Colechi (LINK) A brief extract from their website.
“We are Colèchi – a multidisciplinary insight collective and agency teaching sustainable development in the fashion industry.
We collaborate with thought-leaders, brands, education and government to build locally focused projects to understand, inform and inspire action towards a more ethical fashion industry.
We collaborate with our collective of over 1000 multidisciplinary fashion practitioners working across the fashion supply web, from growers to scientists, designers, media, retailers and recyclers“.
I was invited on the 22nd of February to facilitate a workshop;. However, it was last minute, and I felt very honoured to be a part of this game-changing environment around teaching and ” clean ” practices in the community. Although this meant I had to build a workshop very quickly without fully experiencing the teaching environments. I was informed it was a mixed-level experience and the focus is on learning new techniques or progressing techniques.
I built a small pdf hand out that was level based and progressive in the sense that you could test and play with each and use the experience as a learning adventure of the techniques but also as a visual for the levels to be seen, they all hold the same type of information and layout. With finalising a small garment tension swatch and how to copy a pre-loved garment.
Objectives
1. Get complete beginner knitting or purling (if moving forward from garter stitch)
2. Get beginners to test decreasing/ increasing
3. Get the intermediate to understand how to progress from Yarn over to Make one!
4. Allow Advance knitters to build textural samples around shape-making.
5. Reflect and discuss “homework” on a small garment-making session.
6. Reflect and discuss the possibilities of Garment making and the process of making an “action plan”.
Personally, from an outside observer, I wanted to bring an ‘academic’ approach to the session rather than a hobby-based learning objective. With the feedback, I received from the owners of the agency, so personally, I got what I wanted from the session.
The 6 page hand out- Rushed but can be reflected.
The first page was a basic introduction of myself and my practice, just something to recite while introducing the workshop, with a hidden challenge announced to allow perspective knitters to find a secret pattern within the hand it. (it’s the YKWU, on the first page).
The next 3- is basically the workshop but broken down into beginners, intermediate and advanced, the last two pages will be introduced during the reflective part of the day. What I took from the session overall was that I was slightly too ambitious and actually built techniques and designed patterns based on what I assumed were beginner, intermediate and advanced knitting. Many didn’t surpass the green handout and struggled with the terminology around knitting, which made me think about how these classes are built and the importance of learning the symbols and abbreviations of knitting as well as practising the physical techniques.
Below are images of the learning tables, a mixed group of knitters and then complete beginners, who have never knitted before, A participant was able to offer her help as the class was so big and work with the beginner’s table.
The main difference between academic practice and community-led is that the time scales are completely different in retrospect and it is probably best to under-prepare for the easier side of work and maybe less complicated. But I normally teach in 3-hour sessions, and this session was completely obscure in the sense of who is learning, higher education environments bring a sense of stability and ‘professionalism’ to the student learning experience, whereas the community-led project is a softer more relaxed approach and reminds me of low-residency based learning and that is a completely different mindset to what I am used to.
I wanted to bring asynchronous learning to the workshop and teased the participants with an at-home work on it yourself and use the swatch to record measurements for making your own.
While finishing up the session, I took the opportunity to play a reflective response to the session, on a peer-to-peer engagement surrounding the work that was in today’s workshop. With a little add-on, on found tactile pieces in the surroundings, other people’s clothes, other balaclavas etc. I think it was the first time, some of these participants have given themselves the time to reflect on what they are learning, and to express what they felt during learning these techniques.
The feedback was positive, and they enjoyed my ‘professional’ response to teaching compared to other sessions they have attended, and I showed a great level of expertise and patience to their questions and struggles.
Reflective –
I am eager to learn and respond to different teaching scenarios to grow and progress in my career, I don’t want to be stagnant in a single teaching environment, I believe teaching Is a craft and art form of its own, and the best way to learn is experiencing what other environments can provide to my perspective.