Cultural and artistic project created to value the emotional aspect of fashion and recover antique and vintage textile pieces, from family closets, actualize them and create photographic documentation of the stories that belong to them. The premises of the development are creating a network like users and people interested in the transmission of experience, knowledge, and artisanal: cultural and artistic dissemination creating an expansive form of teaching, awakening involvement.
Cross-border/international
Spain
Italy
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Tenerife, Canary Islands - Spain
Firenze - Italy
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
Yes
Circoax by CircularInnoBooster (COSME program)
No
Yes
As an individual in partnership with other persons
First name: Valeria Last name: Scoppa Gender: Female Nationality: Italy Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Calle la Libertad, 59 Town: Arafo Postal code: 38550 Country: Spain Direct Tel:+34 672 57 85 25 E-mail:info@abissimoda.com Website:https://www.abissimoda.com/
First name: Lucilla Last name: Bellini Gender: Female Nationality: Italy Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Via Benozzo Gozzoli 32 Town: Firenze Postal code: 50124 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+39 389 839 3369 E-mail:info@lucillabellini.net Website:https://www.lucillabellini.net/
URL:https://www.reawakenproject.eu/ Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): https://www.instagram.com/reawakenproject/
Reawaken was born as a cultural dissemination project to highlight the need to address a change in the fashion industry, recovering and updating craft methods, applying them to virtual functional methodologies, but above all linking each textile piece to the concept of emotional memory to achieve the artistic expressive form of propagating the personal roots of a user by creating a hereditary historical path. The premises of the development of the Reawaken project led us to create a network of acquaintances of people interested in participating in the project, some as end customers of a textile product but many with a much more specific interest in the transmission of experience, knowledge, and culture, the starting points of each of the actors is different but they all have one thing in common: cultural and artistic dissemination creating an expansive form of teaching, awakening involvement. The narrative that unfolds from the moment of research to the personal encounter to the deepening of knowledge to the creative moment of redesign to the photographic and videographic documentation, to the artistic photographic creation, is in constant motion, expanding and nurturing we can recreate a collective dance where everyone can learn and everyone can contribute. We are instigators of a system aimed at spreading a more sustainable and circular fashion system, the means are education with the transfer of information and notions in the form of text, photographs, and audiovisuals that are passed on by involving the emotional part that resides within each one of us; and the textile pieces themselves both from private clients and from archives that are updated through a redesign method.
We are activists: our formula is to create a system of interviews, lectures and debates where we interchange stories, information, and emotions of the individual and the collective.
Circularity
Belonging
Teaching
Inclusion
Trasmission
The recovery of old or vintage clothes, from family closets, makes it possible to avoid the production of new garments and foment the circularity of textile pieces.
This action then is made important regarding the sense of belonging through the telling of stories and emotions related to the clothes that convey the value of the past and roots. Reflecting and recovering by giving value to something ancient is a very relevant act because it gives importance to ancestral, universal knowledge. Fomenting activism through conducting interviews, and lectures, creating a space for debate and teaching.
The clothes convey the personality of the person who wore them, their own story.
A participatory fashion that lives and feeds on experiences, that develops a response to intimate and personal needs, a fashion made to measure, a word that is inclusive because it adapts, to a body, to a role, to a moment, to a place.
We want a fashion that does not imply overproduction but is grounded in eco-design, in upcycling, in conveying skills, through emotions told by poetic images that inspire one to look with other eyes.
Materials and stories overlap creating a path that starts from the hands of the craftsman, the artist. From the heart and mind, we weave the value of memory, roots, and knowledge through every stitch, every texture, and every thread.
In ancient things, one finds an infinity of stories.
The telling and transmission of these stories is a celebration of the past but also a benefit for the future so that they are not lost, remain alive, and we continue to recall these moments through memory.
Memory is our identity.
From the hidden lessons you encounter in the stories of people who have a long journey behind them, and which are illuminated in the hope that these will be passed on
To save memories from oblivion.
So far we have involved people of all ages and social classes. Our idea is to create a collective space that can be of exchange, discussion, a locally active space, and a safe space of deep transformation by first listening to ourselves, others, and the planet.
During the research for our project, we realized that many people who became enthusiastic while participating were older people.
Bringing older people closer to younger people through what their memories can bring.
The excitement that comes from reliving past stories.
Through the telling of personal experiences, we arrive at the transmission and creation of a collective story that serves to overcome the barriers of apparent cultural differences.
Right now we are two partners, one in Italy and one in Spain, and then at the European level, we acted by looking for materials in Spain and Italy.
We involved ordinary people as well as vintage and antique store owners.
Through researching antique textile pieces and collecting stories belonging to the life of the textile piece and the "characters" it had belonged to with photo documentation and various video interviews.
The innovative capacity of our partnership is to be two complementary partners that fuse the hands of sartorial knowledge with the eye of documentary vision and storytelling.
Essential to the functioning of the project is the figure of the user who will be involved in the journey that passes through the re-connection with the past as well as will be involved in the creative process of eventual transformation.
Key figures are also the craftsmen who are the driving force behind the production of quality pieces.
In the search for textiles, unless they are a family heirloom, the suppliers play a very important role because they are passionate about preserving and caring for antique pieces.
We believe that institutions are very important for our project because we hope that the suggestions and inspirations coming from the actors of sustainable fashion will prepare laws that help the implementation of measures for the preservation of the environment, social protection for people who need it, and rewarding
companies that seriously apply the philosophy of well-being in their way of working.
Collaboration is the basis for the success of the project, the involvement of local craftsmen, as well as antique shops, artists, and other collaborators as well as the enhancement of the location and the surroundings.
The idea of creating a verified history of an antique textile piece by following its journey through time, its changes through craftsmanship, its sale, and the eventual reverse route, from the customer to the atelier for a redesign to start a new journey, with all the photographic and video graphics documentation of this journey creates an objective circular impact in the triple line (social, environmental and economic).
Users are personally involved, leaving part of their story and footprint.
Craftsmen and artists will create a collaborative and respectful network in the future.
Recovering and re-evaluating an old or vintage textile with the possibility to come back, again and again, to be reinterpreted with a solid base of design and aesthetics allows for reducing the previous impact on the aquifer system, and of the initial production process in CO2, further impacts will be reduced with local development and in any case, an environmental compensation will have to be foreseen.
The innovation is to tell with stories and images/videos the emotions by making them tangible and to share this message of the value of emotions to create a change in the educational form of the textile industry.
This education is open to everyone and not just those in the textile/fashion industry.
We want to increase the spread of the Reawaken message by opening a collaborative physical space for training, work, and sales, laying the foundations for the propagation of this system in various countries, initiating locally a community of female entrepreneurship, a place for exchange and discussion, creating collaborations with small and medium-sized enterprises and institutions that support the growth of a circular system of development.
Generate an imprint/historical trail of the garment made, through an in-depth examination of the details:
- in antique shops: where it comes from, region, if possible family, the craftsman who made it, etc.
-from customers: family history, inheritance, etc.
-to transform this information into a story that represents the value of the garment itself, and that its regeneration (redesign) today, stimulates future regenerations, through an interpretative and circular design, to adapt to the aesthetic needs, both personal and external of the moment lived. Or to the needs of a new user.
Focusing on the history of a textile piece and creating a path from the time when it was made, the craftsmanship or the creation within the family, such as the preparation of the pieces of a dowry with the whole process that accompanies it, the passage from one generation to the next, or the history of a tailor's shop that closed its doors many years ago and of which vestiges remain in the textile remnants in the patterns or mannequins created to measure for the customers.
Awareness and respect for the environment are fundamental to our goal of combating the harmful practices of the fashion system.
The propagation of these methods will be done through workshops, lectures, and discussions and the exchange of stories and information.
Globally, we see the problem in the fashion system that overproduces by having an excessively negative impact on the environment. We see the solution in educating the actors in the fashion system and those who design/produce to rethink the form in which they do so, but also the users to rethink their relationship with shopping.
Locally, we find the solution in creating places for debate, approaching ordinary people in the surrounding area to teach them another vision of fashion, recovering inherited pieces or pieces from one's own wardrobe, and collaborating with local craftsmen (artisans artists, etc.) for the transformation and change of the production system.
We create an aggregation between users and craftsmen by making them reflect on the opportunities of pre-existing material and the creative form that resides in the individual.
The connection between the documentary and visual collection of memories related to a specific, everyday object such as a dress, which over time accumulates emotional valence, generates an awareness of roots and culture.
The textile piece comes to life by loading itself with the stories, firstly of the people who conceived, designed, and made it, then of the people who lived it.
It is essential to create an awareness of sustainability, so a cultural understanding of roots leads us to their preservation by putting in place a system of protection for the betterment of people and the environment.
The premises of the development of the initiative, led us to create a network of knowledge, the starting points of each of the actors involved is different but they all have one thing in common: cultural and artistic dissemination creating an expansive form of teaching, awakening involvement.
The use of interactive technology and online dissemination are additional requirements to bring out the value of the initiative's disciplinary fabric and become fundamental to the understanding of the multicultural and inclusive societies we want to build, without these becoming one more globalized production of artifacts and communication.
We have created a website that collects the stories documented so far.
To spread our initiative we want to carry out a series of conferences, debates, and workshops starting with fashion schools and universities, cultural centers, and local urban centers.
We had our first experience with a student, a graduate student in Fashion Design from the Academie D'Aix-Marseille - Denis Diderot, who did a 1-month internship with Valeria Scoppa to explore topics such as sustainable fashion, from design to craft making, to Reawaken's research method.
The beneficiaries were able to retrace and convey family stories related to the clothes, sharing them both through retrieving photographic documentation of the past and through video interviews.
