2021-2022 // CreativeWear PLUS

The CreativeWear project (2016-2019) anticipated how the T&C industry can recover from its deep structural crises through a new attention to design and quality in a value-driven and customer-driven approach. To ensure transferability, the cluster of five Creative Hubs developed the CreativeWear Model, which allows to adapt the concept to different cultural and economic contexts.

CreativeWear PLUS builds on the results of the Interreg MED CreativeWear project (2016-2019), which brought a new attention to creativity, personalised design, and artisan and small-scale production for territorially specific value chains for the Textile & Clothing (T&C) industry. Five Creative Hubs brought together artists, designers, and creatives with T&C businesses in Italy, Spain, Slovenia and Greece. Experimentation with different interaction formats led to a common CreativeWear Model, whose transfer capacity was tested by extension to six new Creative Hubs through an Open Call in 2018 and by incorporation into the H2020 TCBL network of innovation Labs in 2019.

In 2021 CreativeWear PLUS associates three original partners from Italy and Greece with three new Hubs established in Portugal, France and Bosnia to further integrate the CreativeWear network by directing creativity towards the new challenges of circular economy and sustainability in T&C, involving areas such as bio-based textiles, upcycled clothing, and reinterpretation of cultural traditions. In this context, it is important to further extend the network of Creative Hubs in the MED space, specifically bringing the creative eye to the new challenges of the Circular Economy in areas such as bio-based textiles, upcycled clothing, the re-interpretation of cultural traditions, and digital fabrication. This can breathe new life into existing districts of fashion and artisan T&C production, and exalt the specific value added of Mediterranean social capital, creativity and flair for European and global markets.