Shenzhen’s second MakeFashion Edu Runway, May 26th, 2019 at Design Society’s Seaworld Center for Culture and Arts. Find out how you can create a fashion tech program in your school or community at MakeFashion.org/edu
Our second show in Shenzhen, and fourth show since launch, showed advanced results from the students and schools! We had returning students innovating with deeper stories and tech, and new students coming into the program with dozens of prior projects to inspire and motivate them!
We were able to capture more of the show, and produce open source teaching videos to spread the movement even farther. The whole team was thrilled that we were able to grow year over year, and have set our sights on more countries and more content to share for next year.
Special thanks to our amazing student designers, and to all the parents and teachers for supporting them and their projects!
Thanks to the MakeFashion Edu organizers:
Carrie Leung, James Simpson, Candice Massey, Yvonne Siu, Aisling from MG Space, Sherryl Pan from Design Society, and Michael Shaw
MakeFashion Edu Designer Kiki Yi presents a behind-the-scenes look at her project, “Dual Emotions”. See how students are combining Fashion and Tech to tell a story on the Runway!
We prize storytelling, self agency, and problem solving as parts of our program. Come hear directly from a student about what she learned and how she built her project.
Kiki wanted to show the dual emotions that she, as a teenager, is forced by society to display every day. Feeling upset but acting happy. Polite while offended. Dressed nicely while feeling stifled. Her dress was both beautiful and uncomfortable, like that act that many people must put on in society!
6 design steps to help students complete fashion tech projects full of story and expression! James breaks down a model based off of Stanford d.school’s Design Thinking process. This is great for educators of all levels interested in becoming involved with the Fashion Tech scene.
James recounted, “Breaking the project into design steps really helps the teachers and students complete the project in manageable steps that build into a fantastic story behind the project.”
The process also uses Open Badges, which are micro-credentials that students get for learning small skills like storyboarding or soldering. Interested teachers can contact James directly on social media, or browse SteamHead’s YouTube channel for more examples and lessons.
A few of us where fortunate to have a tour of the Shenzhen based M5 office and factory. This included their production and testing facilities. They have made a few different testing jigs and even an automated extruded aluminium slot cutter rig that of course uses an M5 controller to run it all.
Another SteamHead resident Qiu and Paul managed to wrangle a tour of the X-factory Makerspace. We spent a delightful hour being led around the space by Violet, the Community Outreach Officer. This included her showing us a plant desk growing station that she had design, CNC’ed out and put together by herself. We also learnt about a tea farm monitoring station that they had designed and installed onsite. It is solar powered and is remotely monitoring and reporting on the local farms weather.
