fashioning identity: creative activism

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time” – T. S. Eliot, 1943.

This article examines how young British Chinese mobilise the concepts of care, self-love and resilience through creativity to develop a ‘politics of affirmation’ that can empower their communities. Noting the intensive and process-driven approach to fashion design within the UK education system, compared to the “result-oriented” design pedagogy participants described in Taiwan, I deduce how the process of refining one’s aesthetic and design perspective is linked to a process of self-discovery and self-care. In doing so, I relate the mobilisation of creativity as a form of negotiating one’s ‘belonging’, ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ in specific contexts (Hall: 1996a).

(coming soon)