About WEAR Sustain

The WEAR Sustain project was funded under the Horizon 2020 Work Programme 2016-17 innovation Action, under the STARTS umbrella. It developed a Pan-European Network, supported the development of emerging projects, and provided resources for wearable technology, smart textile, and e-textiles sectors, leading to more ethical and sustainable design, development, and distribution for a more responsible future. Our strong emphasis on ethical and sustainable design, development and manufacturing was intended to tackle issues of data privacy, collection and use, as well as labour practices within the fashion, textiles and technology industries, and the huge environmental impact of these sectors.

We have provided knowledge exchange opportunities and encouraged cross-sector and cross-border collaboration for a total of 46 exciting and diverse projects we funded from across Europe. In doing so we have informed and inspired designers and developers to adopt ethical and sustainable workflows throughout our programme.

We provided the teams mentorship and support from industry experts, hubs for collaborative working, and the chance to contribute to developing a sustainable online toolkit & resource to exchange knowledge and launch a wearable ecosystem for the future. Alongside our network of funded teams is a larger ecosystem of creatives, technology experts, business leaders, academics and other stakeholders who offer new sustainable and ethical ways of working within wearables and smart/e-textiles sectors.

We couldn't have achieved all we have without the help of a vast number of experts, mentors, hub leaders and other service providers, who have given support for teams, raised awareness, and promoted this new movement of better practices in the fashion, textiles and technology sectors.

We hope that WEAR Sustain will become a recognised framework for developing future products and projects with more ethical and sustainable approaches to innovation within the fashion, textiles and materials, and technology sectors, so that we can leave a lasting mark and make the world a better place for society and consumers.

Original aims of Wear Sustain

Develop a sustainable European network of stakeholders and hubs, to connect and push the boundaries in the design and development of sustainable and ethical wearables, electronic and smart textiles;
Encourage cross-border and cross-sector collaboration between creative people and technology developers to design and develop wearables, electronic and smart textiles;
Develop a framework within which future prototypes can be made that will become the next generation of what ethical and aesthetic wearables, electronic and smart textiles could/should be;
Lead the emergence of innovative approaches to design, production, manufacturing and business models for wearable technologies;
Make citizens, entrepreneurs and other stakeholders more aware of the ethical and aesthetic issues in making and use of wearable technologies.

WEAR PARTNER CONSORTIUM

imec

About imec

imec is the world-leading research and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies. The combination of our widely acclaimed leadership in microchip technology and profound software and ICT expertise is what makes us unique. By leveraging our world-class infrastructure and local and global ecosystem of partners across a multitude of industries, we create groundbreaking innovation in application domains such as healthcare, smart cities and mobility, logistics and manufacturing, and energy.

As a trusted partner for companies, start-ups and universities we bring together close to 3,500 brilliant minds from over 70 nationalities. imec is headquartered in Leuven, Belgium and also has distributed R&D groups at a number of Flemish universities, in the Netherlands, Taiwan, USA, China, and offices in India and Japan. In 2015, imec's revenue (P&L) totaled 415 million euro and of iMinds which is integrated in imec as of September 21, 2016 52 million euro.

uca

About University for the Creative Arts

With over 6,000 students, studying over 120 creative courses across four campuses, UCA generates unique communities of artists, designers, makers, writers and researchers. As a specialist arts institution, their distinctiveness against larger multi-disciplinary universities comes from focusing on provision through our creative campuses, which are not compromised by sharing facilities with other subjects or disciplines. The latest Research Exercise Framework (REF 2014) confirms their position as one of the top ten research communities in art and design, with 93% of our research designated as internationally recognised for quality, and 64% of our research submissions classed as world leading and internationally excellent in terms of originality, significance and thoroughness.

Queen

About Queen Mary University of London

Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) is ranked in the top 100 world universities (Times Higher Education World University Rankings) and is a member of the Russell Group of leading UK universities. It generates circa £100m research income per year and has over 20,000 students. QMUL is investing 10% of total research income in new research equipment by 2018-19; over £250 million has been invested in 15 years.

Berlin

About Universität der Künste Berlin

Berlin University of the Arts is one of the biggest, most diversified and traditional universities of the arts in the world. The teaching offered at the colleges of Fine Arts, Architecture, Media and Design, Music, and Performing Arts, as well as at the Central Institute for Continuing Education/ Berlin Career College encompasses the full spectrum of the arts and related academic studies in more than 70 courses. Having the right to confer doctorates and postdoctoral qualifications, Berlin University of the Arts is also one of the few art colleges in Germany with full university status.

Blumine

About Blumine Srl.

Blumine Srl., based in Milan, Italy, provide consultancies to fashion and textile SME in the field of Sustainability, with a special interest in the Design of Digital Technologies, Services and Interaction. Engaged in the studying economics, production, communications, and culture of sustainable and ethical consumption, Blumine Srl believes that Sustainability bridged with Digital Technologies will foster ethical social innovation as well as new opportunities for the creation of added value and development to SME providing services and manufacturing in the industries of Fashion and Design.

Digital Spaces

About Digital Spaces Living Labs

Digital spaces are digital, virtual or computer-generated worlds, but also the spaces we live in, where we use digital media, digital communication devices, digital gadgets, etc. The Digital Spaces Living Lab (DSLL) was founded in 2008 in Sofia, Bulgaria, to support industrial and academic partners working in the field of new digital media technologies, location-based services (LBS), and smart city services and apps. DSLL provides a creative environment for research and innovation, as well as new forms of direct user involvement in the innovation process. It aims to establish links between business enterprises, media partners, academia and citizens to ensure the successful collaboration between all these parties.

DataScouts

About DataScouts

DataScouts is an ecosystem intelligence platform that visualizes, explores and engages with the connected organizations in a Business Ecosystem. Datascouts helps business developers and ecosystem leaders to stay informed about trends, innovations and the vibrancy of their network.

Mapping a business ecosystem is a continuous effort to monitor the market, technology trends, business performance of incumbents and new entrants. The platform collects, aggregates and curates relevant business information to explore the available data through interactive visualization. This allows leaders to collect data and annotate information that will build and tap into a common knowledge base.

By allowing actors to claim their profiles, contributions enable a building of this common knowledge base with all information that is relevant to your business and your network of connected organizations.

DataScouts is associated with We Connect Data a Belgian startup developing technology that aggregates data across applications and databases in real-time. For more information visit datascouts.eu or email info@datascouts.eu.