One of the features of the conference in Beijing was that all the members of the Executive Committee were allocated a volunteer to look after them, help guide them round the building and make sure they got to the various events.
The volunteer that I had was Hualei Yu who was graduating this year. Her collection was really interesting. She had worked photographing a number of homeless people, and had then gone on to design clothes, rather in the way in which Lucy Orta has done, where these clothes can manifest themselves into tents or various other protective garments to help them cope with the environment in which they are living. She also produced photographs, made videos and the work was shown to one of my favourite Bob Dylan tracks, Working Men’s Blues. It was a really thought-provoking set of designs and showed how much across the world the issues of sustainability is a common thread that many students are concerned with. Her work also highlighted the issue of how we help support and design for people less fortunate than ourselves.
