The Rebel Tartan Project , founded in 2015 by Juliana Sissons, designer, and course leader MA Fashion Knitwear at NTU and Prof Giles Jackson of Liberation Kilt Co. The project gives an opportunity for students and Lectures to have discussions about contemporary social movements and the embedding of sustainability in fashion & textile design education today.
This continually growing collaboration with over twelve leading arts, textiles and fashion design programmes has emerged as a result of a small pilot project with just two universities in 2015; since then, students have been inspired by designer talks from Holly McQuillan, Timo Rissanen and Orsola-De-Castro etc. and have put forward innovative and sometimes activist solutions for the climate change crises. Through intense research, practical workshops and knowledge exchange students confront contemporary social issues in highly creative ways.
Theme: Keeling tartan for Climate Change
The Keeling tartan symbolises a wholesale shift in the energy basis of civilisation, from fossil fuels to 100 per cent clean energy. It is named in honour of the late Charles David Keeling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, whose measurements from 1958 onwards supplied the first concrete evidence of rapidly increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, commonly known as the ‘Keeling Curve’.
Today, ninety-seven percent of actively publishing climate scientists agree that man-made climate change is for real. Permission to adopt the Keeling name was graciously granted by his son, Ralph Keeling, director of the Scripps CO2 Program that continues the vital measurement series to this day.
Scottish Tartan Register No. 10593 ; UK Patent Office No. 4022617
Thank you to Nottingham Trent University for the generous funding of the project in 2023.
