News, Open Calls, events and insights from the WEAR Sustain ecosphere

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December 2017

 

WEAR Sustain is pleased to announce the launch of our second and final competition call out.

 

This second Open Call is offering €1.3 million in funding for up to 26 teams of creatives and technologists to co-develop wearables, smart or electronic textiles that are ethical and sustainable.

Teams can pitch proposals online until the 15th January 2018, with awards of up to €50,000 available to each selected project.

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Call 2 – Information and Support:

A number of WEAR hubs and supporters in our network have co-organised information events with us to support local people interested in applying to the competition. WEAR Sustain is also organising webinars, to commence in December 2017, to help those of you unable to access a local event. These upcoming webinar sessions will give you the opportunity to learn about key considerations and ask questions.

Upcoming webinars will cover the following topics, followed by a general Q&A:

• Legal, IP & Collaboration  – What to think about when you apply.

• The Importance of Art, Design & Tech Collaboration – Why is this relevant to me?

• Sustainability, Ethics & Personal Data in Wearables – How to integrate life-cycle, data ethics considerations and design approaches.

Sign up to the webinars at bit.ly/WEARwebinarOC2. Please note that previous webinars from the 1st Open Call are still informative, relevant and helpful. You can watch them at wearsustain.eu/open-calls/webinars.

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So what is WEAR Sustain looking for?

After the first competition Call in May 2017, twenty-two projects were chosen to receive funding to develop their proposals. Results from these projects are due to emerge after March 2018. The first funded projects are addressing issues facing society today with awardees creating prototypes for air pollution, circular design in production and recycling, reuse of electronic components, health, stress, biodegradation, human impact and more. We are looking for new project collaborations that propose valuable solutions to real problems.

This Call is seeking applications from teams of art, design, technology and engineering practitioners / businesses to co-develop ethical and sustainable solutions using wearable technology, smart or electronic textiles. The scope covers wearables and e-textiles worn on the body that may generate body data and/or data about your environment.

Competition applicants must address at least one of the ethics and sustainability themes such as use, reuse or waste; or data collection and privacy during the development of their prototypes. Irrespective of the chosen theme(s), both major concerns (ethics and sustainability) should be addressed in the proposal. At the core of the project are questions around the use of personal data, ethics and privacy issues, which WEAR Sustain covers in its project Rationale.

For more information, and to enter the competition visit wearsustain.eu/open-calls/

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SUSTAINABILITY RESOURCES

In the lead up to our Sustainability Strategy and Toolkit, due in late 2018, we are starting to compile our initial findings in a list of ethics and sustainability resources at wearsustain.eu/sustain/ethics-sustainability-resources.

We invite you to help us build this resource by emailing your recommendations to: sustain@wearsustain.eu

WEAR Sustain has collated an excellent resource of presentations and videos on collaboration, sustainability and ethics, kindly supplied by our event co-organisers and the speakers who participated in our first Open Call events this April and May.  You can now view these in our Slideshare and Youtube channels. Don’t forget to subscribe to these channels as we will be adding more resources over the duration of the project.

A final WEAR Sustain showcase event in late 2018 will exemplify ethics and sustainability in wearable technology, smart and e-textiles. The awarded project prototypes will be shown, together with our collective findings via a free Sustainability Strategy and Toolkit, to outline best practices for future creative and technology collaborations, sustainability and ethical innovation methodologies and resources.

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JOIN OUR GROWING NETWORK

The WEAR Sustain ecosystem has grown quickly and now has over 700 actors. network.wearsustain.eu is designed to be a valuable resource for anyone wishing connect with creatives, hubs, experts, technologists, academia, accelerators and investors involved in wearables, smart or e-textiles, and/or interested in supporting ethics and sustainability in innovation. Membership is FREE.

WEAR winning teams will use their innovation vouchers to work with selected mentors, experts and hubs in the network, to take their projects to as close to market ready as possible within a 6m period.

Enter or claim your profile now to be part of a pioneering critical, ethical and aesthetic wearables and e-textiles network!