Changemaker: Dr Francesco Mazzarella
By BEL JACOBS
Francesco Mazzarella is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Centre for Sustainable Fashion (CSF) – a University of the Arts London (UAL) research centre based at London College of Fashion (LCF). His research explores ways in which design activism can create counter-narratives towards sustainability in fashion. He is currently leading the Making for Change: Waltham Forest project, a programme of community engagement, design research, and educational activities, using fashion and making as catalysts for positive change.
Bel: Your work focuses on the ability of design to change the world.
FM: In the face of the complex challenges posed by the current global environmental, economic and social crises, designers are adopting more sustainable practices and social responsibility in their work, playing the role of activists to challenge the unsustainable status quo. I focus on design activism, using my skills and expertise to build communities of practice with a shared vision towards activating positive change.
Bel: Design activism - how would you define that?
FM: Professor Alastair Fuad-Luke defined it as “design thinking, imagination and practice applied knowingly or unknowingly to create a counter-narrative aimed at generating and balancing positive social, institutional, environmental and/or economic change”. I adopt it as an approach to rescue cultural heritage, fight social inequalities, help local economies flourish and enhance environmental stewardship.
Bel: In your Loughborough Design School doctoral research project, you explored how service design can be used to help communities transition towards a sustainable future. Say more?
FM: I conducted case studies with two textile artisan communities, one in Nottingham, UK, the other in Cape Town, South Africa. As a result of both cases, the artisans, who had previously working in isolated, precarious conditions, became communities. I played diverse roles – of a cultural insider, storyteller, sensemaker, facilitator and activist.
Bel: We are witnessing an increased interest in artisanship as a “meaningful model of design, production and consumption, contributing to sustainability, cultural identity and wellbeing” - your words. Why are these skills so important?
FM: Artisanal products are often characterised as unique and pleasurable, useful and beautiful. They embed a timeless know-how and are deeply rooted in the material culture of a territory. However, artisans often find themselves working in isolated, precarious conditions, at the bottom of ecosystems which do not take people, heritage and the environment into account.
Bel: What strikes you as most urgent about the practice of fashion?
FM: We live in a complex reality where global economic and environmental crises are interwoven with social inequalities. Dwindling resources and re-localisation of urban manufacturing are making natural fibres unaffordable for artisans who have consequently turned to mass production. Many items once produced by skilled textile artisans have been replaced by fast fashion, whilst over-production and over-consumption are resulting in a fast landfill. Increasing global competition means that many artisans live in precarious, fractured and marginalized ways, at the bottom of the pyramid with little chances of overcoming their poverty due to the lack of long-term market access, regular wages and opportunities to learn new skills.
Furthermore, the real nature of artisanship is challenged by issues of cultural appropriation leading to a form of ‘craft bricolage’, which consists of items inspired by foreign archetypes and mass produced in global peripheries, then sold in cheap supermarkets to cosmopolitan consumers who use them out of context.
Bel: You’re part of Mode Uncut, a collaborative network aimed at exploring ways to reshape unjust fashion systems.
FM: Yes, Mode Uncut was created to explore and disrupting fashion practices by reconfiguring the designer-producer-consumer relationship. Our members have facilitated over 20 design and sewing workshops in Finland, Germany, Italy and the UK, challenging the way we make our clothes, individually and together. In 2016, in partnership with Professor Alastair Fuad-Luke (from the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy) and Anja-Lisa Hirscher (from Aalto University, Finland), I initiated the ‘Make Yourself…’, a project focused on socializing value creation through making clothes differently. We invited residents, migrants and refugees to a ‘makershop’ where they up-cycled discarded textiles and second-hand garments to create and exchange alternative types of value, including individual, community, societal, environmental and economic.
Bel: You’ve been described as a social capital catalyst …
FM: I don’t particularly like labels but those who know my work call me a ‘social capital catalyst’, perhaps due to my sensibility to recognise and value the social capital of people and to activate communities towards implementing collective action. I have been lucky enough to create an immense network of amazing people with aligned values, which I treasure and share generously. I am always keen on connecting people as this is for me the only way for nurturing open innovations.
Bel: You’ve travelled extensively. What have you learnt through your interaction with other cultures?
FM: I love absorbing other cultures and ways of working and shaping my own way of being a citizen of the world. Being Italian, cultural heritage and artisanship have always been in my DNA. During my studies at Politecnico di Torino, Italy, I deepened my interest in systemic design as a holistic approach to local assets. As an exchange student in the Netherlands, I learned about user-centred design, scenario building and design futures. A moment that marked my life was my experience as a visiting student at the CEDTec DESIS Lab in Brazil, where I collaborated with local artisans to investigate opportunities for design-led social innovation. Finally, London is the place that I call home, at least for now. The UK is the cradle of the Arts and Crafts movement and in this context, I have established my research in design activism, service design and sustainable fashion.
Bel: Who are the most influential people in your life?
FM: If I can mention just one person, I’d say Professor Ezio Manzini from Politecnico di Milano, the ‘father’ of design for social innovation. I was very lucky to meet him during my studies at a honourary MSc called Alta Scuola Politecnica, where I collaborated with a team of students in design, architecture and engineering on an EU-funded project (for which Ezio was one of the mentors) aimed at designing collaborative services to boost social innovation in smart cities. Ezio was also the inspiration for focusing my work on services that contribute to social innovation and sustainability.
Bel: Could you highlight how the current emergency of climate, human rights and animal rights intersect with your work?
FM: I am so grateful to be working at Centre for Sustainable Fashion, which is committed to living sustainably in interdependence with other human beings and within the natural world. We do this through our on-going process of embedding sustainability within fashion education across London College of Fashion; in particular, I contribute to MA Fashion Futures and MA Fashion Entrepreneurship and Innovation, placing sustainability and social entrepreneurship at the heart of fashion practice to help shape the next generation of sustainable pioneers.
I have also recently joined the Climate Emergency working group across University of the Arts London and am currently scoping a research project focused on climate emergency and the displacement of people as catalysts for new learnings on individual and community resilience in place. Through participatory action research projects (such as ‘Making for Change: Waltham Forest’ - watch the video here), I tackle socio-economic issues experienced in local communities, using fashion activism to contribute to shaping better lives, for ourselves and all living beings.
Bel: If there is one thing you’d like to tell fashion citizens/activists today, what would that be?
FM: Reflect on your own potential to activate counter-narratives towards social innovation and sustainability. We need to tailor our approaches to specific contexts in order to craft meaningful social innovations, avoiding the risk of being ‘parachuted’ into communities using fixed toolkits and developing ineffective one-size-fits-all outputs. Finally, given that activist terminology has increasingly been co-opted by organisations, we need to shy away from a commoditisation of the role. Design activists have been hired for commercial purposes to develop technical fixes to the symptoms of sustainability. Instead, [we need to] dive deep into an exploration of the root causes of the unbalanced system we live in.
Labels changing the world
READ MORE: As part of Oxfam’s #secondhandseptember campaign, Alice Wilby of Novel Beings and I like to think we played a part in that.
