Festival Tent Waste Becomes Fashion: University of Brighton Student's Project on Show This Weekend
Tilly Lawless created Bâche, a sustainable fashion collection made from abandoned festival tent fabric. Photo: University of Brighton
A University of Brighton student has turned abandoned festival tents into a limited-edition sustainable fashion collection, with her work on show at the university's free Architecture and Design Graduate Show this weekend
Every summer, an estimated 250,000 tents are abandoned at UK music festivals, generating around 900 tonnes of waste. Most end up in landfill. Tilly Lawless, a Product Design student at the University of Brighton, saw something different in that waste. Her graduate project, Bâche, recovers tent fabric left behind at major festivals and concerts and reworks it into limited-edition clothing, demonstrating that sustainability and desirability can coexist.
Tilly said: "I love festivals. There's so much culture, creativity and community around them. But it's really disappointing to see how much waste is left behind afterwards, with entire fields covered in abandoned tents and equipment. Where many people saw rubbish destined for landfill, I saw a material with potential. Bâche is about changing how we value materials that are usually discarded and proving that sustainability and desirability can coexist."
She added: "Rather than treating festival waste as an endpoint, I want to reposition it as a valuable resource. Design has an important role to play in tackling environmental challenges and helping people see waste differently."
On show this weekend at Moulsecoomb
Tilly's work is part of the University of Brighton's Architecture and Design Graduate Show, which is free and open to the public today and tomorrow. The show runs at Mithras House and the Heavy Engineering Building on the Moulsecoomb campus, today Friday 13 June from 10am to 5pm and tomorrow Sunday 14 June from 12 noon to 5pm.
The exhibition showcases work from students across Architecture, Interior Architecture, Product Design, Sustainable Design and Design Engineering. This year's show includes a new temporary pavilion in the south quad of the Cockcroft Building, designed to connect the exhibition venues and offer a meeting point between disciplines.
James Tooze, Course Leader for Product Design at the University of Brighton, said: "Tilly's project is a fantastic example of the kind of innovative and socially conscious design thinking we encourage at Brighton. She has taken a highly visible environmental problem and transformed it into a creative, practical and commercially viable response that challenges assumptions about waste, value, and consumption. It is exactly the kind of forward-thinking work that the future of the design industry needs."
James added: "The work on display at this year's show demonstrates the creativity, ambition, and social awareness of our students. Throughout their studies, they have been challenged to think critically about the role design can play in addressing some of society's biggest challenges, from sustainability and resource use to health, wellbeing, and community engagement. What makes me particularly proud is seeing students develop ideas that move beyond the classroom and have genuine potential to create positive change in the world."
More Summer Shows coming in July
The Art, Media and Design MA Show follows in July at the Grand Parade City campus. The private view is Friday 3 July from 6pm to 10pm, with the public exhibition running from Saturday 4 July to Saturday 11 July, weekdays 10am to 5pm and weekends 12 noon to 4pm.
All University of Brighton Summer Shows are free and open to the public. More information is available at brighton.ac.uk/summer-shows.
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