On Friday October 12, 2023 WUR and ArtEZ jointly organized the co-creation workshop on knowledge gain, awareness raising and communication campaigns regarding a bio-economy ecosystem for fashion and textiles on behalf of the Dutch Hub. The workshop event was held in collaboration with a larger event called the Innovate Experience Festival. The main goal of the workshop was to create a framework with some inspirational ideas for the intended activities for communication, awareness campaigns and art events of Engage4Bio in Hub NL.
In the Dutch Textile Hub there are a number of cultural institutes and platform involved as partners (State of Fashion, Fashion & Design Festival Arnhem, The Arnhem Museum. Holland Open Air Museum). In the co-creation workshop we have defined these cultural platforms as the participant posing the question: How can we include the sustainable and/or bio-based transition in our programming and, knowing their target groups, what could this look like. We have informed the platforms of the multitude of possible ways they could consider to belay the information to their target groups.
State of Fashion has an extensive highly curated two yearly festival (in 2024 from May 16 until June 30). Their target groups are in most cases art, design and fashion conscious and are aware of the urgency of climate change and the need to start and continue the bio-based transition. In the workshop it is clearly visible that the platform would like to tell the story of change and eagerly included the knowledge and experience of the stakeholders and awareness designers.
Fashion and Design Festival Arnhem (FDFA) is orientated to the local network, more specific the inhabitants (end consumers) of the region of Arnhem and its SME companies working in fashion and design related aspects. For FDFA the most important goal is to break down complicated issues to information that is accessible for the‘common’ audience and to become able to measure the impact of the message. In the workshop we could see the constant attempts to simplify the information from the participating stakeholders.
Museum Arnhem has gone through a major remake over the past years and addressing sustainability and other urgent societal topics has become a major focus point. What is noticeable during the workshop is that the complexity of the topics are very much embraced by the museum and they do not hesitate in using the designers expertise to explain, structure and display complex topics. There does not seems to be the urgency to condense the information, the complexity is seen as good and relevant. The campaign type‘Exhibition’is still the preferred campaign type for Museum Arnhem. However the museum has a few inhouse locations where other campaign types can be tested such as‘The Lab’or‘The Material Library’ Also theme driven lectures and workshops are possible with Museum Arnhem.
