Clean Up Camo Textile

Designer and circular economy advocate Ella Doran has collaborated with communications Designer & environmental campaigner Sophie Thomas on a new textile design called ‘Ocean Clean-Up Camo’, which not only draws attention to the huge quantities of discarded plastic in our oceans, but uses it as inspiration for a beautiful, new Textile design.

Sophie Thomas has been beach cleaning and collecting waste plastic for several years, and these particular pieces were washed up by the tide from a favourite beach in Northern Spain. Whilst helping to keep the beach clean, the waste plastics collection also started to evoke something more. ‘The particular rock formation of the area helped make the waste plastic pieces particularly smooth, almost like flat pebbles, whilst maintaining their original colour’, Sophie explained.

The duo created artful arrangements from the plastics, which Ella then photographed, making a textile design from the resulting images, ‘From a distance, the design is reminiscent of a particularly colourful Italian mosaic tile’, Ella said, ‘with the true nature of the objects only visible under close inspection.’

Ella and Sophie both share a passion for the circular economy they hope that the new fabric will help tell the story of plastic pollution. ‘Whilst the end-product is beautiful and has turned non-biodegradable pollutant waste into something positive, the message is still very much that it shouldn’t be there to start with!’ they added. ‘We hope that the life cycle of the new textile will carry that message forward into the future.’

Design Ventura

Design Ventura is the Design Museum’s flagship design and enterprise competition for secondary school students in years 9, 10 and 11. Over 13,000 students from 265 across the UK and beyond are registered to take part in 2018, the ninth year of the competition.

The young people are challenged to work in teams design a new product for the Design Museum Shop, responding to a detailed brief. The winning team will work with creative professionals to develop and manufacture their idea and will see it on sale in the Design Museum Shop, with all profits donated to a charity of their choice.

Ella has been invited to help choose the top ten Student teams for Design Ventura this year. The shortlisting involves choosing the top ten ideas from submitted entries and these teams will then be invited to pitch their ideas to a panel of expert judges at the Design Museum in December.

The project is supported by industry experts from the creative industries and business and offers students the chance to develop creative, design thinking, enterprise and transferrable employability skills.

Here’s this year’s brief for the Students given by the lovely Donna Wilson.

Visit the Ventura website

Email ventura@designmuseum.org