TALKS AND DOCUMENTARY

This is a film about a Batak weaver Uli Panggabean from North Sumatra, Indonesia. Credits: Producer: Fashion Act Now Director: Sandra Niessen and MJA Nashir Filmer and Editor: MJA Nashir Weavers: Uli Panggabean and Ompu Rode br. Panjaitan Spinning wheel makers: Jesral Tambun and Paul Manahara Tambunan General assistence: Agustina Sitanggang and Baja Panggabean On location: Pansur na Pitu, Silingdung Valley, North Sumatra, Indonesia, 2022

This is a film about weaver Matico Lema, from Peguche, Ecuador. Producer: Fashion Act Now Interviewer: Veronica Pesantes, Onikos Filmer: David Holguin Wagner, Surda.TV On location: Peguche, Ecuador, 2018 Editor: MJA Nashir, mjArt 2022

A panel discussion with David Bollier, Ana María Durán Calisto, and Dave from One Army; moderated by Bel Jacobs. Why fashion and the commons? A commons arises when a community treats a resource as a shared wealth. There's no commons without commoning: a process of community participation. It's a thriving alternative to capitalism that puts human wellbeing and the planet above profit. So we, Fashion Act Now, feel its important to ask, is the commons the answer when it comes to degrowing fashion, an industry rampant with overconsumption? For this talk, we bring together three people who work outside of the fashion industry but for which we feel the fashion industry has much to learn from. On the 26th April, we had the pleasure of bringing together leading thinkers and doers in their fields: David Bollier, author, activist and consultant who has spent 20 years exploring the commons, writting countless books and co-organizing pioneering international conferences and strategy workshops. He's the author of Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Commons. He's the co-founder of the Commons Strategies Group and Director of the Reinventing the Commons Program at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics. His most recent book is The Commoner's Catalog for Changemaking. Ana María Durán Calisto, Ecuadorian architect, urbanist, educator and writer, who founded Estudio A0 with her partner in Quito, Ecuador and challenges the status quo and the spatial and environmental paradigm for urbanization in South American cities, developing environmentally responsible design and construction systems. Her expertise is in urbanisation in the Amazon Basin. Dave from One Army, dutch industrial designer and founder of a community that creates projects that tackle global problems. One Army are "a global movement of peaceful sapiens dedicating their lives to serve and protect planet earth" and are the creators of Fixing Fashion, Precious Plastics and more. We think Fixing Fashion is a wonderful example of the commons providing answers for the fashion and growth conundrum. This conversation will be moderated by Bel Jacobs, writer, speaker and campaigner on the climate emergency, animal rights and alternative fashion systems. She's the co-founder Fashion Act Now and founder of Fashion in Schools. She's campaigned for Extinction Rebellion and Animal Rebellion and is a former Style Editor for Metro.

You can’t have climate change without sacrifice zones, and you can’t have sacrifice zones without disposable people, and you can’t have disposable people without racism. (Hop Hopkins) In August 2020, cultural anthropologist Sandra Niessen published the seminal article: Fashion, its Sacrifice Zone and Sustainability. Using a decolonial perspective, Niessen investigates why and how the clothing systems of the Other have been systematically undervalued and obscured by the fashion system of the Global North, and instead proposes a “revision to the customary framework of sustainability that is being used by dress scholars, environmental activists and policy makers, so that it includes the putative “non-fashion” clothing traditions of the world.” In Fashion Act Now’s third panel investigating Fashion & Degrowth, Niessen will be in conversation with Extinction Rebellion co-founder Clare Farrell, looking at why an ethical, ecologically aware fashion system must also be a decolonised fashion system.  "Sacrifice zones are resource-rich lands, generally associated with minority communities that are considered dispensable and exploited for economic gain. Rather than expendable physical landscapes, fashion sacrifice zones are dress traditions, and their makers, associated with fashion’s Other half, that are destroyed for and by the expansion of industrial fashion. These zones facilitate industrial expansion because they are a source of cheap labor and also indigenous design (commonly appropriated) important for style change. They also serve as markets when indigenous dress is replaced with industrially produced dress. And finally, they are the major sites of waste disposal, including secondhand clothing (Rodgers 2015)." Sandra Niessen Racism brought us the climate crisis, and it will take transformative anti-racism to solve it. (Eric Holthaus) ABOUT FASHION ACT NOW Fashion Act Now is campaign group calling for environmental justice within the fashion industry. We advocate for decolonisation, just transitions and regenerative practices. Born out of and supporting Extinction Rebellion, we're a team of fashion insiders who believe we need to address the elephant in the room: that the fashion industry in the Global North is too wedded to models of exponential growth and profit to “mark its own homework” any longer.  Through a series of talks, campaigns and workshops, we'll be addressing degrowth and what it means for the fashion industry.  Help XR mobilise and donate: https://extinctionrebellion.uk/donate/ Extinction Rebellion UK: https://extinctionrebellion.uk/ International: https://rebellion.global/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ExtinctionR Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/XRebellionUK/ 1. Tell The Truth 2. Act Now 3. Beyond Politics World Map of Extinction Rebellion Groups: https://rebellion.global/branches/ #extinctionrebellion #climatechange #globalwarming

Fashion produces more than 100bn garments[1] every year, most of which is thrown away. Meanwhile, in a time of climate emergency,, the industry contributes up to 10 per cent of global CO2 emissions[2]. Fashion desperately needs to degrow but if it does, what happens to the 80 billion people currently employed in its supply chain, many of whom live and work in the world’s most vulnerable countries? In a hard hitting panel by Fashion Act Now, three speakers share views from their individual areas of expertise and concern. Clare Farrell is a co-founders of Extinction Rebellion. Asad Rehman is the director, War on Want. Simone Cipriani is the founder and head of the Ethical Fashion Initiative.  The panel is moderated by Bel Jacobs. [1] https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/sustainability/our-insights/style-thats-sustainable-a-new-fast-fashion-formula [2] https://unfccc.int/news/un-helps-fashion-industry-shift-to-low-carbon  Help XR mobilise and donate: https://extinctionrebellion.uk/donate/ Extinction Rebellion UK: https://extinctionrebellion.uk/ International: https://rebellion.global/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ExtinctionR Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/XRebellionUK/ 1. Tell The Truth 2. Act Now 3. Beyond Politics World Map of Extinction Rebellion Groups: https://rebellion.global/branches/ #extinctionrebellion #climatechange #globalwarming

The fashion industry produces up to 150 billion items of clothing a year, using excessive amounts of natural capital and bonded human labour, cutting a swathe of destruction across the natural world and emitting tonnes of greenhouse gases. Any lull in the industry created by the pandemic will be eliminated by a desperate scramble back to ‘normal’. Despite a plethora of frameworks and action plans, the industry is still nowhere near the level of carbon emissions it needs to reach in order to play a viable part in hitting the Paris Agreement goals.  Going back to business as usual will make this impossible. Now is the time to address the elephant in the room: that the fashion industry in the Global North is too wedded to models of exponential growth and profit to “mark its own homework” any longer. Or, according to Global Fashion Agenda’s 2019 Pulse Score, “findings demonstrate that fashion companies are not implementing sustainable solutions fast enough to counterbalance the negative environmental and social impacts of the rapidly growing fashion industry.”  Fashion needs to reduce its production levels in ways that respond to the needs of the workers it abandoned during the initial lockdowns - and it needs to do so NOW. In a groundbreaking conversation, XR co-founder Clare Farrell and Giorgos Kallis, ecological economist and one of the principal advocates of degrowth theory, talk about why modern Western society is so unnerved by ideas of degrowth, what we need to enact alternative visions to modern growth-based development and and how to apply them to an industry built on unfettered expansionism. Help XR mobilise and donate: https://extinctionrebellion.uk/donate/ Extinction Rebellion UK: https://extinctionrebellion.uk/ International: https://rebellion.global/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ExtinctionR Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/XRebellionUK/ 1. Tell The Truth 2. Act Now 3. Beyond Politics World Map of Extinction Rebellion Groups: https://rebellion.global/branches/ #extinctionrebellion #climatechange #globalwarming