Tracing the social impact of fashion with Designed for Life

Presented across five immersive showcase areas in LCF’s new building, visitors will encounter textiles, design, film, photography, artefacts, personal testimonies and community building to discover the transformative power of creative action in shaping our world.

Designed for Life features many pieces never before on display to the public. Featured work includes:

• Notable work from LCF’s Centre for Sustainable Fashion researcher and artist Professor Helen Storey, including ‘Dress for Our Time,’ a decommissioned refugee tent donated by the UNHCR, the Jacket of Wishes, designed as a surface to capture the voices and wishes of the female Syrian refugees in Zaatari Refugee Camp, and the previously unseen project, Messages of Hope, created in collaboration with the TIGER Girls (These Inspiring Girls Enjoy Reading).
• Centre for Sustainable Fashion, LCF researcher and artist Lucy Orta’s project Traces: Stories of Migration, a collaborative series of textile-based artworks portraying images of the array of east London communities with migration experiences
• Work celebrating LCF's Portal Centre for Social Impact and its ten-year anniversary of award-winning programmes including Making for Change; established by the Ministry of Justice and LCF, UAL in 2014.
• Pieces from Centre for Sustainable Fashion LCF’s Decolonising Fashion and Textiles Project; a long-term community-based research workshop project led by Dr Francesco Mazzarella including short films by David Betteridge.
• An interactive Living Room installation reflecting and representing a broad heterogeneity of lives and experiences in East London, co-created by community curators Pallavi Chamarty, Omolara Obanishola, Dave Sohanpal and Anh Tran.
• Works and events by East London Art Prize recipients Woo Jin Joo, Sophie Cunningham and Alaa Alsaraji developed in collaboration with Bow Arts.
• Innovative practices of Toyin Gbomedo and Noemi Gunea; part of SEEDED, an East Bank partner residency programme for east London-based creatives, communities and collectives supported by Foundation for Future London and the City of London Corporation.