in the fight for data-driven carbon accounting versus synthetic textiles led greenwashing. 

TALKS: The Opportunities of Web 3.0 for the Textile Industry

In this session, we dive into the future of the metaverse, web.3.0 and blockchain technology. We find out how the natural fibre industry can benefit from emerging tech to stay relevant and improve sustainability.

Roundtables open

Thursday, 8 September 2022 7:00-10:00 UTC & 14:00-17:00 UTC


Welcome to Day 2: Challenges

TALKS: The Realities of Animal Welfare – The Challenges Growers and Herders Face

For centuries, growers and herders have had a close, caring and dependent relationship with their animals and nature, often embedded in traditional knowledge. In this session, we dive deep into the expectations on animal welfare, how distinct guidelines may not always be practical and why animals are still well taken care of.

TALKS: Putting Social Welfare on the Agenda – Recognising Natural Fibres as the Engine of Rural Economies

In this panel, we get an update from various experts concerning Life Cycle Assessment and the European Union’s Product Environmental Footprint. In particular, we explore the small successes natural fibres have achieved in the fight for data-driven carbon accounting versus synthetic textiles led greenwashing.

How to Unlock Regenerative Agriculture for Arid Regions

In this session, we dive into the future of the metaverse, web.3.0 and blockchain technology. We find out how the natural fibre industry can benefit from emerging tech to stay relevant and improve sustainability.Regenerative Agriculture continues to be of high interest to the fashion textile supply chain. However, the devil sits in the details, as not all regenerative practices are the right fit for all regions. In this session, panelists will discuss what options arid regions have and how we can create a common language and definitions to progress and benefit together.

Roundtables open

Friday, 9 September 2022 7:00-10:00 UTC & 14:00-17:00 UTC


Welcome to Day 3: Innovations

TALK: How Traceability is Reshaping the Industry

This session explores how transparency is transforming business through the use of technology, directly connecting all actors of the supply chain and simplifying certifications.

PANEL: How Green Finance can Support Growers

If the future is more green, finance will be too. This session looks at how the finance sector is reacting to climate change by allocating relevant funds to build a sustainable future. The panellists of this session will share how they are rethinking finance and what green investment opportunities lie ahead for growers and herders. 

TALK: Hearing Directly from Growers & Herders

Hear a recap of the in-person grower and herder meetings that have taken place this week and what growers had to say about the main talks of this conference. What are the main challenges they are facing, how do they view market trends and what innovations are taking place at grower level. Each fibre will have a closing message of what we want to achieve in the future by taking action.

Roundtables open

Click here for more information and registration (gschneider.com).

Local as a fashion change-maker

Hybrid event, 8th June 2022, 17:30-19:30 CET
Online and at Sentralen, Oslo

How can we bring the local alternatives to the forefront of the sustainability debate and in policy?

We have important decisions ahead to ensure a just transition to more sustainable ways of living. The new book “Local, slow and sustainable fashion: wool as a fabric for change” from the clothing research group at Consumption Research Norway SIFO, uses “wool as a lens through which to see important aspects of the contemporary world: corporate capitalism, consumerism, standardisation and their opposites: localised crafts and practices, quality of life, sustainability” (Professor Thomas Hylland Eriksen).

The clothing research group’s (world-renowned) wool and clothing research sits within the institute’s important research areas of local consumption and sustainability.

Click here for more information about the book: Local, Slow and Sustainable Fashion | SpringerLink

Program

Doors open at 17:00 CET

17:30: Welcome by Eivind Jacobsen, Institute Director at SIFO

17:35: The editors, Prof. Ingun Grimstad Klepp and Tone Skårdal Tobiasson introduce the book and the authors

17:40: Perspectives from authors and readers of the book, led by the editors:

Prof. Kate Fletcher, Centre for Sustainable Fashion, London College of Fashion, UK
Rebecca Burgess, M.Ed.,Executive Director of Fibershed, California
Gunnar Vittersø, Senior researcher at SIFO and the Amazing Grazing Project
Dr. Lorrie Miller, University of British Colombia, Canada
Elisabeth Stray Pedersen, Designer and owner, ESP
Maria Ehrnström-Fuentes, Associate Professor, Hanken School of Economics, Finland
Dr. Tone Smith, Member of Advisory board, Rethinking Economics Norway; Editor, Degrowth Norway
Gisle Mariani Mardal, Head of development, Norwegian Fashion & Textile Agenda, Oslo, Norway

18:55- 19:30: Streaming ends – in-person discussions and mingling

Click here to watch the event recording (facebook.com)

Wardrobe Research for Change

2nd March 2022, 9.00-16.00 CET, Pilestredet 46 – Clara Holsts hus, Athene 1&2, OsloMet

The CHANGE research project invites you to a full-day seminary about´wardrobe studies´ as a research method, and how it can be used to solve the challenges of the current clothing consumption and the fashion industry. There will be talks by Kate Fletcher, Else Skjold, Ingun Grimstad Klepp and other researcher from the CHANGE project. The seminary will be in English and is open to students, researchers, designers and other people working in the field. Sign-up by e-mail by sending us a few words about why this is relevant to you.

Programme:

9:30: Arrival + check-in
9:30-10: Presentations of the CHANGE research project, its aims and scope by Ingun G. Klepp
10-12: The Wardrobe Gaze – workshop facilitated by Kate Fletcher and Else Skjold
12-13: Lunch
13-14:15: The Wardrobe Method – talks by CHANGE researchers
13:35-14:15: Q&A with participants and the CHANGE team
14:15-14:30: Future Scenarios; How can wardrobe research create change?
15:30-16: Round-up and plenary discussion

UCRF: Themed Local Assembly in Oslo

8 March, 08:00-09:30, OsloMet, Stensberggata 26, Oslo

A twist on the usual Union of Concerned Researchers in Fashion Local Assembly format, this themed Local Assembly will concentrate on textile fibres. Points for discussion can be tabled by any UCRF member in advance or raised on the day.

Theme: Textile fibres, key themes and challenges

Date: 8 March 2022
Time: 8am – 9:30am local time. Light refreshments will be available.
Location: OsloMet, Oslo, Norway
Address: Stensberggata 26, 0170 Oslo

The Local Assembly gathering will be in-person, but the themes for discussion can be tabled by UCRF members world-wide to ensure that fibre-related concerns in all locations are present.

All participants will be invited to share their fibre knowledge, these will include UCRF members and fibre and LCA experts Ingun Grimstad Klepp and Kirsi Laitala. A summary will be circulated following the event.

Register your interest by 28 February by email via this link.

Click here to read more about UCRF (concernedresearchers.org).

«Revitalize, Repair and Redesign». Доклад Ингун Гримстад Клепп

Webinar: 8th December 2021, 19:00-20:30 CET

Organised by HSE University Art and Design School, Moscow.

«Revitalize, Repair and Redesign»

In this talk Ingun Grimstad Klepp, professor in clothing and sustainability, will take you through the world of damaged clothes. She will show how the history of mending has as many holes as the clothes, and why and how interest in mending is growing. The examples given are mostly Norwegian, but international political and cultural changes will be discussed. To spend time and resources on taking care of something demands that the object is worthy of our care. It is important to do it in the right way, and not destroy it in our eager to change it. This talk is based on a brand-new book, unfortunately only available in Norwegian, about how to give clothes nine lives.

Click here for more details and to sign up (timepad.ru).

Responsible Fashion: How do we make our ideas a reality?

Symposium hosted by Instituto Maragoni, London

24th November 2021, 9:30 am – 4:30 pm GMT

This online symposium offers a space to propose and discuss radical new ways to envisage fashion and how these may be implemented.

About this event

The pandemic has provided space to step back and to reflect, to ask questions about the meaning, value and potential of fashion in a post-Covid world. How can the industry move forward in a responsible way? How must it change? What does responsible fashion really mean? What is it that we actually want to sustain? We know the problems, so let’s find solutions.

We will present our work with wool during the symposium.

Click here to see the recordings from the event (researchiml.com).

Out of the Wardrobe

Webinar: 21st of October 2021, 10:45 – 14:00 CEST

An international panel discuss how wardrobe studies can help us to understand how what we wear can make a sustainable future

About this event

The remit of wardrobe studies is not limited to actual garments or textile objects, although it often starts there, but to consider the way clothes communicate notions of self, emotion, place, connectivity and relationships that hitherto would be unspoken and/or rendered mute. Wardrobe studies offer a way in which these relationships or clothing experiences can be recorded, interpreted and also utilized outside of the realms of academia to understand the ways in which clothing is selected, used, kept, discarded and so on, in order to change or challenge clothing consumption, to empower the user, to improve clothing manufacture or indeed to revitalize or instigate it. Wardrobe studies are concerned with clothing behaviours in everyday life, from start to finish, birth to death and everything in-between.

Schedule

9.45 – opening welcome and introduction ( Dr Jo Turney)

10.00 – Keynote speaker – Dr Ingun Grimstad Klepp (Oslo Metropolitan University) Professor in Clothing and sustainability The presentation will provide a short overview of the history of wardrobe studies and how the method was developed through collaboration between clothing, design and fashion researchers the last 20 years. It will then look at what characterizes the method and why it is so useful when working towards sustainable development. Ingun will provide examples from ongoing projects where the method is being used in very different ways, from improving LCA for clothing to understanding wardrobe dynamics. This includes using the method for quantitative as well as qualitative purposes. Examples of ongoing studies at SIFO are CHANGE and Wasted Textiles. In CHANGE the main objective is occasions and variety in couples’ wardrobes. You can read more about the study here: CHANGE: Environmental systems shift in clothing consumption – OsloMet. Wasted Textiles will map textiles that is going out of use in households to increase knowledge about the ways this waste is generated and disposed of, and its fibre composition. You can read more about the study here: Wasted Textiles – OsloMet. Currently, the researchers are re-analyzing material from two earlier wardrobe studies conducted at SIFO for potential use in both CHANGE and Wasted Textiles. Although most studies that use the method have an environmental viewpoint, it can also be used to examine other perspectives. One example is the project BELONG, which examines children’s sense of belonging through their relationship to people, places and to their possessions. You can read more about the project here: Practices and policies of belonging among minority and majority children of low-income families (BELONG) – OsloMet. Overall, this presentation will give you an insight into the method and its rich potential in gathering knowledge about clothing and us, their wearers.

11.00 – Dr Anna-Mari Almila (independent scholar) – Older Men’s Wardrobes

11.20 – Dr Else Skjold, (Royal Danish Academy, Copenhagen, Head of Fashion, Clothing and Textile; New Landscapes for Change) – Wardrobe Studies and Pedagogy

11.40 – Dr Liudmila Alebieva (Editor Russian Fashion Theory, Higher School of Economics, Moscow) – Curating Wardrobes

12.00 – Dr Valerie Wilson Trower (London College of Fashion) – Expatriate western women’s wardrobes: Hong Kong, 1960 – 1997.

12.20 – Sharon Williams (WSA) –Wardrobes at WSA

12.40 – questions and round-up

#WSAFashionTalks

#ClothingCultures

Klick here to watch the recording of the event (donkeydave.co.uk).

Make the Label Count campaign virtual launch event

Webinar: 12th of October 2021, 11:00-13:00 CEST

The campaign

Textiles are a priority sector in the EU’s plans to shift to a climate-neutral, circular economy, where products are designed to be more durable, reusable, repairable, recyclable, and energy-efficient.

As part of these efforts, the European Commission is planning to introduce new sustainability labelling for clothing. This aims to empower consumers when making purchasing decisions and positively influence the drive for a sustainable economy.

But what if the labelling system being proposed doesn’t account for key environmental impacts?

Event program

11:00 AM – 11:05 AM – Welcome and Keynote

Livia Firth, Founder and Creative Director, Eco-Age

11:05 AM – 11:55 AM – Panel Discussion: How to Make the Label Count

  • Paul Adamson (Moderator), Chairman, Forum Europe
  • Paola Migliorini, Deputy Head of Unit, European Commission, DG Environment, Sustainable Production, Products and Consumption
  • Carlo Calenda, Member, European Parliament
  • Pascal Morand, Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode
  • Ingun Grimstad Klepp, Professor in Clothing and Sustainability, Oslo Metropolitan University

11:55 AM – 12:00 PM – Closing Remarks

Dalena White, Secretary General of the International Wool Textile Organisation (IWTO)

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM – Networking Lunch

Watch the recording from the official Make the Label Count campaign virtual launch event using this link: http://makethelabelcount.eu/ 

You can follow the campaign at the Make The Label Count campaign website (makethelabelcount.org) and social media: LinkedIn and Twitter.