The cost of clothing bodies; what are the ethics of apparel and creative reuse?

Our University of the Streets Café public conversations are much like any you’d have with friends or family around a dinner table, except with more people, more points of view, and slightly more structure. Conversations are hosted by a volunteer moderator who is there to welcome everyone and keep things on track. To get things started, there’s a guest, or sometimes two, who get the ball rolling by sharing their ideas, experiences and questions. After that, it's all up to the participants.

As we attempt to understand the life cycle of a garment, how do we clothe ourselves more ethically? How can creative reuse help us to alleviate our ecological footprint? When thinking of a life cycle for garments, “cradle to cradle” is often the terminology used to describe garment conception from fibres to yarns and then from yarns to fabrics. Once fabrics are produced, garments or “end uses” are described. “End uses” can be developed to create beautiful fashion garments to everyday basic apparel. As a garment becomes mature and the product lifecycle expires, garments can be recycled back into fibres where the cycle is reborn and new concepts are developed.

Art Hives’ Science Shop presents UrbanBodies : an exploration of what matters in our everyday lives and neighborhoods. This series of public art making conversational labs, held in collaboration with the University of the Streets Café program at Concordia University, will explore the theme of the body as it lives and dies, grows and ages, struggles and thrives in the urban environment.University of the Streets Café organizes bilingual, public conversations in cafés and community spaces across Montreal.

Guests:
Heather Sorella has worked in clothing manufacturing and textiles all of her life. Her father was a clothing manufacturer and she has worked as a marketing manager, merchandiser, product development and teaches textiles at College LaSalle. She has seen many changes in the lifecycle of the industry; from local textile mills to domestic manufacturers, times and needs have changed for both the makers and the consumers.

Pandora Hobby wrote on the difficulties of the rag trade as well as contemporary slavery for global citizenship courses, while working on her masters in educational studies. Having worked for seven years in Montreal’s friperie district recycling clothes during the 1990’s  Ms Hobby feels especially versed in the concerns of both the waste and human resource issues inherent in the questions surrounding fast fashion. From 1999 to the present day Ms. Hobby has participated in a group recycled art show called Art d’Eco originally Curated by Olga Maksimova who passed the responsibility to Ms Hobby in 2013.   

Moderator:
Kay Noele is a textile artist interested in (among many other things) resilient communities, social geographies, and social and environmental justice. She has worked with closely community initiatives in Saskatchewan, Cuba and in Montreal, including Coop Le Milieu and the Art Hives Movement and will be starting her masters in Arts Education at Concordia in September.

Accessibility info: La Ruche d’Art St Henri is on the ground floor. A removable ramp is set up so that the space can be entered. The single-use washroom is in the basement, down a flight of stairs. It is not wheelchair accessible and is not equipped with a grab bar.