This workshop was part of the design research by TED for MISTRA Future Fashion, a Swedish consortium concerned with creating sustainable, systemic and profitable change for the fashion industry. When organisations put design at the heart of product and service development, they are triggered to ask the fundamental question about what they make, how they make it, and who for (Thackara, 2008). The approaches included within TED's TEN (Earley & Politowicz, 2010) promote design thinking and demonstrate how textile designers can play a more strategic role to instigate social and environmental change. The workshop combines 3 of the 10 by applying design to replace the need to consume in order to ‘upcycle’ discarded garments (Earley, 2009). Design activism influenced the agency within this workshop and combined insights from two existing projects 'Black Hack' (Earley, 2012) and 'Old is the New Black' (von Busch & Ballie, 2011).

The 'Black Hack Chat' (BHC) explored a new role for the professional textile designer (the authors), which enabled them to exchange their skills and experience through facilitation of this design intervention. The aim was to push the boundaries of textile design practice through co- design to identify how it can be used as a tool for citizen engagement.