IG19131 - Building a Heritage-Based Knowledge Hub to Empower the Green Transition in Textiles and Fashion (HERITEX-HUB)

The textile and fashion industries are among the primary engines of the European economy. There is, however, a growing awareness of their tremendous environmental impact, resulting from resource-intensive and pollutant production practices and a business model predicated on high turnover of products (“fast fashion”) which generates an increasingly unmanageable volume of waste. This has put this economic sector at the forefront of European policy plans promoting a green transition, based on sustainability and a circular economic model.
Such a paradigm shift requires creative and innovative thinking to foster new ways of making, consuming, and transforming textiles and garments. In this context, research on the textile and textile crafts of the past offers a vast repository of experiences and knowledge which can be mobilised to inspire and inform innovative projects, new business ventures, and more generally the deployment of policies aimed at tackling the challenge of sustainability.
Research on Textile Heritage has developed into a full-fledged transdisciplinary field which has amassed a wealth of data and insights about natural resources, their development and uses, and the environmentally adaptive strategies deployed to exploit them in the past. It also affords critical glimpses into different ways of making, wearing, and transforming textiles and clothing, which point the way towards alternative, more sustainable consumption practices.
This significant potential remains, however, underexplored. Textile Heritage research still lacks the proper tools and incentives to implement applied approaches, produce large, actionable datasets capable of informing evidence-based policy decisions, and pursue meaningful and transformative synergies with the creative and business sectors. There is, therefore, a clear need for a new platform capable of fostering such approaches and unlocking the potential of Textile Heritage research to contribute to contemporary society.
This CIG will lay the foundation work to create HERITEX-HUB, a networked knowledge hub to empower the green transition in textiles and fashion by harnessing the wealth of data, knowledge, and insights provided by the study of Textile Heritage. It will bring together Textile Heritage researchers to create practical tools and guidelines, and to provide training, mentoring, and collaboration opportunities to craftspeople, creators, innovators, entrepreneurs, start-ups, and small and medium businesses in the textile and fashion sectors.
Its aim is to empower stakeholders to pursue sustainable creative and business practices and value chains and act as a partner and institutional support in transformative projects. The end goal is to promote a bottom-up transformation of the textile and fashion industries, positively contributing to rebuilding it along fair, sustainable, and socially responsible lines. Simultaneously, as a way to further push for this transformation, the hub will pursue an active intervention in the policymaking arena, supporting evidence-based decision-making at the European level.
while pursuing collaborations with existing textile research, Heritage, and business platforms, the HERITEX-HUB will play a distinct and innovative role by focusing on knowledge transference and creating practical tools and services. This platform will be uniquely placed through this approach to promote a greener future for textiles and fashion.