Materials as Species Workshop: Sensing Seaweeds

Sensing Seaweeds

Dive into the world of seaweeds at our inaugural Materials as Species workshop! Ideal for textile professionals, academics, and enthusiasts, this educational event offers a unique blend of sensory experiences, hands-on learning, and material insights.

Hosted at , Portland’s historic Marine Artwork building, attendees will explore Pacific Northwest seaweeds to uncover their role in marine ecosystems and their potential in the future of textiles, while engaging in immersive learning and networking with a community of sustainability-minded peers.

Program Overview:

As the textile industry faces a future of climate-related risks, the chance to reshape our relationship with Earth’s living systems begins now. To shape the future of performance apparel and materials, companies must take a comprehensive approach and deepen our commitment to sustainability alongside innovation, reintegrating ecosystems into supply chains and positive wellbeing into work.

By exploring the life cycles and flows of materials in the textile industry through multi-sensory, experiential learning, we can begin to weave human-made supply chains to more-than-human ecosystems. Through slowing down, observing, reflecting, and reimagining with fellow peers, new perspectives are born and connections are made that can sustain the work ahead.

With a focus at the intersection of sustainable textiles and oceans, this event invites attendees to collaboratively explore Pacific Northwest seaweeds to understand broader marine ecosystems and their significance in the future of fashion and textile industries. Through a blend of immersive learning, textile education, and community networking, this event is designed to empower attendees to grow human and more-than-human connections that will help them reimagine new possibilities for themselves, their work, and their world.

Purpose:

To foster sustainability community, education, and ecosystem empathy through hands-on exploration, imagination, and networking.

Outcomes:

1) Reframe material systems by recognizing materials as species and supply chains as ecosystems, understanding their inherent interconnectedness.

2) Describe seaweed’s significance across time and cultures, including identifying examples of historical use, contemporary development, and its prospective future applications across fashion, textiles, food, medicine, and agriculture.

3) Demonstrate multi-sensory engagement and experiential learning to establish embodied connections and materials-led making methods, using macroalgae as a medium.

4) Engage in co-speculative discussions and collaborative thinking to reimagine material futures with a diverse audience of industry practitioners and interdisciplinary experts.

5) Provide deep connective tissue and high-level engagement for attendees to advance deeper discussion around sustainability and innovation.

****As part of the workshop, attendees will receive custom wooden weaving frames for their own weaving exploration with our featured material species: PNW seaweeds*****

Target Audience:

This workshop is ideal for textile professionals, academics, and enthusiasts – we particularly encourage those working in sustainability, design, product, materials development, sourcing, and supply chain management to attend. To make this workshop as accessible as possible, we’re offering a sliding scale based on the attendee's company size (if applicable). Apparel or textile academics, students, scientists, and nonprofits are welcome to select lower rates, and those facing financial difficulties are encouraged to contact us directly for scholarship consideration. For scholarship consideration, please reach out to [email protected] and share a bit about your motivations to attend.

About the Hosts:

Krystle Moody Wood is the founder and principal consultant of Materevolve, LLC. - a company driven to lead the evolution of our materials world. After a decade in sustainable materials innovation and development, Krystle founded Materevolve with the mission to develop and scale innovative regenerative textile systems through the lens of soil, sea, and circularity. Through Materevolve, Krystle designs nature-immersed experiential learning programs, provides technical consulting cross-sector, and fosters trail-blazing collaboration between science, industry, government, non-profit and academia. Krystle loves to nerd out on all things sustainable textiles but her superpowers are materials innovation, microfiber pollution, and regenerative agriculture.

Jessie Curry is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, and researcher based between London, UK and Portland, OR. Whether through her studio, VonCurry, or personal artistic practice, Jessie engages in material experimentation, visual research, and conceptual design across fashion, costume, performance and sculpture. With a background in apparel and costume design combined with a career in sustainability and communications, Jessie brings an interdisciplinary approach to her research-led visual stories, focusing on materiality, consumption, embodiment and ecology. While not immersed in design, Jessie can be found reading about plant communication and quietly playing with plants outside.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

BUILDING 5, 2516 Northwest 29th Avenue, Portland, United States