Rationale:

I designed the 3×3 Summer Project for Year 2 BA Menswear students as a way to help them develop a deeper, more individual connection to their research practice. At this stage of their course, students are beginning to define who they are as designers — their points of reference, their creative language, and their critical voice. I wanted to create a moment where they could pause, look outward, and reflect inward — to rediscover curiosity and research as something lived and personal rather than procedural or purely academic.

The 3×3 format — one book, one film, one location — was intentionally open. It invites students to make three small but meaningful choices over the summer, following instinct and interest rather than direction. This idea draws on Carole Gray and Julian Malins’ notion that “practice-based research is an inquiry initiated in and through practice” (2004, p. 22), positioning creative work and lived experience as legitimate forms of knowledge-making. I wanted to encourage students to understand that the things they are drawn to — the stories, places, and images they consume — are not separate from research, but form the foundation of it.

Part of my motivation came from wanting to broaden what we collectively define as research within fashion education. As Bestley and McNeil (2022) suggest, visual research can expand the way we think about context, authorship, and meaning in design, particularly when students are encouraged to document and reflect on what they see rather than simply reference it. Many of our students’ most profound insights come from outside formal academic contexts — from the textures of their own lives, their cultural environments, and the digital spaces they inhabit.

In recent years, and particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic, students’ ways of learning and engaging with culture have shifted significantly. Digital platforms such as TikTok, visual memes, and online micro-cultures have become sites of meaning-making and visual literacy in their own right. As Karen Ryan (2022) argues, re-framing fashion research through visual forms enables students to communicate in the languages most natural to them — image, sound, movement, and story — and this felt increasingly important in a post-pandemic university setting where learning happens across multiple, often hybrid spaces.

I wanted to legitimise these contemporary, non-traditional forms of research to make space for students to see memes as cultural artefacts, or social media as an archive of contemporary identity, rather than dismissing them as distractions. This also aligns with broader efforts to decolonise design education by recognising that valuable knowledge is not always produced through Western academic systems. As Rojas-Pernia and Haya-Salmón (2022) note, inclusive research practices that integrate visual and narrative strategies can empower participants to represent their own realities more fully and authentically.

Through the 3×3 project, I aimed to cultivate a sense of research as a personal and critical habit — something exploratory, emotional, and connected to lived experience. My hope is that students begin to see that meaningful creative research can emerge from anywhere: a conversation, a film still, a walk through a market, or a scroll through their digital world. Ultimately, this project is as much about shifting how students think about research as what they research — encouraging them to claim ownership of their creative process and to value their own ways of seeing as legitimate and insightful.

In my own practice as an educator, this project also acts as a form of action research. It allows me to reflect on how students interpret freedom within structure, and how expanding the definition of research can affect engagement and confidence. As higher education continues to adapt to post-COVID realities and increasingly visual modes of communication, I believe it is vital that we recognise and celebrate research practices that are personal, diverse, and deeply rooted in the visual and cultural present.

References:

• Bestley, R. & McNeil, P. (2022). Visual Research: An Introduction to Research Methods in Graphic Design (3rd ed.). Bloomsbury.
• Gray, C. & Malins, J. (2004). Visualizing Research: A Guide to the Research Process in Art and Design. Routledge.
• Ryan, K. (2022). “Re-Framing the Arts Dissertation: The Visual Research Abstract as an Alternative, Innovative and Creative Approach to Fashion Research.” University of Southampton Institutional Repository.
• Rojas-Pernia, S. & Haya-Salmón, I. (2022). “Inclusive Research and the Use of Visual, Creative and Narrative Strategies in Spain.” Social Sciences, 11(4), 154.