B·SEArcular arrives at Maker Faire Barcelona 2019

This Saturday 5th October at 11:50h, within the maker fair of Barcelona, there will be a presentation of B·SEArcular, the sustainable fashion initiative we led last academic year with Epson and Seaqual. A few days earlier we have talked with the person in charge of the event, Mariona A. Cíller, founder and creative director of the integral center of scientific, technological and social innovation projects SokoTech.

- What is exactly the Maker Faire?

Organized by Sónar+D, Fab Lab Barcelona, SokoTech and Make with the collaboration of Barcelona City Council, our fair brings together the local and international maker community, understanding it as a broad universe that includes researchers and practitioners from the movement, universities, research centers and socially innovative companies. In short, it is the meeting where engineers, artists, designers, hackers, digital artisans, scientists and technologists present their projects to find solutions to the great challenges of an increasingly global and complex society.

- What is the relationship between the event hosted by Barcelona and those held in other cities around the world?

Make, co-organiser of the fair, inaugurated the first Maker Faire in San Francisco in 2006 and, shortly afterwards, this event gradually spread to the United States. Today the initiative is present all over the world. According to USA Today, participation in maker fairs increased by 939% in just five years. And we will continue to grow because this movement is changing the identity and meaning of consumption and blurring the boundaries between creators and consumers in today's society.

Mariona A. Cíller is the director of Maker Faire Barcelona

- Where would you like the fair to evolve in future editions?

We will continue to bet on circular economy and, within the framework of a progressively digital society, we want to stimulate and give visibility to all those projects and initiatives that make it possible to tackle the climate emergency.

- This Saturday morning, in the Speakers Corner section, you will moderate the session "B·SEArcular: Clean seas, sustainable fashion" with Raúl Sanahuja from Epson Ibérica and our head of Fashion Design area, Estel Vilaseca. What do you think is the value of the initiative?

The textile sector is the second most polluting industry in the world, and every year more than half a million tonnes of plastic waste are spilled in the Mediterranean Sea. It is as if the equivalent of 33,800 plastic bottles were thrown into the sea every minute. And, if we do nothing about it, these figures will quadruple by 2030.

We got to know B·SEArcular thanks to your fashion shows "Memories of the Future" and we immediately thought it was an excellent project because it illustrated in an exemplary way the return of polluting waste to the market converted into products of high social and economic value. The initiative contributes to reversing an emergency situation by recovering garbage, cleaning the seabed, creating sustainable fabrics and avoiding the consumption of new raw materials. The entire creative process that goes from obtaining the waste to the catwalk demonstrates the power of adding research and innovation in socially responsible companies.

Discover the full program of Maker Faire Barcelona 2019 here.

Images: Maker Faire Barcelona.