On 11 and 12 September 2024, the entire FashionTEX project team met with representatives of all partners for a three-day workshop in Amsterdam to share experiences to date in the project and determine the next joint steps towards achieving the project goals. An inspiring meeting with all partners involved at the beautiful Amsterdam Fashion Academy.

Evaluation of the first studio courses – also with CLO3D

Day 1 of the meeting focussed on getting to know each other better and sharing experiences from the project so far. The partners were very satisfied with the basic atelier courses that were designed at the universities as part of FashionTEX in the last few months and last semester. The implementation of the CLO3D design software was also rated positively by all partners. The FashionTEX project makes it possible to finance the necessary licences for the universities to use the software. The project also provides support from experts from the fashion and design industry, who are on hand to advise the universities on how to communicate digital possibilities and modern approaches to fashion design to students.

The professors spent a lot of time discussing their previous experiences with CLO3D. In the Atelier basic courses, they had partly trained themselves in CLO3D, with regular support in online meetings from the Fashiontex experts Flavia Bon, Anita and Adele Parker. In this reflective system, the teachers gained a profound insight and also a didactic feel for their own teaching of the software application to their students. The experience gained thus became the basis for the planning and development of the Fashiontex Atelier basic courses, which started for the first time in the winter semester 2024/25.

A nice snippet of first steps with CLO3D at the Amsterdam Fashion Academy:

Planning the makerspaces and festivals in 2025 (Chemnitz) and 2026 (Riga)

Day 2 was dedicated to looking to the future. Together, the project members discussed the next steps needed to realise the upcoming milestones. These include, above all, the Makerspaces and Festivals 2025 in the Chemnitz area and the Makerspace 2026 in Riga. Concrete concepts for the Makerspace residency programme and the show as part of the festival in Chemnitz 2025 were presented. Potential topics and aspects that could interest students, workshop topics and possible excursion destinations relating to the textile industry and design in the neighborhood were discussed.