CUT

This report documents the ‘CUT’ project led by Dr Francesco Mazzarella (Research Fellow in Fashion and Design for Social Change at Centre for Sustainable Fashion, UAL) and assisted by Anna Schuster (LCF graduate and independent designer and researcher) in partnership with London College of Fashion (LCF) and London Borough of Waltham Forest (LBWF) for the Great Place scheme. The project was driven by the assumption that a knife is only dangerous in someone’s hand; up until that point, it is just a piece of metal. To shift this narrative, knives (the very weapons that can take a life) have been transformed into something that could help nurture a life: buttons and rivets of a bespoke collection of jeans, donated by Blackhorse Lane Ateliers, a local denim design and manufacturing business. The CUT team organised co-creation workshops and cultural conversations with young people from Waltham Forest to customise and make a design range aimed at protecting young lives, through fashion activism and awareness-raising. This way, the young people have gained agency and new skills that will likely have a lasting impact on their lives. As another output of the project, a film was produced to document the design and making process and the positive impacts the project will have on the young people and on others. At the end of this pilot project, a fundraising event – consisting of a panel debate, film screening, and pop-up exhibition of the jeans – will be organised. The funding raised through the auctioning of the collection of jeans will contribute to supporting a social enterprise with on-going activities focused on fashion to subvert the potent allure of knife crime.

ISBN 978-1-906908-69-0