Fashion is a powerful medium for storytelling, reflecting the zeitgeist and challenging the status quo. In a time of compounding planetary and social crises, sustainability has repositioned fashion as a force for good. Alongside fashion, immersive technology and new...
Nine teams of two creatives each have been selected for the Design Futures Lab 2022. Included in the lab are fashion designers, artists, gamers, product designers and creative technologists who will be making immersive media prototypes.The Design Futures Lab is a...
Softly spoken during most of our conversation, Betty Chilonde becomes animated when the topic turns to circularity and the potential of fashion in Zambia. Betty is not only a designer. She is also an educator, farmer and activist quietly shaping the future of design...
When Mozambican designer Wacy Zacarias realised that most African textiles were not really African but imports from Holland and China, she shifted her focus from fashion design to reclaiming textiles for something more meaningful. “The tradition of African textiles,”...
Vanessa Nsona collects waste, tinkers and toys, prototypes and makes new products. Circular thinking is central to her work in Malawi. “I have always thought of waste as treasure,” she says. I spent a day with Vanessa, visiting her workshop, sourcing materials in the...
Makadikko, avandi Moreblessings Moyo. Mama Moreblessings is my new comic book character. Read her story here: Moreblessings Moreblessings works as a street vendor in Harare, Zimbabwe, hustling to make ends meet, while her husband does the same as an uber driver in...
Mahendra Gooroochurn lives on an island that Mark Twain supposedly compared to paradise on earth. Was Twain right? In Mauritius, people of diverse cultures live in harmony, near blossoming pink sugarcane, beautiful pearly-white beaches and indigenous forests. But all...
Designer Matthew Edwards holds a three-dimensional cube in the palm of his hand. It is small with smoothed-over jagged sides. The deep blue and white colours dance together as if swirling in a slab of marble or like the calico shapes that pattern on a turquoise stone....
Design Futures Africa presents six stories about design and the circular economy in Southern Africa. In the first story, published on Sunday 24 January, Stefanie Jason speaks to South African industrial designer, Matthew Edwards, about his transformation of...
Design Futures Africa is a collaborative project between Twyg, storytellers and the British council using the power of narrative to further the reach and understanding of African designers. Storytellers were tasked with creating narratives about the journeys of six...
