Aniela Fidler-Wieruszewska is a designer, creative researcher and strategist specialising in storytelling and futures thinking. She is also doing a PhD at Glasgow Caledonian University, through which she researches how young people experience change, feel and deal with the climate emergency through things we wear. Fashion, climate and futures: How do they bring those three ideas together? Do they think about this at all? What do they feel about it? How to help them connect these dots, while supporting them cognitively and/or emotionally?

What

The awareness is here, but it needs a pathway to expression

According to Aniela Fidler Wieruszewska, most young people are somewhat aware of climate change. They might not be able to explain it, but they know it exists. However, at the beginning, she introduced it from the problem perspective, “and they shut down”, she reports. “It was like, ‘Yeah, we know this, and we don’t know what to do about it.’” So she took them to Black Horse Lane Ateliers, a factory in London that makes jeans in a sustainable way. Seeing change happening gave the participants a sense of possibility, which opened up the possibility to discuss why change is needed. “By understanding that stuff has to be made, you soon discover the systemic dimension: when you talk about reducing water to wash denim, you also learn that water is an issue.”

Eco-anxiety, or anxieties

As soon as Aniela started talking with young people about how they feel about the future, anxiety emerged naturally. “Anxiety is a feeling of fear about something that hasn’t happened yet. It comes from anticipation and is essentially a concern for the future – in the case of eco-anxiety, for the future of the Planet and our environment.”

Also, when asked about sustainability, participants both said that it’s very important, but they struggle to say what sustainability actually looks like in their lives – especially when the system around them isn’t built for it. There are knowledge gaps (“I want to but I don’t know how”) and financial limitations (“I can’t afford it”). “To feel something strongly and be unable to practice it makes them very uncomfortable, which creates another kind of eco-anxiety. You need to create a space for that contradiction and not judge it”, says Aniela.

This led Aniela to put emotions at the heart of her approach, rather than as a side issue that needs to be moved out of the way of ‘serious’ work.

Futuring/sustainability in particular, rather than in general

In terms of feelings or emotions, when participants think about Fashion alone, “it’s all positive: joy, creativity, identity, fun. But the moment you ask them about Fashion and Sustainability, emotional responses become overwhelmingly negative: guilt, frustration, helplessness. It disturbs me, because that’s not what I want people to feel about sustainability.” However, on Fashion and Future, the level of anxiety was very similar to the Fashion/Sustainability combination, while the level of positive feelings was double! “Participants felt more excited to talk about fashion and future than they were to talk about fashion and sustainability. That told me that framing sustainability in a futures lens evokes much more agency and generates more engagement.”

Durability and community

According to Aniela, “Lots of young people were interested in the durability of things they own. They are fed up with things falling apart. It’s just a waste of money and space. They want new stuff, of course, but they don’t want that stuff to be single-use. They want cool, affordable stuff that lasts. They feel frustrated and angry at a system that doesn’t let them enjoy those things long enough. Or, since they have zero money, they want to use them as investment (if it doesn’t lose too much value) because they love resale. However, they don’t go as far as imagining a community wardrobe where they all exchange everything. That’s too abstract for them. If influencers did it, and if it were more accepted by the public, then they might do it, because no one is going to judge them. They have this community-based way of thinking about what’s possible and what’s not.”

How

Generating and sustaining young participants’s engagement

To engage young participants, in Aniela’s experience, “It was important that they didn’t feel like it’s a class where they have to give the right answers.”

If the sessions happen outside school, the young participants have to be very motivated and their parents often need to make time for it. If at all possible, the most effective way is to work with a school.

Three steps

With each group, Aniela typically runs three 90-minute sessions.

• The first session starts with a visit or an introduction of a sustainable innovator profile, so that young participants can immediately get excited about the work and are incentivised to come again. Then participants dive into emotions, with the help of three prompts: “How do you feel about fashion? How do you feel when you think about fashion and sustainability? When you think about fashion and future?” To answer, they can use stickers and place them on a big “Feelings Wheel”. Each participant has their own wheel, they are not forced to share their feelings.
• Ahead of the second session, Aniela asks participants to bring a ‘fragment’ that represents the future of fashion in 15 years. It could be an image of a catwalk in 2040, a song, etc. Then, participants engage in fiction writing about the world – and fashion – in 2040.
• During the third session, participants draw objects or services that could exist in the futures which they previously described in writing. They carry on illustrating their futures through crafting, using glue and denim scraps, while Aniela has conversations with them in ‘focus group’ mode.

The difficulty of naming anxiety

In Aniela Fidler Wieruszewska’s experience, “One thing that really didn’t work was bringing eco-anxiety as a subject. The expression itself was unknown to many of them. The emotion was there, but the label wasn’t. Also, anxiety as a feeling is intimidating, and they don’t really want to talk about it when their peers are around.”

Many young people struggle to articulate their emotions around climate and sustainability (and sometimes in general). “They lack an emotional vocabulary, because education is not so interested in emotions.” This is the reason why Aniela introduced the Feelings Wheel: so that they can just pick and choose rather than look for words.