Industrial and creative design in advanced textile manufacturing Erasmus Project

Project Title

Industrial and creative design in advanced textile manufacturing

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Creativity and culture; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Enterprise, industry and SMEs (incl. entrepreneurship)

Project Summary

The textiles’ manufacturing sector in Europe is facing several major challenges like competition from emerging markets or the environmental demands among others. In order to tackle the current and future needs, Europe requires reassessing its position on critical factors affecting its competitiveness like uniqueness of its products, skills of its workforce and innovation as a means of competitive advantage. Advanced textile materials sector is an emerging sector within the textile industry driven by transdisciplinary innovation in several end-market focusing on the technical aspects and contribution of textile materials rather than on the aesthetics. However, in order to foster the innovation growth within those companies, higher education systems needs to bring in the creativity culture found in industrial design and creative design to textile higher education programs as a way to unlock the innovation potential advanced textile manufacturing industry has when combines with transdisciplinary.

In this context, the DESTEX project will develop the tools necessary for skills enhancement targeted to higher education in relation to innovation in order to obtain its objectives:
– To support higher education students to acquire skills in transdisciplinary innovation based on creative and industrial design applied to the textile sector
– To foster student cooperation in a multidisciplinary approach in work-based projects
– To provide knowledge, skills and competences using virtual collaboration tools
– To promote the application of good practices for the enhancement of innovative skills;

The DESTEX partnership comprises 8 institutions from 5 European countries (Sweden, Greece, Italy, Spain and Denmark) presenting a balanced geographic coverage. There is a mixture of institutions with different profiles, capacities and complementary competences that are appropriate for the development of the work plan (higher education institutions, training centers, SME’s companies, non-profit institutions, and business associations).

A set of implementation activities will materialize the project objectives, supported by preparation, management, quality and dissemination activities that will ensure the outreach of its results even after the project has ended. All of the project results are the outcomes of four (4) Intellectual Outputs and one intensive training:
(1) Designing and developing of a virtual training program with open education resources for training higher education students with industrial and creative design applied for advanced textiles’ manufacturing.
(2) Creating a book of lectures “Creative and industrial design for innovation thriving in advanced textiles’ materials”, aiming to serve as the training material to be used during the C1 learning activity. Once tested (during C1 activity).
(3)Development of a virtual hackathon platform for on open innovation and project-based training of students using real case studies and challenges from the advanced textiles’ manufacturing industry.
(4) Developing a “Project handbook of good practices & open challenges: training tools and methodologies to foster creative and industrial design in advanced textiles’ manufacturing sector”, a document containing all relevant information related to the project and its achievements as well as open challenges to be tackled.
(5) An Intensive training summer course will be held in Milan with participation from students selected from the 4 universities participating in DESTEX project using a blended methodology that will integrate the different results from DESTEX.

DESTEX will generate an impact to the different target groups including students of HEIs (both design and textile), technical textiles’ companies and their managers as well as other stakeholders from the textile ecosystem. They are expected to benefit from the outputs generated during the project lifetime by their participation in the multipliers events, the different activities and surveys, their participation in the virtual hackathons, by using the virtual training material and the book of lectures and also getting informed of the different updates with the different newsletters. At the end of the project, they will also benefit from the open access of the final version of all materials created that will remain in the project website and in different repositories to facilitate their access. Moreover, partners commit themselves to use the learning materials developed as part of their daily activities.

Project Website

https://destexproject.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 318676 Eur

Project Coordinator

HÖGSKOLAN I BORÅS & Country: SE

Project Partners

• CREATIVE THINKING DEVELOPMENT
• CIAPE – CENTRO ITALIANO PER L’APPRENDIMENTO PERMANENTE
• POLITECNICO DI MILANO
• DESIGNKOLEN KOLDING
• ASSOCIACIO AGRUPACIO D’EMPRESES INNOVADORES TEXTILS
• Escuela Superior de Diseño y Moda, S.L.
• MATERIALLY IMPRESA SOCIALE S.R.L