Fashion District is a collaborative initiative set to make London the global capital for fashion education, design and innovation, and the Fashion Technology Academy’s (FTA) sister company Fashion Enter is very much involved…
Fashion District – a new hub for London’s fashion industry involves businesses and organisations across east and north London with sites in East Bank, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Hackney Wick, Haringey and Poplar. This new hub aims to boost growth through thousands of new jobs, improving skills and training, and the provision of new affordable workspaces.
Fashion District aims to:
- Create 15,000 new jobs and provide skills, training, apprenticeships and paid internships for local Londoners.
- Ensure local people are able to develop the production and technical skills that the industry needs – in the next five years, fashion businesses will need to recruit for up to 60,000 vacancies2.
- Help local young Londoners into the fashion industry through with more than 2,000 training opportunities and 100 apprenticeship opportunities.
- Bring 5,500 students from the London College of Fashion together in one campus in East Bank.
- Provide new affordable work spaces including:
- 32 new affordable studios at The Trampery Fish Island Village
- New manufacturing space and studios from the conversion of disused garages at Poplar Works, Tower Hamlets. Led by Poplar HARCA, The Trampery and London College of Fashion, UAL, the scheme will create a new training space for fashion enterprise – with 3,404 sqm of affordable workspace funded by the Mayor’s Good Growth Fund and London Regeneration Fund.
- Fashion Enter’s Tailoring Academy in Haringey will kick start alternative routes into fashion careers through apprenticeships in technical skills, again funded by the Mayor’s Good Growth Fund. Stimulate innovation, provide business support and access to fashion technology – including 3D printing, laser cutting, interactive and wearable fabrics and design software.
This brand-new approach comes as the result of an innovative collaboration by London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, the British Fashion Council (BFC), UK Fashion and Textiles, the Mayor of London, London Legacy Development Corporation (LDDC), Unibail Rodamco-Westfield, Poplar HARCA, The Trampery, Fashion Enter, Here East, Newham College, and the London Boroughs of Hackney, Haringey, Newham, Waltham Forest and Tower Hamlets.
Jenny Holloway, CEO of Fashion Enter / FTA, said: “The new Tailoring Academy (due to open in Spring 2019) will create a new generation of highly skilled tailors to be equipped with the skills required to reach the exacting standards of master tailors. Investing in state of the art machinery and up-skilling the industry will tackle future industry gaps. Working with Fashion District partners there will be an extensive network of facilities and resources for our wonderful creative fashion and textiles sector.”
The launch of the Fashion District builds on the Mayor’s vision for East Bank – a £1.1bn investment at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park bringing together a powerhouse of culture and education for innovation and growth across the capital.