Catalytic Clothing - Teaching and Learning

An inspirational intervention for teachers and students, and with support and knowledge exchange from our long term partner school in London, Thomas Tallis School. Helen exhibits a newly catalysed Limb Bud Dress from Primitive Streak and a small Field of Jeans from Catalytic Clothing as the starting point.

The project will be launched at Ipsley CE RSA Academy in Redditch and will engage all five schools in the RSA Family of Academies. The purpose is for teachers and students to explore environmental issues, climate change and our relationship with nature, to show how innovation, design and art can help us solve problems and find ways to communicate ideas differently in different disciplines.

From RSA website:

This June RSA are launching a new project working with the Helen Storey and Thomas Tallis School in London. Opening at Ipsley CE RSA Academy, the Field of Jeans and ‘limb bud’ dress will be revealed to students, teachers and parents as a surprising temporary installation by placing some extraordinary objects in places that are very familiar.

The Field of Jeans is part of the Catalytic Clothing collection and the ‘limb bud’ dress is from Primitive Streak, a collection representing the first 1000 hours of life. The installation is a fashion / science collaboration investigating how we could purify air. A catalyst has been washed into these clothes which helps reduce harmful car emissions affecting our health and environment. In the future simply washing our clothing could help purify the air we breathe.

RSA Academies’ schools are using this inspiring concept as a catalyst for teaching and learning between Summer 2015 to early 2016 when the installation of the ‘Field of Jeans’ and the ‘limb bud’ dress tours to each school. Teachers from across all the RSA Academies are considering ways to engage students and colleagues in how they might teach differently. The purpose is for teachers and students to explore environmental issues, climate change and our relationship with nature, to show how innovation, design and art can help us solve problems and find ways to communicate ideas differently in different disciplines.

Thomas Tallis School, London kindly hosted a workshop for RSA Academies on May 12 where we heard from Jon Nichols, Director of Art, Creativity and Communications about the Thomas Tallis whole school approach to Helen Storey’s work. We reflected on the habits for creativity that Thomas Tallis have adopted and were inspired to think what might be possible and relevant in our schools.

Catalytic Teaching and Learning launches on 18 June launch at Ipsley with students and teachers participating in a creative cross curriculum workshop led by Stephen Steinhaus, Ipsley and Whitley Academies, Helen Storey RDI and Jon Nichols, Thomas Tallis School.

Helen Storey became an RDI in 2014. This project is the first time RSA have worked across all the schools in the RSA Family of Academies with an RDI and this project forms part of a wider programme of work between RDIs and RSA Academies.

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