Shadescape: A Participatory Research Project in Collaboration with LSBU

Earlier this year Ella Doran Design partnered with London South Bank University to run a small participatory piece of research named Shadescape, looking at a circular economy for textile-based shading products with a focus on the local economy.

I have been asking the question of how my company Ella Doran Design Ltd could close the loop and gain more transparency through our supply chains and communicate end-of-life or ‘next life’ with our customer base, for our shading products. Deborah Andrews has been my mentor on several applications to support this research. Below is an outline of what we have achieved so far, thanks to LSBU’s support through an External Participatory and Collaborative grant.

We spoke and/or worked with ‘actors’ throughout the product life cycle, from traders of the base cloth to the printers and recyclers, re-makers, and consumers. The project itself also involved re-making workshops where participants learned to repair and or repurpose waste shading textiles, empowering them to contribute to solutions that sustain materials and keep them in use demonstrating a circular economy in action.

You can read the call to action that we sent to our customer base here.

London South Bank University supported the conduction and management of the research, the workshops, and the publishing of the report. Deborah Andrews particularly was the academic eye during the whole time guiding and mentoring the process with her experience and past related studies. Essential was the collaboration with my company and Yodomo who contributed with their community engagement and making space in Hackney Wick for the public re-making workshops.

We also had full support from Hackney Council which promoted Shadescape at their Summer 2023 Sustainability Day where Sophie of Yodomo and I ran cushion-making workshops using remnant and pre-used textiles with the local community.

This research and the project pilot touched every point mapped on the journey around Circular Economy for textiles in the Shading Product Industry. The research was structured to better understand the common practices of the industry and the behaviours of consumers. Unfortunately, the industry participation was scarce, nevertheless, the three interviewed experts gave precious insights that will inform further investigations. In the future, engaging more suppliers, manufacturers, and waste management companies will be extremely important to tightly close the loop of this discourse. Talking with a couple of my suppliers, it emerged that they live in a stationary condition and are unable to drive the change, due to their scale especially as they are not the actual ‘producers of the raw textile’. Also, the recycler we spoke with confirmed that traders as well as consumers do not have alternatives to landfill when it comes to disposing of shading textiles, and institutions do not seem to put systems in place for that. Textile waste collectors, re-purpose hubs, and recycling plants are still too rare.

An additional survey regarding housing may help identify new opportunities for further studies and implement the holistic approach carried out so far. This research also demonstrated that blinds and curtains are valued after their use, and that circular approaches like this pilot have foundations to be built on. Public engagement is clearly evident, and not to be underestimated but rather leveraged. The Shadescape project and survey demonstrated that people have a sincere interest in contributing to research and are eager to acquire skills to play their part in the circular economy. They also committed to donating fabrics and repurposing them during workshops where sustainability values and actions were shared. In turn, the participants felt empowered, confident, and able to continue repurposing fabrics in the future. Finally, this study generated an ecosystem by connecting different elements together adopting a systemic approach. It highlights the preconditions for a localised circular economy where shading textiles are collected from pre-and post-consumer waste streams to be regenerated into new products by and for skilled communities.

This can help not only Hackney but also other councils to meet their sustainability targets. To achieve a stronger, lasting, broader, and demonstrable impact, the study needs to expand and build on the foundations of this pilot. Here, environmental and social benefits start to be explored by offering a way to reduce the need for new resources, mitigating the textile production impact on land and by teaching people new skills while developing a sense of responsibility and control towards waste. However, to determine a more accurate social impact the study needs to be extended to a larger and more diverse audience. Moreover, some points are still necessary to generate a Circular Economy Template/Actions Guidelines and to further engage experts of the shading products industry, as well as citizens.

This text has been adapted from the report and conclusions of our first research project with London South Bank University.

This recent Guardian article clarifies the issue further with the dumping of textiles in Chile’s Atacama desert to a beach in Accra, Ghana, but it also sheds light on an exciting innovation with Renewcell which can and will begin to change some of this discourse through recycling used clothes, but there is still much work to be done!

For those of you still curious I learned about Renewcell via watching the World Circular Textile Day held at The Conduit the afternoon session can be watched here if you are interested. A wider question, one that was raised at this event, and one I have been grappling with in my own business for some years now, is Jason Hickel’s book and provocation of LESS is MORE… How can we manage this transition in essentially making ‘less’ whilst retaining a healthy system?

He neatly points out that “… It’s not growth that’s the problem, it’s growthism: the pursuit of growth for its own sake or for the sake of capital accumulation”

He also said “….once we are liberated from the growth imperative we will be free to focus on different kinds of innovations – innovations designed to improve human and ecological welfare, rather than innovations designed to speed up the rate of extraction and production.”

A statement that I and all at Shadescape wholeheartedly agree and believe we are advocating through the participatory work with Yodomo to empower and inspire creative solutions to shading products.

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