Face-ing Collaboration: A Meditation on the Faces of Circular Textile Research

Abstract To achieve a circular textile industry – one that has closed complex resource loops at all stages of the lifecycle – collaboration is required between diverse stakeholders. Working with people from a broad set of backgrounds, cultures, training, professions, with different languages can be extremely challenging, and progress when working together for the first time can be slow. Traditionally, textile designers have been a silent link in the industry supply chain, but with the new challenges that collaboration brings that role is expanding. The research presented here poses this question: could textile designers play a more influential role, by using their unique methods and skills to support new collaborations working towards an industry where waste is more often utilised as a resource? The study focusses on practice-based design research undertaken by the authors –one with a background in textiles and the other in materials communication – to support the formation of effective working relationships between participants in the multidisciplinary consortium project: Trash-2-Cash. A series of experiments were conducted using photography, visual data mapping, silent meditation and drawing to bring participants closer together by focussing on faces. The authors conclude by proposing this approach as a new method for enabling shared understanding in a multi-disciplinary setting, starting with participants’ portraits and using design practice to build connections between the people within the collaboration. The authors suggest that this method inform internal communication and facilitation tools as well as external communication of the collaboration as part of a wider strategy to engage external non-specialist audiences in the work being undertaken. The approach may be of particular interest to research projects where designers are working with other disciplines for the first time.