Schools must teach garment repair skills, Bergans says
Outdoor brand Bergans has said more high schools in Norway should teach sewing and textile crafts as a subject.
The company’s sustainability manager, Yngvill Ofstad, has said that new-generation product developers and garment repairers are going to have important roles to play as the garment industry moves to a more circular model.
Bergans has welcomed a new textile strategy announced by the European Commission earlier this year and the requirements that will follow for all garment manufacturers to make it easier to repair damaged products. But the company said important questions flowed from this regarding who will carry out the repairs.
Ms Ofstad has raised this question during a tour of Norway that Bergans has been making this summer. When the tour reached Arendal in the south-east of the country in August, she wasted no time in visiting a local school, Sam Eyde High School, to show students this aspect of Bergans’ work at the very start of a new academic year.
Of 400 high schools throughout Norway, Bergans has calculated that only 20 offer students the chance to choose crafts, design and product development as a subject. And of those 20, even fewer offer options in sewing and textile crafts.
“It was fantastic to meet the designers and product developers of the future here at Sam Eyde,” Yngvill Ofstad said after the visit. “At the same time, it is a little worrying that there are so few students taking this field of study in Norway.”
She said teaching these skills to young people was about much more than maintaining old craft traditions. She argued that students such as the ones she encountered in Arendal will become the professionals who will help secure the circular business models of the future.
Image: Bergans
