Textile Academy Bootcamp

by Marco Sanalitro     Posted on March 23, 2017

The Textiles Academy Bootcamp was an intensive 40h course that took place at Fab Lab Barcelona with 45 participants from 16 countries.

This course was the kick off and a pilot course to test the forthcoming Fabricademy, a new textile academy that will run in multiple places all over the world simultaneously, starting mid September 2017.

For more information: Textile Academy Bootcamp Wrapup/

Fabricademy, a new textile academy is will be functioning on the same principles and infrastructure of the global Fab Lab network, but focused on new alternative materials, processes and techniques related to textiles, wearables and soft fabrication. The class will be launched in September 2017, with a top level faculty and an extensive program of 13 weeks, followed by two months of individual project development. Many labs around the world have already expressed interest in participating to this program and we will be opening soon students applications. The course is planned to be carried out all over the world, and the bootcamp is already showing that we will be able to involve everybody interested no matter in which continent they are based.

DAY 1 – HACKING THE FASHION INDUSTRY-SEAMLESS CLOTHES - The aim of the first day was to define the context in which we are going to work, the reasons behind this forthcoming and explorative textile movement in Fab Labs and other typologies of innovation labs.

DAY 2 – NEW MATERIALS, ALTERNATIVES PROCESSES - The goal for this second day was to learn how to work with new material and processes aimed at growing your own clothes.

DAY 3 – COMPUTATION FASHION - The main theme of this day was to investigate how computers and digital technologies can revolutionize the work of fashion designers and common people alike.

DAY 4 – ELECTRONICS – SOFT SENSORS- ATTINY – OPEN HARDWARE - The focus of the day was to enter the electronics, wearables field and the development of soft sensors using conductive fabric.

DAY 5 – JAM - After a super full week, the JAM day was the perfect moment to bring together all the lessons learnt during the bootcamp and make stuff! We had an amazing team of mentors helping the participants in the project fabrication, a great thanks goes to them for the support and passion.

The course was given by experts in the new fashion industry and technology:

. Anastasia Pistofidou, Fab Textiles Project Leader;

. Cecilia Raspanti, Textile Lab Amsterdam and TCBL EU project;

. Zoe Romano, founder of the wemake.cc makerspace and expert in Circular Fashion;

. Fiore Basile, Software Developer, Creative and Fab Lab Cascina Manager, Fab Academy Guru;

. Varvara Guljajeva & Mar Canet, Artist duo working with Art and Technology;

. Amber Slooten, Dutch Fashion Designer;

. Aldo Sollazzo, Noumena, World-renowned expert in Computational Design;

. Ángel Muñoz & Christian Rizzuti, expert in Interactive Design and Interactive Media Artist;

. Liza Stark, Content + Community Lead at LittleBits;

. Alex Murray-Leslie, Artist/Researcher and Curator, foot-wearables, Pop Music & Live_Art;

. Annemie Maes, Artist and a Researcher, Director of Looking Glass, So-on and Okno, Mentor;

. Adriana Cabrera,FabLab Kamp-Lintfort - Scientific Assistant, Mentor.

For more information: Textile Academy Bootcamp Wrapup/