Denim Democracy from the Alliance for Responsible Denim (ARD) is an interactive exhibition that celebrates the journey and learning of ARD members, educates visitors about sustainable denim and highlights how companies collaborate together to achieve results. Through sight, sound and tactile sensations, the visitor experiences and fully engages sustainable denim production. The exhibition launches in October 2018 in Amsterdam and travels to key venues and locations in the Netherlands until April 2019. As consumers, we love denim but the denim industry, like other sub-sectors in the textile, apparel and footwear industries, faces many complex sustainability challenges and has been criticized for its polluting and hazardous production practices. The Alliance for Responsible Denim project brought leading denim brands, suppliers and stakeholders together to collectively address these issues and take initial steps towards improving the ecological sustainability impact of denim production. Sustainability challenges are considered very complex and economically undesirable for individual companies to address alone. In denim, small and medium sized denim firms face specific challenges, such as lower economies of scale and lower buying power to affect change in practices. There is great benefit in combining denim companies' resources and knowledge so that collective experimentation and learning can lift the sustainability standards of the industry and lead to the development of common standards and benchmarks on a scale that matters. If meaningful, transformative industrial change is to be made, then it calls for collaboration between denim industry stakeholders that goes beyond supplier-buyer relations and includes horizontal value chain collaboration of competing large and small denim brands. However collaboration between organizations, and especially between competitors, is highly complex and prone to failure. The research behind the Alliance for Responsible Denim project asked a central research question: how do competitors effectively collaborate together to create common, industry standards on resource use and benchmarks for improved ecological sustainability? To answer this question, we used a mixed-method, action research approach. The Alliance for Responsible Denim project mobilized and facilitated denim brands to collectively identify ways to reduce the use of water and chemicals in denim production and then aided them to implement these practices individually in their respective firms.
Advances in technology are opening up new learning opportunities, consequently having an impact on conventional teaching and learning concepts. The roles of teachers, students and universities are also being transformed worldwide. The Academy for Leisure & Events of BUas has always been part of the above quest.Therefore, it is crucial that teaching methods and learning experiences in higher education are dynamic and continuously incorporate innovative approaches as well as integrate new technologies. After all, it is essential to be prepared for the way students learn nowadays and for the future demand coming.It is now more important than ever, especially considering the challenging coronavirus times we are in, for Breda University of Applied Sciences – as a partner of this project – to actively contribute to strengthening staff capacities in innovative teaching and learning methods and digital skills. For instance by offering training courses in a blended model, combining face-to-face teacher training with MOOCs and e-learning.As designing meaningful experiences has always been at the heart of the mission and work ofthe Academy for Leisure & Events, this project builds upon further extension of networks in teaching and learning innovation in national and international higher education contexts.Partners:FH Joanneum University of Applied Sciences, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Universidad de Lima, Universidad Catolica San Pablo, Universidad de Piura, Universidad Austral de Chile, Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Universidad Vina del Mar
Zowel bij ondernemers als onder kunstenaars zien we steeds meer initiatieven gericht op de ontwikkeling van een ‘volhoudbare’ economie. Partijen uit deze domeinen zoeken manieren om een generatieve economie te bewerkstelligen die – anders dan een extractieve economie (‘de economie van het leegtrekken’) – sociaal rechtvaardig en ecologisch duurzaam wil zijn. Omdat kunstenaars en ondernemers in hun zoektocht naar innovaties-met-impact verschillende kwaliteiten inbrengen, wordt veel verwacht van samenwerking tussen de twee sectoren. In de praktijk echter is synergie eerder regel dan uitzondering. De grote verschillen tussen de twee ‘innovatiesferen’ leiden vooralsnog tot meer gedoe dan complementariteit. In het vraagarticulatietraject dat ten grondslag ligt aan SUSTAIN kwam naar voren dat hier een belangrijke rol is weggelegd voor zogeheten innovatiebrokers: derde partijen die werelden van ondernemerschap en kunst op duurzame wijze met elkaar weten te verbinden. In SUSTAIN willen we de body of knowledge en het handelingsinstrumentarium van deze innovatiebrokers verrijken. Door met praktijkgericht onderzoek juist in deze beroepsgroep te investeren, hopen we een hefboomeffect richting de volhoudbare economie te creëren: we dragen bij aan de effectiviteit van de samenwerking tussen de innovatiesferen kunst en ondernemerschap. Onze hoofdvraag luidt: Wat kunnen innovatiebrokers op het snijvlak van kunst en ondernemen in de verschillende fases van het innovatietraject leren en doen om de synergie van de samenwerking tussen ondernemers en kunstenaars te vergroten en zo een duurzame bijdrage te leveren aan de transitie richting een volhoudbare economie? Gedurende het onderzoek ontwikkelen we een gefundeerd Brokers Kenniscanvas dat beschrijft welke vraagstukken zich aandienen in samenwerkingsverbanden tussen kunstenaars en ondernemers en hoe de innovatiebrokers die vraagstukken hanteerbaar en productief kunnen maken. We richten ons welbewust op het ‘gedoe’ in de samenwerking en ontwikkelen vóór en mét de innovatiebrokers kennis over hoe vandaaruit synergie te realiseren.
