The Designing a Sensibility for Sustainable Clothing project represents a significant attempt to seek to understand how creative activities might shape individuals' sensibility for sustainability (that is the way in which they think through, imagine and practice sustainability) in relation to clothing. Our interdisciplinary approach provides a novel methodology that promises to push forward the boundaries of work on pro-environmental behaviour change. It also makes a significant contribution to the emergent field of sustainable fashion and to research on the relationship between craft processes, creative making and material affect. The project is grounded in 'social design' and co-production methodologies, which means that we are not interested in just producing knowledge, but also in working with others in the process of generating knowledge. This approach is important because fashion industries, cultures and imaginaries are multi-faceted and complex issues with significant personal (i.e. emotional) social and environmental implications. We argue that participatory arts and craft practices are potentially an important tool for generating a sensibility of sustainability and therefore for informing policy on behaviour change. Arts and crafts therefore require a serious test bed as a behavioural intervention, not least because political scientists have, now for a number of decades, recommended that multiple knowledges be drawn together to solve policy problems. The project consists of five interrelated work strands: Work strand 1. Individual research participants and experts (including our local community textiles / fashion partners and national and international policy -making and -shaping actors) come together to discuss the social and environmental problems associated clothing, and to inform and shape the workshops that follow through exposing the challenges of making fashion sustainable and engaging in asset mapping to address these challenges. Work strand 2. Throughout a series of workshops (8 series of 5 half day workshop), groups of 6-10 participants explore different elements of the clothing life-cycle in a participatory manner. They are encouraged to share knowledge and be reflexive and interactive by passing creative outputs (see Case for Support for details of these) artefacts and written and self-evaluative films on to a group of similar peers in a different part of the country. Work strand 3. Clothing practices are assessed before and after the workshop series to identify any changes in clothing sensibilities and choices using a survey, interviews and a wardrobe audit. A smaller group of key volunteers will keep a reflective clothes-purchasing diary throughout the life of the project, recording clothing purchases as well as reflecting on any changes in their feelings, attitudes and behaviours. They will record their perceptions about the role of engagement with material processes in shaping any changes. Work strand 4. We adopt a 'politics of affect' by exploring in-depth the way people feel about clothing and the material processes involved in making fabric and clothes explored in the workshops. We do this through inductively analysing talk during the workshops, interviews and participants' blogs and the reflective films. Work strand 5. Our findings are assembled carefully after liaison with our extensive network of project partners, consultants and participants into a policy brief that will help policy-makers work towards promoting pro-environmental behaviour change. In liaison with our project partner Fashion Revolution, we will arrange meetings with DEFRA and the All Party Parliamentary Design and Innovation Group at which we will share the policy brief and some creative output from the project (e.g. reflective videos and artefacts). A small select group of 2-3 participants from each location, some key partners, the investigators and project researchers will attend.

The current global fashion supply chain is characterised by its lack of transparency, forced labour, poor working conditions, unequal power relationships and overproduction caused by fast fashion. Lacking ethics, the global fashion supply chain is also highly polluting. The total footprint of clothing in use in the UK, including global and territorial emissions, was 26.2 million tonnes CO2 in 2016, up from 24 million tonnes in 2012 (equivalent to over a third of household transport emissions). The Textiles Circularity Centre (TCC) proposes materials security for the UK by circularising resource flows of textiles. This will stimulate innovation and economic growth in the UK textile manufacturing, SME apparel and creative technology sectors, whilst reducing reliance on imported and environmentally and ethically impactful materials, and diversifying supply chains. The TCC will provide underpinning research understanding to enable the transition to a more circular economy that supports the brand 'designed and made in the UK'. To enact this vision, we will catalyse growth in the fashion and textiles sector by supporting the SME fashion-apparel community with innovations in materials and product manufacturing, access to circular materials through supply chain design, and consumer experiences. Central to our approach is to enable consumers to be agents of change by engaging them in new cultures of consumption. We will effect a symbiosis between novel materials manufacturing and agentive consumer experiences through a supply chain design comprised of innovative business models and digital tools. Using lab-proven biotechnology, we will transform bio-based waste-derived feedstock (post-consumer textiles, crop residues, municipal solid waste) into renewable polymers, fibres and flexible textile materials, as part of a CE transition strategy to replace imported cotton, wood pulp and synthetic polyester fibres and petrochemical finishes. We will innovate advanced manufacturing techniques that link biorefining of organic waste, 3D weaving, robotics and additive manufacturing to circular design and produce flexible continuous textiles and three-dimensional textile forms for apparel products. These techniques will enable manufacturing hubs to be located on the high street or in local communities, and will support SME apparel brands and retailers to offer on-site/on-demand manufacture of products for local customisation. These hubs would generate regional cultural and social benefits through business and related skills development. We will design a transparent supply chain for these textiles through industrial symbiosis between waste management, farming, bio-refinery, textile production, SME apparel brands, and consumer stakeholders. Apparel brands will access this supply chain through our digital 'Biomaterials Platform', through which they can access the materials and data on their provenance, properties, circularity, and life cycle extension strategies. Working with SME apparel brands, we will develop an in-store Configurator and novel affective and creative technologies to engage consumers in digitally immersive experiences and services that amplify couplings between the resource flow, human well being and satisfaction, thus creating a new culture of consumption. This dematerialisation approach will necessitate innovation in business models that add value to the apparel, in order to counter overproduction and detachment. Consumers will become key nodes in the circular value chain, enabling responsible and personalised engagement. As a human-centred design led centre, TCC is uniquely placed to generate these innovations that will catalyse significant business and skills growth in UK textile manufacturing, SME fashion-apparel, and creative technology sectors, and drastically reduce waste and carbon emissions, and environmental and ethical impacts for the textiles sector.