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Fashion Values: Nature

Understand biodiversity in the context of fashion and create a plan for fashion that protects Earth’s ecosystems.

4,663 enrolled on this course

Fashion Values: Nature

4,663 enrolled on this course

  • 4 weeks

  • 3 hours per week

  • Digital certificate when eligible

  • Introductory level

Find out more about how to join this course

Discover fashion practices that can protect, restore, and regenerate ecosystems

Nature is the life force that provides us with the air, water, soil, and minerals that sustain life on earth. These elements come together in the clothes we wear.

This course will help you build the knowledge, skills, and connections to reimagine fashion’s practices and develop a plan to put nature first.

You’ll join a community of fashion and sustainability thinkers and doers that have the vision, skills, and commitment to radically transform how we live and work through fashion.

Explore the impact of fashion on biodiversity and earth’s systems

With more than one million species of plants and animals at risk of extinction, our ecosystems are under stress.

Fashion plays a direct role in this, and on this course you’ll identify how dominant damaging systems of fashion production and consumption can be transformed to protect natural life on our planet.

Use design thinking to radically rethink fashion products, services, and systems

Very few fashion companies have biodiversity strategies, but you’ll examine the tools and frameworks used by companies who are developing a nature-centred way of working.

You’ll also be set a design thinking challenge, asking you to develop a fashion product, service or system which supports the restoration and regeneration of nature.

Respond to sustainability challenges with London College of Fashion

This course is led by fashion and sustainability experts from Centre for Sustainable Fashion and shares knowledge from world-leading fashion practitioners and researchers.

With over 80,000 learners on our FutureLearn courses to date, you’ll gain valuable insights from fellow fashion and sustainability changemakers from around the world.

Skip to 0 minutes and 3 seconds Welcome to Fashion Values A new portfolio of courses brought to you by Centre for Sustainable Fashion. There’s never been a more important role for fashion than in our current times. It can be both joyful as an expression of who we are a contributor to livelihoods, cultures, societies and economies. It is also a destroyer of dignity lives cultures and the only true economy, nature’s wealth. Fashion is many different activities and businesses large and small doing different things so everyone who engages with this is an active part of the fashion system.

Skip to 0 minutes and 39 seconds Anyone who engages can make changes to that system and the more that we recognize and elevate our values in action both professionally and personally and the more that we call out destructive practices the closer that we can get to a world that we can really all thrive in. Time is short. The evidence is starkly apparent the climate emergency is recognized by governments and organizations around the world. Social injustice is also starkly apparent. Racism, gender and other social inequalities must be stopped. We need to develop skills and capabilities for deep change. This is what these courses seek to develop with you

Skip to 1 minute and 26 seconds They start with a provocation, a new lens through which you can re-imagine what a thriving system might look like. We are seeking to give you a thirst for knowledge about fashion in the context of our times. Not to give you answers to every question that you have. We are very keen to share with you what we know what we’ve learned but there’s no crystal ball for any of us to look into. It’s our ambition to give you a sense both of what is but also a sense of what isn’t yet, but could be.

Syllabus

  • Week 1

    Fashion and Nature

    • Introductions

      Welcome to the course! This set of steps will give you an idea of how the course works and what you will cover over the next four weeks.

    • Nature in Fashion

      In this part we will look into the intricacies of fashion's connection to nature.

    • Design Thinking Challenge

      Here you will be introduced to the Design Thinking Challenge that you will address over the next four weeks. You will undertake a visualisation activity and have the opportunity for reflection.

    • Summing Up and Looking to Next Week

      Reflect on what you have learned so far in Fashion Values: Nature.

  • Week 2

    Fashion, Biosphere and Biodiversity

    • Introduction to Week 2

      Welcome to week 2 of Fashion Values: Nature. This week we would like you to develop an understanding of nature's systems that support life - the biosphere. 

    • Fashion and the Biosphere

      Here we will develop an understanding of nature's systems that support life - the biosphere - and explore fashion practices that operate within the limits of nature's systems.

    • Design Thinking Challenge: 'Define'

      This stage of the Design Thinking Challenge is 'Define'. This is where we can analyse the data and observations from week 1 in order to better define and personalise the task you wish to explore over this course.

    • Summing Up and Looking to Next Week

      Reflect on what you have learned so far in Fashion Values: Nature.

  • Week 3

    Fashion's Response

    • Introductions

      Welcome to week 3 of Fashion Values: Nature. This week we explore examples of fashion practices and critically examine their relationship with nature and their intentions to avoid, reduce, restore or transform ecological balance.

    • Avoid, Reduce, Restore and Regenerate, and Transform

      In this set of steps you will learn about how different actors are approaching fashion practice with a clear sustainability intention in mind. You will also understand where these activities sit in the mitigation hierarchy.

    • Design Thinking Challenge: 'Ideate'

      In this stage you will ‘ideate’, generating ideas to respond to the challenge. You will let go of ideas you are attached to, to enable the creation of more responses. You will learn to be open and expansive in your thinking.

    • Summing Up and Looking to Next Week

      Reflect on what you have learned so far in Fashion Values: Nature.

  • Week 4

    What Will We Do For Nature?

    • Introductions

      Welcome to week 4 of Fashion Values: Nature. This week is all about prototyping, evaluating, refining and communicating - important practices that we can develop to enable the change that we want to see in and through fashion.

    • Design Thinking Challenge: 'Prototype'

      In this set of steps you will be creating a mock-up of your idea. Prototyping allows us to identify opportunities for refining and improving the idea.

    • End of Course

      The final steps of the course offer ways to reflect on your experience, ways to stay in touch and to find out more about the wider Fashion Values programme.

When would you like to start?

Start straight away and join a global classroom of learners. If the course hasn’t started yet you’ll see the future date listed below.

  • Available now

Learning on this course

On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

  • Reflect on fashion’s relationship with nature and how this relates to fashion sustainability.
  • Understand nature's systems that support life (biosphere) and explore fashion practices that could operate within the limits of nature's systems. Learners understand biodiversity in the context of fashion.
  • Critically examine fashion practices that can protect, restore and regenerate nature's systems, and transform fashion's relationship with nature.
  • Develop and evaluate a fashion practice that can regenerate nature.

Who is the course for?

This course will empower learners with the tools to address challenges facing fashion today.

This includes students, sustainability professionals, fashion and business professionals, educators, designers, strategists, and communicators.

Who will you learn with?

Professor Dilys Williams FRSA is Director of Centre for Sustainable Fashion, a University of the Arts Research Centre based at London College of Fashion.

Head of Education (Sustainability) at Centre for Sustainable Fashion, London College of Fashion

Education Project Coordinator at Centre for Sustainable Fashion, London College of Fashion

Who developed the course?

London College of Fashion

London College of Fashion, UAL is a world leader in fashion design, media and business education. We have been nurturing creative talent for over a century, offering courses in all things fashion.

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Ways to learn

Choose the best way to learn for you!

Subscribe & save

$39.99/month

Automatically renews

Develop skills to further your career

  • Access to this course
  • Access to 1,000+ courses
  • Learn at your own pace
  • Discuss your learning in comments
  • Digital certificate when you're eligible

Cancel for free anytime

Buy this course

$134/one-off payment

Fulfill your current learning need

  • Access to this course
  • Learn at your own pace
  • Discuss your learning in comments
  • Printed and digital certificate when you’re eligible

Limited access

Free

Sample the course materials

  • Access expires 16 May 2024

Find out more about certificates, Unlimited or buying a course (Upgrades)

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