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The Vital Signs project continues and this entry marks the first film made with the newly established 'Dzaleka Arts Lab' a group that has formed out of the workshops delivered at Dzaelka Refugee Camp, Malawi, since 2023. The film was released on World Refugee Day 2024.

This chapter, based on an in-depth interview and ongoing dialogue, recounts the extraordinary journey of designer, artist, researcher and activist Helen Storey through her role as Professor of Fashion and Science at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London. This is a story narrated in dresses, not simply embodied as clothing, but over time becoming an increasingly powerful symbol and metaphor for some of the most complex challenges of our time. This work, covering an extended period and several innovative projects, culminated in a unique position being created for Helen within Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan, working in a research and knowledge exchange capacity with the residents and NGOs, to co-create and develop life-improving projects.

Collaborating with the long-term displaced people in Africa means direct engagement with and being in relationship to, some of the biggest global challenges we face; chronic poverty, hunger, social injustice, inequality, lack of education, gender-based violence and climate change. The Vital Signs project takes place with people whose lives are permanently affected by all the above hardships. Vital Signs is a project which began through invitation by UNHCR Mozambique & UNHCR Malawi to scope how our ways of thinking, working & collaborating might have a positive impact on the long-term displacement of refugees in Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi and Maratane Refugee settlement in Nampula Province, Mozambique. The refugee population represents multiple nations: Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, and Ethiopia. Scoping missions were conducted in May & October 2022 to understand the nature of life and environment in which people live and to value and co create a reciprocal way of working, through relational practice and knowledge exchange.

Collaborating with the long-term displaced people in Africa means direct engagement with and being in relationship to, some of the biggest global challenges we face; chronic poverty, hunger, social injustice, inequality, lack of education, gender-based violence and climate change. The Vital Signs project takes place with people whose lives are permanently affected by all the above hardships. Vital Signs is a project which began through invitation by UNHCR Mozambique & UNHCR Malawi to scope how our ways of thinking, working & collaborating might have a positive impact on the long-term displacement of refugees in Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi and Maratane Refugee settlement in Nampula Province, Mozambique. The refugee population represents multiple nations: Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, and Ethiopia. Scoping missions were conducted in May & October 2022 to understand the nature of life and environment in which people live and to value and co create a reciprocal ways of working, through relational practice and knowledge exchange.

'Motive/Motif: Artists Commemorate the Suffragettes' was co-curated by Charlotte Hodes Artist & Professor in Fine Art at London College of Fashion, UAL and Alison Moloney, Curator, Writer, Consultant. This exhibition marked the 100th anniversary of the passing of the 1918 Representation of the People Act, and consisted of embroidered handkerchiefs designed by 20 contemporary artists. The starting point for the exhibition was a piece of cloth embroidered in 1912 by Suffragettes imprisoned at Holloway Prison. Most of the 78 women who embroidered their signatures participated in demonstrations organised by the Women’s Social & Political Union. They were denied the status of political prisoners and many were force-fed. The contemporary handkerchiefs are presented alongside the historic cloth embroidered with the names of seventy-eight Suffragettes, courtesy of The Women’s Library Collection at LSE. The exhibition also included photographs and information about each of the Suffragettes through an AV installation prepared by London College of Fashion, UAL. Prof Helen Storey designed one of the pieces for this group show. The piece was created out of a victorian handkerchief with a faded & torn pale green silk chiffon overlaid. Silver bells were attached to add the punctuation of sound to the piece. See also https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/15487/, https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/14427

Designed for Life celebrates London College of Fashion (LCF), University of the Arts London (UAL)’s decades long commitment to using fashion, design and creative practice as a force for positive social change. Comprised of diverse projects employing textiles, design, film, photography, artefacts, personal testimonies and community building, the exhibition illustrates the transformative power of creative action in shaping our world. Coinciding with the launch of LCF's new campus at East Bank on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Designed for Life showcases projects which foster community cohesion whilst yielding high-quality artistic outputs. Responding swiftly to social crises, these interventions offer employment and training opportunities to support those with experiences of displacement. Through five immersive showcases, the exhibition invites visitors to explore key themes; London as home; reciprocal learning as community building; empowerment through making; the relationship between global emergency and creative expression. Across these themes are visions pertaining to a more sustainable and equitable future.

A series of 4 films made between 2016 - 2020 from the "Dress For Our Time" and Zaatari Action projects were presented as a part of the Global Voices event & conference: World Stage Design (WSD22) hosted in Calgary, Canada with the Society of British Theatre Designers and Ecostage.

This collaboration is the culmination of 6 years of work that mirrors the evolution & development of refugee rights in Jordan. This project brings together, for the first time, the most skilled makers in Zaatari Refugee Camp with a brokered relationship with Turquoise Mountain and marks the first time that a local based commercial company has been able to connect to refugee digital bank wallets, in order to complete the sustaining circle of making, employment and direct payment. The makers in this instance, are our previously trained embroidery women of Zaatari, highly skilled in their own right, but whose work, up until this point, could not be professionalised, or sold commercially. This, therefore, is now a legacy project for our presence in Jordan these past years.

The "Jacket of Wishes" & "Dress For Our Time" were contributing pieces in the exhibition “Fitting In: Fluid Identity in a multiverse world" About the exhibition: The world turns increasingly pluriverse. How can we, without losing ourselves, become part of a larger entity? That question forms the starting point of the group exhibition Fitting In. Artists and designers show how lavish our context can be, if we are open to the many voices around us. They understand identities as multi-layered or fluid. In conversation with you they explore the boundaries between fashion, visual art, photography, design and the world.

An action-based research project with the children of Zaatari Refugee Camp, Jordan. This collaboration uses soap making with toys buried with in it, as an intervention to help with hand hygiene for children in a time of Covid.

A collaboration for World Refugee Day between LCF, Dress For Our Time, Wimbledon College of Art, BA Acting Performance Course, World Wide FM, Radio Zaatari, World Refuge, (Jordan) War Child, Africa is a Country, UNHCR UK, UNHCR Africa, UNHCR Jordan and music composer, Sarathy Korwar. https://www.sustainable-fashion.com/post/healing-knowledge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DcvZvW0ye4 Zaatari Radio take over: https://worldwidefm.net/episode/radio-zaatari-takeover Mozambique collaboration: https://worldwidefm.net/episode/world-refugee-day-part-2-erica-mckoy

A co-created animation with the TIGER children of Zaatari Refugee Camp, Jordan. Working with Blumont (Zaatari based NGO) and Rainbow Collective, this is a project which shares the lived experience of COVID-19 through the eyes of the young in camp. With 80,000 views across social media the animation can be found here: https://fb.watch/5bBoFkHYqJ/ Entered to the RIFA awards for best animation.

'Seeking the Syrian Stitch' was a workshop which took place at Zaatari Refugee Camp, Jordan with 30 women who wished to train professionally in embroidery. The collaboration was also used to capture the individual stories of the women's lives as refugees and to experiment with new forms of stitches - stitches, which might symbolically represent what it means to be Syrian now, after 10 years of displacement from home.

To counter the mainstream fashion system, which is proving unsustainable in terms of autonomous livelihoods, cultural heritage, social equality, and environmental stewardship, some designers are playing an activist role, challenging the status quo and activating positive change. With this in mind, we have embarked on an on-going research project aimed at exploring ways in which design activism can create counter-narratives towards sustainability in fashion. This paper explores these ideas through a case study focused on the Centre for Sustainable Fashion (CSF). Through semi-structured interviews and a co-creation workshop, we mapped out examples of work undertaken by CSF members, and elicited their contribution to building a transformed fashion system. Hence, in this paper we articulate the diversity of roles, values, skills, and methods that fashion activists can adopt, as well as some of the challenges and opportunities for designers and researchers in transforming the fashion system towards sustainability.

Neurogenesis is a collaboration between Artist Professor Helen Storey, Developmental Biologist Professor Kate Storey, and digital innovation agency Holition. Funded by Wellcome, to mark 20 years from the sisters’ groundbreaking interdisciplinary work, ‘Primitive Streak’, ‘Neurogenesis’ was originally commissioned to explore their most current research practices, marking also the developments in biology, culture and the digital world since 'Primitive Streak'. It is a work which unpredictably brought the personal and professional lives of the Storey sisters together, as the 4 year period to create it was lived whilst both women were prime carers for their father during his slow decline and fight against dementia. Captured on film, the work was completed a few months after his death and ultimately reflected both their intimate and professional journey together. The physical nature of the work is comprised of a dress at the edge of its material life, using collected materials that have been blowing in the wind by a railway track since childhood. Snagged upon a decaying branch, this is juxtaposed with original and responsive film footage of neuron birth and differentiation, taken from research in Kate’s lab – from under the hem of the dress, images shine out, in a literal visualization of the process of neurogenesis. Responding creatively to Kate’s original footage, Holition designed a space within which zones react to the physical presence of the viewer by giving them power to control progression through the neurogenesis process. Twenty years after the sisters' first award winning collaboration, where dress was used to elucidate the universal experience of how we are made, Neurogenesis takes us to the end of life and considers not just how nervous systems are built and maintained, but how biology breaks down and our bodies fail us. (Artifact, film, digital installation exhibition, website)