Category: Sarah Corbett
Guest blog: stitched together in this dress
The pages on the followthethings.com begin as coursework set for groups of students taking a Geographies of Material Culture module at the University of Exeter. They also their own experiments of cultural activism, and write personal reflective journals on what they learn. Kate Brockie’s group were tasked to find a way to draw public attention to the work of mineral justice NGO Global Witness through cultural activism. They chose a talc mining report to work with. Sarah Ditty, the policy director for the Fashion Revolution movement, had kicked off that part of the talk. How could the work of Global Witness and Fashion revolution be connected? Kate scoured the internet, took out her sewing machine, and made her case.
Eye shadows
Global Witness’s investigations into the ways in which talc mining finances insurgency in Afghanistan shocked me. How could products as harmlessly trivial as eye shadow be fuelling terrorism, disrupting the lives of thousands of civilians (Global Witness 2018)? The Global Witness campaign gave me an unsettling feeling of being entangled in global webs of exploitation, wondering whether everything else I use throughout my day contributes to some kind of injustice. Continue reading
How shop-dropping can contribute to the Fashion Revolution: the Craftivist Collective’s Mini Fashion Statements
It’s Fashion Revolution Week this week. To mark this, we’re showcasing our favourite examples of cultural activism which have supported its #whomademyclothes call to action. Yesterday, we highlighted the 2014 ‘guerilla projection’ work of documentary photographer Ismael Ferdous. His photos of people dead and injured by the Rana Plaza collapse were projected on the High Street stores of companies which were refusing to acknowledge that their clothes were being made there.
Today, we turn to the gentle activism of shop-dropping. It’s the opposite of shop-lifting, where activists leave things in store – in garments’ pockets, for example – to highlight to people who find them, and brands and retailers challenged by them, inequities in their supply chains. For Fashion Revolution Week why not make and leave behind in store a ‘Mini Fashion Statement’? He’s the Craftivist Collective‘s 2016 ‘how to’ video.
Further information
Sarah Corbett (2017) Mini Fashion Statements. Craftivist Collective 19 April [includes a MFS kit to purchase and a ‘Why To’ video with Sarah]
Further reading
Randall Bezanson & Andrew Finkelman (2009) Trespassory art. University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform 43(2), 245-322 [download here]
Ian Cook et al (2015) The 13 best examples of shop-dropping… ever. followtheblog.org November
YesMenLab (2011) Shop Dropping Product Labels – by the Yes Lab. Destructibles 7 July
the back office 