Trash to Treasure: A Celebration of Sustainable Fashion and Compassion
Dates: 10 July – 5 September 2025
Location: The Library, AUB Campus
Trash to Treasure traces the enduring role of reuse, repair, and recycling in shaping sustainable fashion, revealing how these age-old strategies bridge past resourcefulness with the demands of a more ethical future.
Lewis-Manning Hospice Care charity shops provided AUB students with unusable garments that would otherwise be destined for landfill. Working in small groups, students from BA (Hons) Textiles Design and BA (Hons) Fashion transformed these materials into stunning textiles pieces, which in turn inspired a series of garments and accessories. Photography by BA (Hons) Commercial Photography students documents these processes, capturing both the material outcomes and the collaborative spirit behind them.
These are set in conversation with historic artefacts from the AUB Costume Archive and recycled fashion and textile pieces from MoDiP, creating a layered dialogue that spans the whole of the last century. Together, these works connect past strategies of textile reuse with contemporary efforts toward material innovation, and situating student designs within a long history of sustainable fashion.
Organised around four interconnected themes – reuse, repair, recycle, and reform – the exhibition investigates the lifecycle of garments, revealing how material innovation and inherited practice converge in sustainable fashion today. Together, these practices invite us to rethink fashion as a site of care, ingenuity, and responsibility.
Partnerships and collaborations at Arts University Bournemouth
BA (Hons) Fashion merges traditional skills and craftsmanship with contemporary, cutting-edge technology and ethical practice. You'll interrogate the current industry while creating innovative, sustainable and bold garments of your own.
Textiles surround us – they're one of the largest design skill sets used globally. On BA (Hons) Textiles Design, you'll hone your practical and professional skills to work with all types of different materials and find your place in the vast industry.
BA (Hons) Commercial Photography offers you the opportunity to push creative boundaries and challenge the perceptions and expectations of contemporary commercial photography. You'll develop your image-making and production skills to a high standard while gaining an in-depth knowledge of the expectations of contemporary commercial practice, and how to operate within it.
TheGallery is an award-winning and internationally recognised space and provides a wide-reaching public platform for the arts within the sub-region. Promoting the University’s shared passion for excellence in education, industry and the sector, TheGallery provides a means by which AUB can enact its values: Innovative, Collaborative, Connected and Passionate.
Throughout the year, TheGallery works on a variety of exhibitions, events, and projects with AUB stakeholders across the University to create opportunities for students and staff to showcase their areas, courses, practices and work.
Trash to Treasure: A Celebration of Sustainable Fashion and Compassion is an example of one of these collaborative projects, this time with BA (Hons) Fashion, BA (Hons) Textiles Design, BA (Hons) Commercial Photography and Lewis-Manning Hospice Care, where TheGallery team leads on curating and exhibition design with its AUB project partners.
The work of TheGallery embodies the University’s promise to promote civic and cultural engagement for positive impact and our commitment to ensuring that education and the arts are accessible to all, for those here at AUB and beyond.
We've awarded Honorary Fellowships to staff, alumni and people who've made a significant contribution to the fields of arts, design, media, and performance.
Reflecting the core values of the University, the purpose-built library is dedicated to supporting research and creativity in the disciplines of art, design, media and performance by providing high quality information, resources, and services
The Library holds an excellent range of print, online and special collections and has staff who are happy to help you make the most of these resources. It has a variety of study spaces for independent and group learning. Facilities include loanable MacBooks and laptops, a bookable meeting space, and a silent reading room.
BA (Hons) Costume offers a comprehensive approach to the study, interpretation and creation of costume. Throughout the course, students learn the art of tailoring and couture dressmaking, become skilled at producing accurate historical recreations of costumes, and are encouraged to express imaginative flair through creative and conceptual costume making.
AUB Costume Archive
The AUB Costume Archive includes garments, accessories, sewing patterns and ephemera spanning four centuries. It is utilised regularly to inform teaching, learning and research. Access to extant garments provides students with first-hand knowledge of period cut and construction methods, fabrics, decoration and aesthetic detail, which is vital to historical costume reconstruction.
Our collection includes items donated by theatrical costumier, Paddy Dickie, elite garments from the Hooton Pagnell family and a teaching collection belonging to Shelagh Lovett Turner. Items range from a Pearly King jacket to a Victorian mourning bodice made by the court dressmaker to Queen Alexandra.
MoDiP is the only accredited museum in the UK with a focus on plastics. It is the UK's leading resource for the study and interpretation of design in plastics and a specialist research resource at AUB.
MoDiP works collaboratively with AUB staff and partner organisations, including schools and museums, to maximise opportunities for people to be inspired by the collection and become more informed about plastics in design. Key learning techniques practiced at MoDiP, including object-based learning and primary research, encourage students to be curious about museum objects and ask questions to further their understanding of the collection. Inspiration from museum objects can be found in their design and shape, or their original context and setting. Ideas can be sparked to inform pattern, purpose or colour for designers and makers as well as narrative, poems and compositions for writers and artists.
Lewis-Manning Hospice Care is a charity helping people with life-limiting illnesses and their families across East Dorset and Purbeck. At their Longfleet Road Poole hub, they offer a Day Hospice to help people who have been diagnosed with a life-limiting condition, offering practical care and social support for our patients. It has a calm, relaxing and homely atmosphere and is a safe place for people to come and meet others in similar circumstances.
Meet the curators
MA, FHEA
MA
Related exhibitions and events
To celebrate Fashion Revolution Week 2025 and Earth Day 2025, BA (Hons) Fashion and BA (Hons) Textiles Design presented Trash to Treasure: A Celebration of Sustainable Fashion and Compassion, displayed on AUB Campus.
Date and time: 18 September 2025, 19.00-21.00
Location: Porsche Centre, Bournemouth supported by AUB
This charity fashion show will feature garments exhibited in the Trash to Treasure exhibition.
To register interest in this event, visit Lewis-Manning's website.
A collaboration between the Library and TheGallery, curated by Suzanna Hall, Victoria Adams and Wayne Martin
An exhibition by AUB Library and TheGallery in partnership with BA (Hons) Costume, AUB Costume Archive and MoDiP. Supported by BA (Hons) Textiles and AUB Innovation and Knowledge Exchange.
