Whole Circles: A Leadership Model to Support Expanded Roles for Circular Textile Designers

As the field of circular textile design emerges, researchers are questioning what skills designers will need to enable the new systems, processes and products to successfully loop back in to subsequent lifecycles. Circular textile design differs from traditional textile design because it asks the designer of the textile to not only create a new material, but to prioritise the use and end-of-life of the product at the outset. This requires the designer to not only understand more about the processes of production, use and disposal, but much more about the people in these new systems too. In this article, the author draws upon first-hand experience of evolving from the making of circular textiles, to supporting others to make circular textiles. Reflecting on the leadership role of being the Director of a University research Centre (UrC), the article goes in search of a model to generate and share the insights derived from developing from a textile design researcher to a leader. The methods involved a form of triangulation using the recognised attributes for success of a high-performing research unit, along with leadership signposts created by an experienced corporate manager, with reflections by the author on the experiences at the UrC across a 5-year period. Working with input from Baron, the author extended her research practice to include an autoethnographic study, from which questions and key insights are extracted. These insights were then used to redesign the HEFCE model. The transferrable Whole Circles model presented at the end of the article proposes that textile designers seek to ensure they have a good understanding of themselves as people, so that their leadership style is empathic and grounded. It also proposes a 3-dimensional form which supports the growth of other researchers to lead in their own expertise areas.