FTalliance is a 3-year academia-industries partnership aimed to facilitate the exchange, flow of knowledge and co-creation within the Fashion-Tech sector to boost students’ employability and innovation potential.
The project starts with a series of knowledge exchange activities aimed at fine tuning a multidisciplinary Fashion-Tech curriculum integrating fashion, design and engineering with industry relevant challenges through open innovation and project-based learning methodologies. A learning process format will be designed through the creation of educational experiences aimed to satisfy the competences/skills needed to support the competitive growth of the Fashion-Tech industry.
Secondly, the project is aimed at designing and piloting innovative mentoring formats for students. Workshops will be launched in the form of challenged-based design activities to boost creative encounters within the framework of a number of industry briefs, allowing beneficial and reciprocal exchanges between the student participants and companies. Lastly the project explores the development of a Fashion-Tech Residency and co-creation opportunities to foster innovative concept development and products prototypes. The residencies have the objective of generating an hands on pedagogical model embedding students in company innovation activities.
The selected students will have the opportunity to develop their projects through coaching opportunities provided by the host company. At the end of the Residency period, FTalliance will deliver a portfolio of developed projects. The consortium comprises 12 partners and 1 associate from 6 Programme Countries: 5 fashion, design, engineering HEIs, 1 leading large fashion and apparel Enterprise, 5 SMEs representing the Fashion-Tech ecosystem and the different supply chain segments, 1 Research Technology Organisation and 1 associate large fashion Enterprise.