Textile expert Dr Joan Farrer RCA was a reader at the University of Brighton from 2009-2014, during which she brought expert leadership across high impact design and textile projects, championing interdisciplinary design, sustainable design policy, and design for well-being.
Conscience Clothing 2008 Conscience Clothing Shoot 08: Garment Miles depicted in 4 Life Size Posters [Digital Textile Prints] Paul St Galleries Aukland, NZ.
Flax Bio-resin Created by graduate student James Dart, part funded by the BRIDGE project.
Shaping Sustainable Fashion Sustainable fashion textiles research engaging with new technologies.
Flax experiments Photoresponsive dressings for the non-invasive treatment of chronically infected skin wounds.
This Pervasive Day The Potential and Perils of Pervasive Computing: Edited by Jeremy Pitt
BRIDGE This work is supported by the Interreg IVA (South) project 3923 BRIDGE.
Sustainable Trade in Textiles and Clothing Promoting Sustainable Trade in Textiles and Clothing World Wide Fund for Nature.
Shaping Sustainable Fashion Shaping Sustainable Fashion
The Fashion Circus Conscience Clothing, 'The Fashion Circus' Big Clothes Swap, AUT
Innovative Developments in Design and Manufacturing Advanced Research in Virtual and Rapid Prototyping
Fashion and Modernity Farrer was one of 17 exhibitors displayed in the Fashion and Modernity exhibition.
Joan Farrer was Reader in Design and Materials at the University of Brighton from 2010-2014, during which time she brought expertise to a range of high-impact interdisciplinary research projects, many of them bringing teams together from across science and design. Following her work at Brighton she became Associate Dean of Enterprise and Innovation at University of Portsmouth.
She is a designer whose research expertise stems from a deep working knowledge of the industrial retail sector in Fashion, Textiles, Fibre and Materials product design, linked to knowledge of the global supply and disposal chain. Her Sustainable and 'Smart', transdisciplinary research collaborations, outside of the Arts, include Physical and Biomedical science, Computing and Mathematics, Engineering and Business.
Dr Farrer is concerned with the facilitation of innovative design thinking, initiating design research knowledge in theory and practise and scholarly exchange in a wide range of contexts including arts, science and engineering developing the concept of the entrepreneurial academic and the design activism.
Farrer’s Royal College of Art PhD was acclaimed as one of the first in fashion textile global supply chain analysis, focusing on economic, social and environmental production (sustainability) which analysed the global journey and true cost of one wool fibre from cradle to cradle. Wool: From Straw to Gold. From this research she developed major consultancy opportunities including, in 2001 to 2002, for Marks and Spencer PLC, 'The Sustainable Textiles Research Project' through which M&S commissioned an extensive confidential risk assessment business report, investigating their global clothing supply, production and disposal chains, via fiber type.
Her interests are in building trans-disciplinary national and international Industry, NGO and academic partnerships in relation to sustainable and smart fashion textiles, materials, design production and disposal, marrying high and low tech solutions. Using fashion and textiles as a campaigning medium for sustainable issues.
She has co-authored and been co-investigator on funded projectssupported by EPSRC, DIFD, DEFRA, AHRB and European Commission relating to 'intelligent' textiles, sustainability in the fashion textile sector and communication of the issues which has driven her research since the mid 1990s.
Chapter in book: Innovative Developments in Design and Manufacturing: Advanced Research in Virtual and Rapid Prototyping. Bartolo, Paulo Jorge da Silva, et al. (Eds.) Taylor & Francis Ltd, Boca Raton; London. 2009.
Research Question:
Is it possible to create a desirable design, which will protect the head from harmful rays of the sun using the method of fashion prototyping?
This co-authored design and science Antipodean research was captured at the outset in a book and a journal article following on from an international refereed (a triple blind peer review) conference paper given in Portugal in 2009. Fashion practice, product design and science are the disciplines at the core of the piece. Which sits alongside technical engineering chapters concerned with prototypes such as 3D printing. Protective headwear was developed for the critical group of young adults suffering from facial skin cancer, aged 15 – 24. The headwear was redesigned and a student project resulted in 6 pieces, which all protected vulnerable parts of the face and neck from harmful rays of the sun. The designs were sent electronically to thirty five thousand New Zealand students in an online survey. They chose a winning design, which was prototyped and tested at the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANZA). The research institute deemed the design to be the most successful protection for the face, neck and head ever tested.
The research showcases my interest in sustainable smart design, textile technology and the importance of interdisciplinary, which in this instance focused on the concept of design for wellbeing in relation to skin Cancer. The research has developed through my work with the Cancer Society New Zealand and the Salvation Army when I was director of the University’s Textile and Design Laboratory at Auckland University of Technology. The purpose of my contribution to this interdisciplinary research was to develop the field of design and science towards impact and real world solutions.
Sun cancer protection research developed in New Zealand and Australia and gathered momentum in the UK with the Seed Fund grant for proof of concept from the University of Brighton Santander Business Innovation fund in 2010. I recruited a research team from UK universities to develop a ‘Toolbox’ of early warning systems to alert subjects to skin damage. The Toolbox was introduced to potential collaborators in July and August 2012 on an international research field trip to the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Bulgaria where I was able to take part in industrial engagement meetings for potential. One of the objectives was to source funding possibilities and international interest in the project as well as to examine prospective clients to advance the products further. This year the project was showcased in Bulgaria at Sofia Science Festival Week, hosted by the British Council, as invited key note speaker entitled ‘Design Activism: Barrier Solutions a ‘Tool Box’ for Change’. The conference coincided with a southern hemisphere lunar eclipse, live link to CERN Scientists and presentations by scientists, astronomers and physicists.
A larger European bid to develop the Toolbox, which includes smart textiles and human computer interaction is under development by and has been written by the collaborators called Barrier Solutions. My role as Principal Investigator holds the responsibility to build this interdisciplinary research team composed of experts in design and materials, Smart Textiles, Fashion, Human Computer Interaction, Cancer expertise and wellbeing design. The research aims to create desirable clothing made of protective ‘smart’ textiles incorporating fibres that interact with computer intelligence and digital communication to provide ‘early warning systems’ of over-exposure to the sun.
The research draws together the key industries of leisure, health, fashion and computing and is informed by my research and development, consumer analysis and data collected in the Antipodes. The ecological and social conditions in the Southern hemisphere contribute to a more ‘out-of-doors’ lifestyle, and this has resulted in an alarming increase in skin cancer rates in recent years, where the most vulnerable group are males between the age of 15 and 25. Since 1975, fair-skinned northern Europeans have also seen huge increases in cancer diagnosis due to climactic conditions, coupled with more holidaying in warmer climates such as the Mediterranean.
The research is being showcased as a chapter in an edited Imperial College Press publication for 2014. Research funding is being sought to further develop this work over the next five years. A subsequent book under the working title ‘The Computer and Me’ is currently being written to be published in 2014.
mediation: discussing fashion textiles sustainability, Farrer Joan, 2011
Chapter in book: Shaping Sustainable Fashion: Changing the Way We Make and Use Clothes. G wilt, A. Rissanen, T., (Eds.) Earthscan-Routledge, London, pp 19-33.
Research Question:
Is a sustainable fashion and textiles industry possible or is it a utopian ideal?
Authored in Australia this is the provocative positioning chapter to contextualise the global fashion textile industry. I discuss the complex issues of people, profit, and planet, which form the core of sustainability using supply chain analysis methodology. This chapter sets the tone and context of the book, which focuses on remanufacture and the idea that waste is simply a material.
I presented Utopian concept in the chapter at the TBIS Conference, Beijing at the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology as a keynote speech in May 2011, entitled ‘Sustainable Fashion Textiles Utopia: through technological enhancement’.
Importantly the chapter brings my current thinking up to date, drawing upon previous research such as that completed in 2003, funded by European Commission DG12. This collaborative research resulted in new standards for purchasing institutional work wear by analysing the supply chain. The work resulted in 2006 ISO global standards. The research was disseminated in 9 European countries through purchasing supply chain workshops and a symposium at the British Design Council in London.
I set out to undertake primary research with stakeholders in the work wear life cycle, to create manufacturing networks in the EU states for institutional green purchasing policy. The project hosts were: European Partners for the Environment (EPE), International Institute for environment and Development (IIED) and Association Belgium of Eco Counsellors ABCEC. Dissemination via EPE’s Vision Lab 21, Co-authored publications, text and web output for the duration of the two-year project.
I conducted the supply chain analysis research as a consultant with the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). I was also a consultant for UK major industrial fashion retailers travelling the globe working with overseas manufacturers, information which has underpinned and informed this chapter from primary research. The chapter could not have been written without a deep understanding of design in fashion and textile fibre and retail, coupled with the fieldwork knowledge of design practice, production and material sourcing in a global context.
Sustainable 'v' Unsustainable: articulating division in the fashion textiles industry- Volume 2 (including sustainability) Farrer, J. and Fraser, K. 2012
Farrer, J. Fraser, K. (2011) Sustainable 'v' unsustainable: articulating division in the fashion textiles industry Anti-po-des Design Research Journal, 1 (4). pp. 1-18. ISSN 2230-6897
Chapter in book: Textiles- Critical and Primary Sources - 4 Volumes HB set. Berg - Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. 2012, UK, pp 1-12. ISBN 978 0 85785 035 5.
Textiles: Critical and Primary Sources is a major multi-volume reference work of key texts that draws together 93 seminal textile narratives. Textile culture stretches geographic, historical, methodological and disciplinary boundaries, and defies chronological ordering. The contents are therefore gathered into four thematic collections dealing with history and curation; production and sustainability; science and technology; and identity, each supported by an introductory editorial essay that serves to critique and supplement each textual collection and theme. My expertise in sustainable fashion and textiles has developed through experience within the fashion and textile industry over a varied career in commercial design and product consultancy.
Research Question:
Can the discussion in the global fashion textiles industry be articulated from the start point of sustainable versus unsustainable production and consumption?
This chapter focuses on the changing industry, addressing the emerging retail landscape, where production and consumption practices are separating like oil and water. It explores the paradigm shift with regard to business models, where the new customer desires and is demanding high value, performance and smart ethical fashion. This thesis predicts that an unsustainable global manufacturing fashion/textile industry will continue to run in parallel to the emerging model of sustainable fashion/textiles design and business systems.
The theories and policies are developed from a range of research and commercial consultancies and research projects in the field of fashion and textiles, which is levered from a long career in design. The first academic output connected to this piece was my Royal College of Art PhD, awarded without amendments in 2000: Wool: From Straw to Gold. The second piece of research to inform the chapter were commercial business reports, completed in 2002, for the UK’s largest industrial retailer, Marks and Spencer Plc. Third was a lobbying document ‘Promoting Sustainable Trade in Textiles and Clothing’ for The World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 in Rio de Janiero which was commissioned by The World Wildlife Fund, Geneva. These were significant policy documents, which netted fees in excess of three hundred thousand pounds of commercial consultancy.
A major outcome of my research was the Sustainable Textiles Research Project’ for Marks and Spencer Plc. (2001 to 2002). This was an extensive confidential risk assessment business report, which investigated the global clothing supply, production and disposal chains, via fibre type. The report focused on global supply chain analysis and the findings (the first if its type) informed the company CSR strategy which affected their buying and sourcing policy contributing to Marks and Spencer Plc. being the first retailer to feature on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (Footsie4Good). Application of the research recommendations culminated in the intention in 2007 to become one of the first carbon neutral retail businesses, which was a Commissioned Confidential Report for External Body.
This research has been disseminated through a variety of conferences and papers including the high-level network conference sustainable trade, Promoting Sustainable Trade in Textiles and Clothing World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF International Geneva) Commissioned Report. The high-level dialogue convened under the European Union EPTSD (Expert Panel on Trade and Sustainable Development). This report was used as a lobbying document for the Johannesburg Summit 2002 by WWF.
Smart Sustainable Futures, Farrer, Joan, 2012
Chapter in book: This Pervasive Day: the potential and perils of pervasive computing. Farrer J., Tillotson J., Ferscha A., Michael K., Mitcheson P., Serbedzijia N., Millan J., Whitaker R., Pitt J., Chavarriaga R., Dobson S., Quigley A., Colombo G., Allen S., Chorley M., Jefferies J., Michael M.G., Kernbach S., Wahren K. London Imperial College Press, 2012, London, pp ??. ISBN 1848167482.
Research Question:
Is it possible to predict how pervasive adaption could provide the foundations for a new range of life enhancing and planet saving applications in health, sustainability and assistive living, using a sci-fi novel from the 1970’s to locate the computing vision of the future? www.thispervasiveday.com
This book was an outcome from the end of a funded project PerAda, which is a Future and Emerging Technologies Proactive Initiative funded by the European Commission under FP7, with a budget of one million euros. The project builds on international collaborations through Imperial College; apart from the book there was a series of international outputs such as Per Ada.
International authors, experts in a variety of fields and various disciplines, were given the 1970s sci-fi novel by Ira Levin ‘This Perfect Day’ to read in order to locate their own discipline as it was then and use it to reflect on our field now and in the future. The book was set in Utopia where visionary blue-sky technology, smart materials and sustainability were key factors for well-being. This Pervasive Day explores the potential and perils of daily living with pervasive adaptive computing. It discusses how pervasive adaption could provide the foundations for a new range of life enhancing and planet saving applications in health, sustainability and assistive living.
The editor Dr Jeremy Pitt, of Imperial College Computing and Mathematics, selected Levin’s book as the stimulus to shape 14 chapters from different experts in their field. This method has become a new hook for interdisciplinary thinking in various parts of the globe.
The purpose of my chapter ‘Smart Sustainable Futures’ is to use Ira Levin’s concept of ‘coveralls’ as a catalyst to examine and discuss what are the critical and philosophical issues surrounding contemporary thinking about sustainability, in particular design in relation to sustainable fashion and textiles. The focus of this project has been to reconsider what is meant by ‘impact’ in terms of research, to consider how clothing (or indeed any object) might be employed to enable interdisciplinary and non-expert players, such as commercial designers, to participate in and contribute to potential solutions of what is an ongoing significant issue. In particular reflecting upon the importance given to fashion, textiles, design and consumption in relation to the importance and scale of the global industry today.
The chapter ‘Smart Sustainable Futures’ builds upon a smart textile commercial project, developed in New Zealand through the textile and design lab where I was director, on conductive polymers and computing in garments for first responders for heart monitoring in dangerous environments. The product was sold to the New York fire brigade and commercialized by Adidas, our commercial partner Zephyr Technology developed the innovation.
Further publications including: ‘Smart Dust: Sci-Fi Applications Enabled by Synthetic Fibre and Textiles Technology’ In Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture, Volume 8, Number 3, November 2010, pp.342-347(6) Berg – Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. has underpinned the research for this chapter.
One initiative focusing on well-being and funded by the university’s Research Challenges Scheme has been to evaluate the potential of the flax plant for biomedical use under the direction of Senior Research Fellow, Dr Iain Allan of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences (PABS). The project LIGHT has been developed to produce photo-responsive dressings for the non-invasive treatment of chronically infected skin wounds and, ultimately, skin cancers and other topical ailments.
The European funded INTERREG IVA FLAX project’s main aim is to increase the production value of flax through exploring its potential use in biomedical applications, foodstuff and biodegradable material for packaging.
The FLAX project design and materials collaboration is a partnership with colleagues in the UK and France led by the University of Brighton and Principal Investigator Sergey Mikhalovsky, Professor of Materials Chemistry. The areas of research to date include investigation into the use of flax and flax based composites as packaging materials, as biomedical materials for wound and patient care, as tissue scaffolds for regenerative medicine and as a food source for healthy diet.
As the leader of the project in the Faculty of Arts the principal purpose of my contribution to the research project is embedding the research into the curriculum in the departments of Fashion, Textiles, Design and Craft through special projects for both final year BA and MDes students to develop new applications and materials including composites. Engagement of these School of Art Design and Media students with the science faculty has been of particular benefit. Working with the students on a one to one and group basis the importance of interdisciplinary research within design is highlighted. This work has been disseminated through the JEC Composites Show in Paris, where in 2011 and 2013 students’ research work was showcased via the institute Liniere de Bosc-Nouel (LBN). In addition work was again showcased at the FLAX closing exhibition in Rouen, 21st May 2013, an event by researchers, industry members and press alike. As a direct outcome of the FLAX project one student has joined the DR-i team as a research assistant with the aim to apply for a PhD in performance materials.
One element of dissemination, apart from a web presence and papers, will be showcasing The FLAX Project in a key note speech at The 6th Textile Bioengineering and Informatics Symposium, September 2013, Shanghai. The accompanying journal paper will focus on the research undertaken collaboratively in the project across the institutions and partners involved, whilst representing the Faculty of Arts and my direct involvement with the project.
One initiative of the project has been to evaluate the potential of the flax plant for biomedical use under the direction of Senior Research Fellow, Dr Iain Allan of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences (PABS). Through the FLAX project a secondary project LIGHT has been developed to produce photo-responsive dressings for the non-invasive treatment of chronically infected skin wounds and, ultimately, skin cancers and other topical ailments.
The FLAX project is being developed into a new EU collaborative bid FLEXFIBRE to begin in 2014, which focuses on biocomposites. The FLAX research will be presented in Shanghaii in September 2013 at the TBIS Conference as an invited keynote speech.
Team Research Project Farrer: Principle Investigator
The Building Research and Innovation Deals for the Green Economy (BRIDGE) is a new European Union INTERREG IV funded research project led by principal investigator, Dr Joan Farrer whose expertise is in Design and Materials. Teams from the Faculty of Arts work in close collaboration with teams from the School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences (PABS) both share the project funding worth 2.4 million euros. The collaboration extends to French partners: MIRIADE, ESITPA, ESITC Caen, Normadie Incubation, Orne Development and ISPA.
Sustainable Design, material analysis and supply and disposal chain research and policy have underpinned my professional work since 1992. Years of experience in this area has enabled me, with UK and French colleagues, to write this bid and secure funding for BRIDGE (Building Research and Innovation Deals for the Green Economy.) The project focuses on eco materials, local and geographical growth, production, use and disposal networks with the aim of supporting emerging eco businesses in Southern England and Northern France. The material streams in focus for the investigation are wood and textiles used in ecological processes to develop/provide, re-use and up-cycle materials and increase consumer understanding of the concept of sustainability. BRIDGE is building partnerships for cross-border economic development, complementary centres, and business and design incubators to work in a sustainable way through sharing best practice on many levels of research and commerce.
The BRIDGE project is in its first year of funding, the main purpose of my contribution as principal investigator was to co-author the proposal in 2010 and then to lead the design and materials focus of the project. BRIDGE is an example of an externally funded research project which is being embedded into the curriculum in the Faculty of Arts in the departments of Fashion, Textiles, Design and Craft and extension studies as a special project, where research is informing and is integral to the curriculum. Selected year groups of BA, MDes and Masters students develop new applications, narratives and materials including composites to underpin design and materials thinking with an understanding of environmental issues. With colleagues I have established a fortnightly BRIDGE Club open to all students and staff, this club holds show and tell sessions, expert debates and engagement with philosophical issues of sustainability and the green agenda, and has a blog and is linked by social networks to the official BRIDGE platform. Engagement of these students in BRIDGE trips to France and in the UK with French peers in science, business and policy has been of particular benefit to students’ collaborative learning and is illustrating what formal research opportunities are open to them in post graduate study, post doctoral employment and the variety of opportunities in the academic environment.
The BRIDGE research has primarily an academic and local business collaborative focus where university staff, design tutors, technical staff, students, SMEs and local government organisations focus on textile waste streams such as carpets, automotive, textiles and clothing waste. In wood our attention is drawn to Ash trees and the recent outbreak of Chalara Fraxinea, concentrating on the effect this will have within the wood industry and exploring the impact through design using felled raw materials, which will be abundant if the disease escalates. In both wood and textile streams the concept of the Green Entrepreneur is supported and celebrated.
As one of the major deliverables of the project my team and I will organise and present at the BRIDGE Eco Circus event to be held December 2013 at the University of Brighton. This event will act as a symposium, business-to-business networking event and exhibition to showcase the University, students and staff work alike alongside local businesses. Research to date will be disseminated at this event and through journal papers.
With our French partners we are in discussion regarding a BRIDGE Plus project and the potential developments and outcomes this may bring.
