Theatre professor Philip Valle thought he knew a lot about fast fashion and climate change after studying the use of theater to teach STEM for the past 10 years, until his trip to India two summers ago.
While doing his own research on child labor and how it impacts the United States, Valle got the chance to tour manufacturing plants in Dharavi, India, one of the largest slums in the world. There he found a lot of pain as people worked and lived in “horrific” conditions.
Valle said that the majority of workers, many of whom were under 16 years old, endured 16-hour work days. They spent their shifts cutting, dyeing and sewing clothing. At the end of the day, they often slept next to their sewing machines because they could only afford minimal food.
Valle also saw firsthand how the manufacturing of clothing was polluting the environment and impacting the health of the people who lived there.
When Valle returned after his trip, he was shocked to find students weren’t learning about these issues in schools.
Fast fashion and climate change have been globally growing issues for years. The average American bought five times more clothes in 2018 than in 1980, buying an average of 68 garments a year, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Fast fashion is responsible for about 20% of all industrial water pollution and 10% of the annual carbon emissions, the Wall Street Journal article said. Additionally, Americans sent 10.5 million tons of textiles to landfills in 2015, according to the article.
Valle and his colleague Phyllis Wong are working to address the issues of fast fashion and climate change by leading a research project that uses theater to educate kids about the issues and encourage positive behavior change.
“Our goal is presenting possible options that are actionable in which students can actually make changes in their lives that are possibly not only advantageous for the planet, but for themselves and their community and they can become leaders in teaching other people or their friends,” Wong said.
According to Wong, there are four phases of their project: researching and beginning outreach, working on a play for young audiences, presenting that play in the spring and observing the impacts.
The first phase of the project was the summer undergraduate research project, facilitated by Wong and Valle, which worked to reduce climate anxiety and empower kids to take action.
Under Wong and Valle’s direction, English junior Julia White and environmental management and protection junior Carver Tunnel went into third-grade classrooms at roughly 8 local schools to lead theater-based workshops about the implications of climate change and what changes can be made in their daily lives to make a difference.
“We wanted to be clear with them that they are not responsible for this and their daily actions, they do make a difference, but we were very clear with them that it’s a bigger picture that’s making all of these impacts,” White said.
Teaching these concepts in a theatrical way gives the kids a better understanding of the material and a way to apply what they learned to their lives, according to Valle.
“The idea within our research is that when the thoughts and all these things are put into the body, and we actually move through these concepts with our bodies, that they become part of our then greater behaviors outside the classroom in the world,” Valle said.
According to Wong, this contributes to one of the project’s main goals: building environmental literacy.
“We’re interested in teaching students about the environment, the issues surrounding the environment, whatever the topic may be to a point where it’s just like ‘I just do this, it’s just sort of woven into who I am,’” Wong said. “It’s like when I read a book I’m not thinking, ‘What’s that word?’ I’m reading to understand.”
The project entered its second phase at the beginning of winter quarter with the Theatre for Young Audiences class (TH 380) in which students have been “devising” a 30-minute play to present to elementary school students about the impacts of fast fashion.
Phase three of the project will be implemented in spring when the students’ play is presented to elementary schools in the San Luis Coastal Unified School District.
The last phase of the project is to measure the impact later on by determining changes in children’s behaviors and their absorption of the information.
White expressed her hope that their project would initiate discussions among the kids about these issues, with the hope that such conversations could spark change.
“I think that as long as the discourse is growing in younger generations, then we can just hope,” White said. “I mean, it’s also my generation that we can just hope that that will create ripples of change coming into this future.”