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Fashion transparency trump card game: data activism to play with.

Hello shoppers! We have some news. CEO Ian is presenting this week at the Geographical Association’s annual conference at the University of Surrey, UK. You might like to get the lowdown, find all the resources in one place. Here they are…

On Wednesday this week, Ian is debuting a trump card game that you play with your own and other people’s clothes. He will set it up and a tournament will take place right in the room. The start is not not exciting. The cards are blank…

– click image to download the template –
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‘Provocations & interventions’: cultural activism and the UCU strike

At followthethings.com we’re fascinated with ways in which cultural activism can contribute to trade justice campaiging. Over the past month, our work has ground to a halt as our CEO Ian – in his guise as a UK-based academic – has been on strike. He has returned to work today as the Coronavirus crisis in the UK is beginning to bite. This post is primarily for students at the University of Exeter taking the MRes Critical Human Geographies module on the ‘Geographies of culture, creativity and practice’ . It’s posted here as part of the social distancing digital alternative to a seminar that’s scheduled to take place later this week. But we’re making it public rather than putting it on the university’s ELE system. If anyone visiting wants to add thoughts and links, the comments are open. Thanks!

There are three parts to this post: a) a starter reading for everyone, b) an intro to 2020 UCU strike activism with some allocated readings for each person, and c) an outline of our Skype session later this week.

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Ian’s #whomademyclothes pledge

We’ve been running a free online course for the past three weeks with and for the Fashion Revolution movement. It’s called ‘Who Made My Clothes?’ and has been organised according to its mantra – Be Curious, Find Out, Do Something. We’ve asked our learners to finish the course by making a pledge to… do something that will contribute to Fashion Revolution’s vision of ‘a fashion industry that values people, the environment, creativity and profit in equal measure’. Here’s the pledge that our CEO Ian has made. 

Another pledge is to run the course again in 2018. Watch this space.

followthethings.com review of 2015

Yes, it’s that time of year when we pretend to have an awards ceremony to mark what’s happened with our website – and the work that spins through and out of it – over the past 12 months. It’s a way of thanking all of our contributors and shoppers, to show how you have helped to shape what followthethings.com is becoming. Highlights and top 10s of 2015? Here they are:

Highlights:

2015…

  • was the year that we welcomed out 100,000th shopper, our 300,000th page view and our 194th country in which our online shoppers are based;
  • saw the publication of the first academic paper explaining how followthethings.com was made, with whom, and what it is designed to do in the world (see p.23 on here, in French);
  • saw the publication of a film in which our CEO Ian Cook explains why many of our pages contain scenes made in LEGO;
  • saw new followthethings.com collaborative research with artists Neville and Joan Gabie on Dust (part of the Bideford Black project), and with artist Paula Crutchlow and others on the Museum of Contemporary Commodities;
  • saw a closer involvement in the Fashion Revolution movement after CEO Ian’s appointment as its Global Education and Resources lead, and his co-authoring of the movement’s free ‘who made my clothes?’ education resources (register here) and first book: How to be a fashion revolutionary;
  • and saw the much-needed expansion of our classroom resources page, including resources and stories of thing-following pedagogies from primary school to university classrooms.

Top 10s:

Here we go [drum roll]…

Top 10 shopping countries (c/w 2014)

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New project goes public: Museum of Contemporary Commodities

This is the project that Ian founded with Exeter-based artist and PhD student Paula Crutchlow in 2013. It  involves a whole host of collaborators now. It is going public this weekend in London’s Finsbury Park. And its website is now live. Please check out what it’s about and take part in person and/or online. Here’s what it’s about. Click the logo to get to the webpage. 

Screen Shot 2015-06-11 at 12.57.49The Museum of Contemporary Commodities (MoCC) is neither a building nor a permanent collection of stuff – it’s an invitation. To consider every shop, online store and warehouse full of stuff as if it were a museum, and all the things in it part of our collective future heritage.

Imagine yourself as this museum’s curator with the power to choose what is displayed and how. To trace and interpret the provenance and value of these things and how they arrived here. To consider the effects this stuff has on people and places close by or far away, and how and why it connects them.

What do we mean by things or stuff? Everything that you can buy in today’s society. The full range of contemporary commodities available to consume.

Please join us on our journey by browsing and adding to our collection, attending an event, becoming a researcher. We are currently curating connections between trade-place-data-values in Finsbury Park, London, and here online. Welcome to MoCC!

Fashion Revolution Day Education Press Release

Fashion Revolution Day PRESS RELEASE TO EDUCATION PRESS

Fashion Revolution Day Offers Engaging Resources for Educators and Students of All Ages

Teaching controversial issues through students’ clothes

Fashrev legoland

The second Fashion Revolution Day will take place on 24 April 2015 to mark the anniversary of the collapse of the Rana Plaza clothing factory complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh.  This global campaign calls for more transparency in fashion supply chains and asks young people in particular to ask brands the question “who made my clothes?”

Following the success of the first Fashion Revolution Day in 2014 when schools, colleges and universities across the world took part, the Fashion Revolution Day Education Team has just launched 4 individual education packs for 2015: for Primary, Secondary, Sixth Form/College and University students. Continue reading →

Wanted! Curious Shoppers and Local Traders (MoCC phase 2)

In January 2013, phase 1 of the ‘Museum of Contemporary Commodities’ (MoCC) art/social science project took place at the University of Exeter: a trade justice thinkering day. This month, phase 2 – in London’s Finsbury Park – began to take shape. Here’s what we’re doing and how you can get involved, as published on Furtherfield’s website.

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Job Opportunity – MoCC Project Producer and Coordinator, Furtherfield, London
Initial contract 120 hours May – July 2015. £1,800 (VAT inclusive)
View details

Wanted! Curious Shoppers and Local Traders

Explore the rapidly changing economies of global capitalism, and help to create a radical new artwork in Finsbury Park.

In July 2015 the Museum of Contemporary Commodities will transform Furtherfield Gallery into an interactive shop-museum, filled with locally sold products that are ranked by different categories and preferences.

We are inviting Finsbury Park residents (and online participants) to join a team of volunteer researchers and art makers and get involved in the process through a series of walkshops, workshops and digital-arty-social events, running April-July in the park and online.

Share your experiences of shopping and trading, and help us create an engaging and entertaining experience with sensor technology, sound design, digital interactions and live action, that makes visible some of the complex relationships at play between data surveillance, trade justice, and global/local commodity culture.

How to get involved in Finsbury Park and online

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