BLOG 2

Sustainability, Diversity, Social Responsibility – we discuss these three topics on a daily basis whether we understand it or not. There are heated debates about climate change, racism, sexism – all kinds of environmental catastrophes and discrimination. But what can we do about it? How can we change the ways we encounter, evaluate and find solutions to such problems? The Better Lives unit was meant to broaden our thinking and perception of these themes and help us think of better solutions as we are the ones who can build a better future.

I have always thought I knew enough about each of the categories, which the lectures covered, but my knowledge was not detailed enough. Thus, I did not particularly learn something brand new, but my views changed a lot.

I started thinking, is it necessary to buy clothes all the time, why not reuse them? I know that I am a consumer and sadly I cannot change this fact, but I can try to avoid constantly buying and looking for new clothes, because this is not only to the detriment of our planet, but to ourselves as well. There are lots of people that are underpaid and abused at their workplace. I do not want to stimulate this no more. Moreover, I do not want to build my identity following fashion trends. I would rather follow myself.

Consequently, sustainability and social responsibility go hand in hand. If we want a better future for our planet, we must allow people to have a better life. This could happen if people are more empathic, understanding towards each other. We are all the same, we all work together inside of this thing called society, we should respect and encourage each other.

To be fair, I was not really keen on changing my surroundings and meeting people from other courses, but during the process I found out that there is nothing scary in doing so. Working in groups (for our projects) to do something as simple as a collage and giving, as well as receiving positive comments, resulted in a simple, yet beautifully done piece of collage. This means that by simply acknowledging others you gain a wonderful experience and you do everything faster and better. The key is to be open and positive.

Then comes diversity, last but not the least. When a person is open-minded and positive, he/she/they can easily come together and implement their differences in their body of work. I learned that by getting in touch with people I can visit every place on Earth – through culture. In my future work I would like to demonstrate to everybody that we now live in a multicultural world. I do not want differences between cultures to be a problem, I want them to be celebrated. I want to re-evaluate where I come from, what am I doing, why am I doing it, and I want to understand where do all of the others come from, what are they doing and why do they do it this way, whether this happens through styling for fashion or illustrating for it. Because only by seeing how people style their clothes and visualise their ideas, I know that many, many things are different and at the same time are perfectly the same.