Future fashion factory: developing an ecosystem to support sustainable change

This paper explores the development of an ecosystem to facilitate sustainable change through one of the initiatives established by the 5-year Future Fashion Factory programme, led by the University of Leeds in the UK. This was a £6.1 million Research and Development, industrial-academic partnership that investigated how the development of new technology could enhance the design and creation of fashion and textile products. This study describes one of the Future Fashion Factory initiatives, developed to identify challenge areas in the fashion and textile sector. This comprised of the competitive Responsive Research & Development funding calls that enabled the Future Fashion Factory to allocate 55 awards to industrial members, with projects aligned with the programme's Core Research Themes. The varied awards successfully aligned relationships between industry and academia and facilitated new thinking that developed an ecosystem to support sustainable change within the UK fashion and textiles sector.