The Connect Project

Conducted in March 2015, the Connect Project provided a collaborative educational experience focused on the challenges of environmental impacts, over-consumption and ethics in the global apparel industry. Motivated by internationalisation, four leading institutions – located at Buffalo State College (USA), Manchester Metropolitan University (UK), Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology China (CH) and RMIT University Australia (AUS) – collaborated on a transnational project. The project brought together instructor/student teams, one from each institution, to travel around the world in eighteen days to learn and disseminate information about sustainability in the apparel industry. In order to involve students at each home institution, a website was built around the project. Prior to travelling, each instructor/student team uploaded videos and articles pertaining to sustainability in their city/country. While the team was active in each country, the team explored local small and medium-sized companies which practised sustainability in some manner and presented at events conducted at each home institution. While the team was in the air, the pre loaded videos and articles would automatically go live in order to keep the audience engaged and informed. Social media was also employed as a means to reach out to students at each institutions home base. They were encouraged to ask questions and read the daily blogs. Travelling students were required to blog via the website about what they were learning. The student audience was encouraged to participate through adding their knowledge of sustainability to the content of the blog, ask questions and participate through classroom/campus activities.