DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7377515
title: Fashion Fictions Education Projects Research 2022

description: This dataset was generated via a focused piece of research conducted by Dr Matilda Aspinall and Dr Amy Twigger Holroyd which investigated the experiences of students and staff involved in Fashion Fictions projects in 2022 at two institutions: LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore and Nottingham Trent University. 

This focused research was situated within the broader Fashion Fictions project. Fashion Fictions, founded by Amy Twigger Holroyd in 2020, brings people together to generate, experience and reflect on engaging fictional visions of alternative fashion cultures and systems. Through these activities, we gain new perspectives on challenges, possibilities and pathways for change in the real world.

The project is structured in three stages. Stage 1 prompts contributors to create brief written outlines of fictional fashion cultures and systems, known as Worlds; at Stage 2, participants put flesh on these outlines and create visual or material prototypes to represent their cultures, known as Explorations; at Stage 3, they performatively enact practices or events from the fictional worlds.

To find out more about Fashion Fictions, visit the project website. To see other data linked to the project, visit the Fashion Fictions Zenodo community.

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Because the dataset contains personal data, access is restricted to bona fide researchers. Please place a request, including details of your research status, if you wish to access the data.

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In both institutions, Fashion Fictions was initially introduced to the curriculum in the 2020/21 academic year; the activities discussed here took place in the following year, with a second cohort of students.

At NTU, first-year undergraduate students from BA (Hons) courses in Fashion Design, Textile Design and Fashion Knitwear Design & Knitted Textiles undertook a short Stage 2 Fashion Fictions project. Spanning three two-hour workshops, the project was part of a Future Thinking toolkit within a module that aims to develop students’ intellectual curiosity and appreciation of the future as something that can be shaped and questioned. Working in small cross-course groups, students were given a specified Stage 1 fiction and asked to create a visual or material prototype to represent everyday life in that world, presented via a selection of images and a short explanatory text.

At LASALLE, Fashion Fictions was set up as a major project extending across a 14-week semester for second-year students on two BA (Hons) programmes: Fashion Media and Industries and Fashion Design and Textiles. Also working in cross-course collaborative groups, the students first created their own Stage 1 world and then progressed to create a collection of Stage 2 prototypes in the form of garments and related media such as photographs and films, accompanied by an extensive body of supporting work.

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in April and May 2022 we conducted semi-structured interviews with tutors involved in the projects – Lorraine Warde (Principal Lecturer in Fashion Design) at NTU and Martin Bonney and Kathryn Shannon Sim Yen Ping (Lecturers in Fashion, interviewed together) at LASALLE – and with three student groups, selected by the tutors, from each institution.

The interview schedules for students and tutors each comprised four reflective questions, designed to gain an insight into the students’ experiences and the tutors’ observations. Each recorded interview lasted between twenty and sixty minutes.

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The dataset is organised in nine folders:

1 Project context



Project website About page from February 2022 (explaining the wider project at the time of this research).

Project website Education projects page from January 2022 (giving context to the education projects taking place at the time of this research).


2 Activity guidance



Project website Stage 1 (World) online guide from January 2022 (as available for use by LASALLE students).

NTU virtual workspace Stage 2 (Exploration) guidance (as used by NTU students and providing an indication of the type of guidance that would have been offered to LASALLE students for their Stage 2 work - although their project was much longer in duration).


3 Interview documentation



Information sheet and consent form given to research participants.

Interview questions for staff and students, shared with all participants in advance.


4 LASALLE staff interview



Transcript of interview with Martin Bonney and Kathryn Shannon Sim Yen Ping (Lecturers in Fashion).


5 LASALLE student interviews



Transcripts of interviews with three student groups, each identified by the number/letter of the Stage 1 World and Stage 2 Exploration they created (as listed on the project website Worlds and Explorations pages).


6 LASALLE student work



Project work (Stage 1 Worlds and Stage 2 Explorations) created by the three student groups interviewed, as displayed on the project website. One group (World 154) did not submit their Exploration for the website.


7 NTU staff interview



Transcript of interview with Lorraine Warde (Principal Lecturer in Fashion Design).


8 NTU student interviews



Transcripts of interviews with three student groups, each identified by the number/letter of the Stage 2 Exploration they created (as listed on the project website Explorations page).


9 NTU student work



Project work (Stage 2 Explorations) created by the three student groups interviewed. Two groups' work is as displayed on the project website. One group (World 95, Exploration X) did not submit their Exploration for the website and so their internal presentation has been included instead.