Be resourceful for #theloveof… the planet
It’s Be Resourceful week this week and we’ve teamed up with Love Your Clothes (part of the Sustainable Clothing Action Plan, SCAP) to think more about resourcefulness and fashion.
Much of our work and thinking at CSF is inspired directly or indirectly from thinking about both resourcefulness and acknowledging that there are challenges and opportunities in the face of resource scarcity for us as fashion designers, thinkers, supporters and us as individuals. Only this morning, in a meeting with some of the brands taking part in our Creative Hub mentoring, I saw resourcefulness being both talked about and thought about in every decision. The SME’s taking part in our mentoring scheme have to be resourceful – they are limited by time, by money, by size, by space. But the trick is not see these as limitations but as opportunities to build resourcefulness, resilience, ingenuity and responsibility.
So focussing on the idea of being resourceful is a way to move the conversation away from the limitations that not consuming resources sometimes presents, in thinking about resourcefulness we can think about action, about our moving from passive engagement to taking a more active role, about being inter-connected between ourselves and with nature, about creating agility and elasticity to face the changes and challenges of the future. Be Resourceful week will challenge us this week to think about how we might use, re-use, grow, make, value and share not only our clothes but our ideas and our hopes and expectations.
When we are resourceful we begin to be ready for change, we ensure we will have the ability to adapt and create solutions. We can’t then talk about change without acknowledging the importance of resourcefulness. To be resourceful we must create connections, foster confidence, have belief, be informed, and recognise the importance of wellbeing of ourselves, others and the world around us.
Yesterday some of us marched yesterday at the People’s Climate March. There was much to think about not least the idea that leaders must all act together to reverse carbon emissions, if they don’t the idea of resourcefulness becomes more critical still, indeed central to thinking about resourcefulness already is the idea of enough and the recognition that discussions around news ways of living are about more than production and consumption, but about what comes after and between those spheres (see Local Wisdom for a deeper exploration of these ideas) – it is not only about consuming more less bad stuff.
With Local Wisdom in mind I have thought more about resourcefulness as an act of the everyday, which means recognition of its importance may be more difficult. The process, the way we use something may be changed by us or we may be changed by it – we are constantly being resourceful and not necessissarily noticing, as I look at my desk I see an upturn ceiling light being used as a pen pot, we no longer think of it as a light but as a pen pot. In Being Resouceful we are creative, we take responsbility, we adjust.
We will this week be concentrating on Being Resourceful – sharing our ideas and work that we think highlights this. We will be actively trying to participate an connect more with others, our clothes and the environment around us. Join us on Twitter on Wednesday (12.30pm) for a tweetchat using #resourcefulfash to join the conversation and to share your thoughts and on Facebook for more ideas.