Starter Kit. Idea 399 of 500. Cluster 20
A fashion school linked to the factories, so the designers do not have to leave
The mechanism, from the book
Sri Lankans make the world's underwear to the world's standard, and the country has no fashion brand of its own that the world has heard of.
The first step
Ask the HR managers at two apparel factories whether they would take design students for paid placements and hire the best, and write down their answers. Then run a 4-week evening design course for 12 school leavers or factory workers, taught by a working designer, for a fee. Enrolments and a factory's promise of placements are your proof.
- Who pays first
- A school leaver who wants to design clothes, whose family would pay for a course that ends in a placement at a factory at home.
- What leaves today
- Designers leave the island to learn and to work; a school linked to the factories keeps the talent where the production already is.
Ask first
- Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission. Ask how a fashion design course can be accredited.
- Sri Lanka Export Development Board. Ask which apparel exporters say they need local designers.
Check before you spend
Whether the course must be registered to issue a certificate, the factories' written promise of placements, and the teacher's qualifications.
Find out these three numbers
- Would factories take design students for paid placements?
- How many people enrol at the course fee?
- What would a working designer charge to teach?
A comparison from the book
The United States. Chapter Sixteen
"A Fulbright-style scholarship aimed at the clothing trade, cloth, design, shipping, with a rule to come home"
Train for the clothing trade's higher rungs, design above all, with reasons to stay at home.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.