4FASHION: CIRCULARITY AT LONDON COLLEGE OF FASHION
In an exclusive interview with 4 Fashion’s Programme Director, Rebecca Doolan, we explore London College of Fashion’s future sustainability initiatives.
Kaela: We’re working on a team for the collaborative unit and, we have two parts where we’re setting up a consultancy to help implement circular solutions and then the second part is building community through events and workshops. So, we’re just trying to like get some information, I guess, from people to see if there’s any type of solutions that will be implemented in the Stratford location that aren’t being considered that our research covers and how we can implement some of those ideas.
Rebecca: is there anything specific when you’re talking about circular?
Kaela: So, we have noticed around campus that recycling schemes are not really up to par. For instance, the bins, they look like they are separated; there’s just one bag and all just goes to landfill. So, one example will be to capture all plastic waste and then use it as a raw material for students to either develop into textiles or accessories, things like that.
Rebecca: Okay, so you’re looking at solutions like that in terms of recycling, building management, that sort of thing for the new building?
Kaela: Right, and to be implemented in other places as well
Rebecca: Okay, yeah
Kaela: (continuation of previous speech) very local to other buildings and communities.
Rebecca: Yeah, sounds good
Kaela: Thanks. So, I guess 4Fashion it looks like they have lot of different things that you kind of cover. If you could just tell us a little bit about projects relating to sustainability in Stratford?
Rebecca: Well, 4Fashion* is the name the college have given to the move to Stratford. That involves a whole load of work associated with getting everyone ready to move from A to B, as well as developing the actual building itself. Thar is very high level, there’s so much going on, there’s still loads of projects coming up. I guess the main aspect of the overall piece of work are the design and development of the actual building itself and, we do have some sustainability objectives there and I can tell you about. The building is part of a wider development that is being funded by the local government, called the private government of the Greater London authority and the mayor of London. They are a number of other organisations there that are going with us: V&A, BBC and so on. They also have similar aspirations in terms of sustainability, and by sustainability, I mean in the broader sense. Not just about recycling, it’s about community and jobs for people. As well as that, there are parts that target the buildings performance against sustainability objectives. So, there’s the building and in the college, there’s the 4Fashion programme that I look after. There are four main areas: one is the people side of things, everything to do with students and staff, all the different groups of students and staff that we have; we’ve got undergraduate, postgraduate, research students, we’ve also got research staff, we’ve got teaching staff, we’ve also got academic and non-academic staff- so people who do administrative jobs and so on at college.
Its understanding what they need to do in terms of staff side of things to prepare themselves to move from six different sites to one building. Within that there’s some sustainability aspirations as well around wellbeing, mental health, that sort of thing that we’re training in development as well (I’m talking about sustainability in the broadest terms here). But certainly, within that people work area, there are quite high aspirations to make sure that the move from where we are mow to where we want to be is sustainable as possible from different perspectives. Not only that, that we actually take the opportunity to improve things, maybe by providing better mental health services for example, better wellbeing type of things, and for staff actually. If we’re doing this, what else can we do to improve in that regard?
Kaela: Are there specific centres that are going to then be at LCF for mental health and wellbeing, because I notice a lot of times there’s someone doing counselling and events but there’s not really a space where you can go to.
Rebecca: I guess what we’re thinking about doing is developing a kind of holistic student service. It’s kind of a student and staff service really, so anybody who uses the building will have a sense of where they need to go for whatever they want to get information about. The way the university is set up, there are lots of places you can go to get access to services, we’re thinking in the new building we would have one place that holds all the information, but you will go there and be pointed in the right directions. So “I’m concerned about finances, but it’s also affecting my mental health, I’m really stressed because I’m anxious and so on “there will be a place where students can go where they will be pointed to a number of different services, I guess and, also for staff. It could also be something like “my laptops broken” or it might be something like “I need help with my accommodation” and the thinking is there will be a one stop shop for those things. But then people would have to go to wherever it is the where the specialists and the experts in those areas are to actually get serviced. So, we’re hoping that that will happen and that would be an improvement from what we’ve currently got, which is people have lots of different places to go. So those other places don’t always know what’s happening in other areas. So, then we’ve also got a work area around how we deliver teaching and learning in the new building, and the best possible way of doing that for the benefits of students primarily. So were talking about making improvements to how we time table classes, how we make the learning experience better for students in a number of different ways. It could be anything from your type of assessment, how assessments are carried out, maybe how your work is programmed out over the week, that sort of thing. Improving more broadly the student experience through teaching and the learning activities and using the opportunity of the new building which is going to be amazing.
Kaela: I’ve seen the plans it looks great!
Rebecca: Yeah, so using the opportunities that brand new environment offers for students really, and for staff as well! To have a better experience of delivering teaching. In terms of sustainability, I will say the idea or the ethos of sustainability is definitely imbedded in everything that we do. We also always do analysis in terms of equality and diversity and inclusion as well. So, anything that we’re doing, I’ll have a look and just check “what’s the impact of this thing we’re going to do? Is it going to negatively impact anybody? Yes, then we’re going to change what we’re doing. No, okay we need to go ahead”. We use an evidence based approach to just make sure that everything we’re doing is not inadvertently putting someone at a disadvantage. So that’s imbedded in everything we do.
Kaela: And that’s an important part
Rebecca: Yeah, its massively important. I think in terms of sustainability broadly, so not just I’m terms of resources. It depends what you think are resources, for us it’s about people as well-
Kaela: Right
Rebecca: The other areas are around quality control engagement, and that is a huge work area that looks at how as a college, an institution embed ourselves in the surrounding area in Stratford for the benefit of the local community, but also for the benefit of our students and staff. So, the collaborative unit and some of the work that’s linked within that is directly linked to some of the partnerships we’ve got and, that’s a new thing. We can talk all day about that, there’s loads of information in terms of sustainability, social sustainability within that work area. Then, we’ve also got business and innovation which is looking at. that’s quite interesting, we just developed a new service called graduate futures which is where were looking to merge the services for careers for students, alumni’s, industry relations, so together it’s just a big melting pot which we think would be really fantastic for students because, they’ll get to interact with alumni better and also industry as well. We’re going to use all the stuff that were learning and translate it into the real world. In terms of the building, the construction is aiming for brilliant and astounding.
Kaela: Yes; I’ve seen that
Rebecca: And that is being looked at at every single level of detail, for example, where they’re having to make aggregate which is just like to lay the foundation of the building and it has to me made of a certain material so that it can perform well and that’s something that’s quite ambitious to target I think, especially with the development which is part of the wider developments we got with other partners, they’re sustainably minded, but maybe not as much as LCF. So, for us, it’s quite an ambitious target. In terms of the building, it’s been designed by the college and lead by the director of learning environments and he is really big on sustainability, so he’s driven lots of initiatives at LCF. He set up the community garden at Mare street.
Kaela: Oh! Is there going to be one in Stratford?
Rebecca: In the new building, they’ve planned to have lots of outdoor space throughout the building, so you don’t have to go all the way downstairs to experience the outside. So, there’s lots of connections to the outside throughout the building, and there’s plans to have lots of green spaces in those outdoor spaces. This is all to bring a bit of nature of the outside world into raise people’s awareness of sustainability issues and find different ways and enabling people to find different way to get in contact with those subjects.
Kaela: Is there a specific department that’s managing those green spaces to make sure there to their fullest potential, for example maybe there are growing food for the canteen such as fresh fruits and things like that.
Rebecca: Yeah, so at the moment we’re literally Working out how we’re going to manage the e-zone, it’s going to be completely to what we’re currently doing now in the sense that we’ve got one building and there’s loads of opportunities to have in one building. The idea is that we look at this new building and ask ourselves those questions: who’s going to look after the canteen and make sure it’s sustainably sourced and its offering lots of different options. Its thinking about future proofing itself, it’s not just a replication of what we’ve got that might not be the best thing. So, questions like who’s going to look after the garden for example, we’re still trying to work it out. But there is a whole programme of work which works out those questions, it’s called ‘building operational readiness’ it’s a huge work stream, lots of key people from the college are involved. We’ve got the head of UAL sustainability Ian Lane constantly reminding us. Questions like that are ones that we are working through right now, we don’t know the answers but we know we need to answer some questions and as much as possible, so we’ve got these kind of high level principals for how were going to answer all those questions and as much as possible we’ve said it will always be driven by the student experience rather than anything else, limitations of resources, or staff or anything like that.
Kaela: So, in terms of not just sustainability but circularity, in terms of the waste output, like design students have a lot of waste output from like textiles to paper to materials, so?
Rebecca: That’s a really good question. So, it may have been thought about by some of my other colleagues who are much more involved in the design of the building, but I don’t know if we’ve thought about it in those terms. It will be really good for us to do that if we haven’t already, or it may have happened and I’m just not aware of, because I’m the programme manager so I look after everything, I have a got a knowledge of the detail in most areas but not everything, so it’s not to say that has not been considered. For example, we’d make sure that all of that paper waste for example from pattern cutting, all of those fabrics and materials. Since we have 6 different stores for fabrics, in six different sites, the idea is when we go to the new building we can at least consolidate how we procure that stuff and how we store it and manage it, so that we could actually make efficiencies not only in terms of how much we spend on those things but you know also from sustainability perspective, to reduce waste. Again, exactly how we’d do that we haven’t worked out yet, there’s opportunity there to come up with something.
Kaela: Yes, that’s great. I mean, my team and I are really working on those details on how to implement those strategic circular solutions. For example, the canteens are outsourced, but if they were run by a different company or internally run then maybe the food waste could go towards compost that could be located in one of the green sites for the dye garden or more food for the canteen. That would be like a really simple circular solution.
Rebecca: That’s fantastic and, I think my colleagues here, although we do have some sustainability experts at the university, but they’re trying to look at sustainability across the whole thing.
Kaela: Right
Rebecca: And we’re trying to embed you know, the college has got a very strong ethos of sustainability, but it’s in that broader sense, so most of the focus has been on people and social sustainability. So, thinking about community and integration of the community, that kind of thing. But I think if there were solutions if we could be advised on, in terms of food waste, anything like that, servicing it with the team here would be fantastic; they’ll definitely be open to hearing about one of those solutions. I think as much as possible things like that will want to be taken forward. I think the thing we’ve got at the moment is, we know we want to do these things, we just don’t know how to go about them. So, there’s loads of opportunity there.
Kaela: My team and I are sort of working towards that if you have any feedback on how you’re going to take those next steps, maybe not now because I know there’s still like 2 years in the planning, but when those things might be considered and how to really go about it.
Rebecca: Yeah! I mean having the conversations now I mean will be good. There are a couple of people I can get you in touch with to say you’re interested in developing new solutions and that you should make contact with them. Soon enough, we have to start working through these questions you know, how we’re going to run the building. Where we are now, we’ve just got to the end of stage 4 which is the development of the building; which is where we’ve just spent 2 years really in the detail of the design and now the designs been signed off, it’s going to stay at it is. Now we’re moving into the stages where we’re thinking about okay, how do we actually operationalise this building? How do we manage the facilities? how many staff do we need? What systems do we need? What solutions do we need to some of the problems we’re going to have, and so though we’re not quite there yet, we’re getting there very soon.