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This satellite lab - an exhibition commons - within a museum exhibit showcased current research and past insights of the Textile Adaptation Research Program (TARP), New Craft, and the formative SSHRC funded cloTHING(s) as Conversation research project. Works on display and adjacent to the lab were inclusive of Alumni Researchers, Material Matters Guest Artists and Designers.

In Spring of 2023, Material Matters installed a satellite lab amidst the display and exhibition commons of Fashion Fictions, developed by lead curator Stephanie Rebick as a holistic survey of contemporary fashion design that is driven by critical, speculative and material futures.

Lab: Here//Too//For (the Lab) merged design, research creation and knowledge exchange as means to uncover new possibilities that support responsible ecological and social action. Our overall goal for Here//Too/For was to create a working laboratory and learning commons that fostered new conversations connected to our relations with the materials we use as artists + designers and the implications of the forms we create. The Lab engaged with the general public and colleagues through active studio practice in situ and a series of dialogues and workshops that contemplate and share contemporary issues and outcomes. For us much of this work involved embracing risk in our creative practice.

Can textiles, products, the clothing that we design offer a plurality of circumstances and deeply inter-relational material world views?

In response to the Fashion Fictions and in conversation with Design research peers! Lab: Here//Too/For Forums will engage the general public in a series of dialogues that will examine the following questions:

1) How do textiles, products, and the clothing that we design and wear offer a diversity of experience and expression?

2) How can our designs support deeply inter-relational conditions and world views that understand materials not as unlimited resources to be used without question but as kin and companion?

materialmatters.ecuad.ca