The Bradford Textile Industry Challenge was held over the week 27th Jan to 3rd Feb 2014 and facilitated by the SPACE/Bradford Challenge and linked to a £750K European Commission Tempus funded project called INNOLAB. This also explains why a number of visiting students from Ukraine and Belarus were involved. The INNOLAB project is headed by Professor Christos Kalantaridis from the School of Management, University of Bradford, and aims to develop a network of five innovation laboratories (three in Ukraine and two in Belarus) that will be part of undergraduate curricula and regional innovation ecosystems. Students from the University of Bradford and Bradford College made up the teams who competed in the development of innovative ideas for the revival of the textile industry in Bradford.
According to INNOLAB the innovation laboratories are visible points of cooperation between universities and enterprises. They allow student teams (often inter-disciplinary and with involvement of academics) to work with Enterprises in resolving ‘real-world’ problems and developing innovations, as part of their studies. This is by and large also one of the aims of the SPACE/Bradford Challenge. But the framework can be much wider – for example, the Textile Challenge is part of a bigger aim of nurturing economic regeneration, circular and green economy – and that requires collaboration between many more participants than business and university alone.
It is not only the universities such as Harvard or MIT or Lancaster that are embracing the concept. Innovation labs are being increasingly used by NGOs such as Unicef, community groups working on specific issues or themes, such as mental health or rethinking the financial system or governance, like the Civic Systems Lab. Even the government bodies are embracing it, e.g. USAID, in collaboration with civic or educational actors. If you type “innovation labs” into google search you will get a LOT of results.
Although the labs have considerable differences, one might argue that they also share some key similarities – for instance, the underlying aim is to bring people together to solve problems and create solutions. They often have “incubation” space and financial support attached, to implement the ideas developed. There are different ways the labs can do that but they hold an enormous potential for mobilising all sectors of society in development initiatives, innovation and collaboration of all sorts. Properly designed and embedded or “in sync”, these “hubs” are the playground for systems innovators, learning architects, entrepreneurs and curious change-makers.
Speakers on the first day to lay the foundation of the project were:
Over the week the students had the opportunity to visit Bradford and explore the rich heritage of textiles and education and produced briefs for their ideas as well as videos. Their efforts were then assessed by a panel of experts, which I was delighted to join, along with the following:
Photos from the challenge (courtesy of Maarja Hallik) are available here.
A number of videos from the event are available to view on Youtube and the link is here.
The WINNER was TEAM A with their innovative material Ramie+. It was a tough competition and all teams were really good! The winning team was recognised by Bradford Textile Society’s vice chairman Barry Whitaker with a plaque, and will enjoy a meal sponsored by Forsters Bistro.
This forms part of a much wider series of events and initiatives surrounding textiles in Bradford and the initiative is to continue with all the departments and bodies who took part in this event.
18/07/2014