On April 27th and 30th, CIRCULAR.Tèxtils.cat Hackathon took place, coordinated by AEI Tèxtils – The Catalan Advanced Textile Materials cluster – and Fundació FITEX, with the financial support from the Waste Agency of Catalonia.
The objective of the Hackathon was to generate potential circularity roads using the textile waste of AEI Tèxtils members.
The event was divided into two sessions during which, a total of 20 design and engineering students could get acquainted with the industrial environment of the textile ecosystem hand in hand with companies and experts in the sector while working on the challenge of generating new opportunities for textile waste.
ELISAVA, INTEXTER-UPC and MODACC collaborated with the Hackathon, participating in and animating the workshops, and training the participants during the two sessions.
The kick off was took place on April 27th at ELISAVA’s campus. AEI Tèxtils started the session by presenting the objectives and the terms of the Hackathon. During the afternoon, the collaborating entities held workshops, including: “textile waste and circularity” by Fitex, and “experimentation with textile waste” and “prospective and creativity” by Elisava and the work teams with the students were created.
Moreover, the director of INTEXTER – cluster’s member – Dr. Enric Carrera, presented the 42 pieces of waste that students had at their disposal to work on prototypes creation.
On Saturday April 30th, the day started with a visit to TEX51, a benchmark company in the textile-fashion sector, where the students could get to know thoroughly the functioning of the entire production process. The rest of the session, which took place in the Igualada Fashion Lab, included an “ideation and formalization” workshop.
Later, the 4 participant teams at the Hackathon started to create their prototypes. During the process, they had the support from collaborators, as well as Isabel Murt’s mentoring, the creative director of Sita Murt.
Isabel Murt was part of the jury, together with Dr. Marta Casadesús from AEI Tèxtils, Dr. Enric Carrera from INTEXTER, Sr. Clara Mallart from MODACC and Dr. Oscar Tomico from ELISAVA, who selected the winning team, which was awarded a cash prize of 1.000€ and an internship in the cluster members: FINSA and ARPE, event’s sponsors, together with POLISILK.
