No place like home

 

Inner-city work placement opportunities are coveted by many fashion students. But as Assia Benmedjdoub discovers, sometimes the most interesting experiences require a little bit of travel.

To the uninitiated, Moree is an outback town set along the dusty border of New South Wales and Queensland. Locally, at least to the indigenous inhabitants who make up some 17 per cent of the district's total population, it is referred to as a "place of water holes and springs".

The first representation is pretty straight forward - Moree is situated 647 kilometres north-west of Sydney and 444 kilometres south-west of Brisbane. There's even a locally published magazine called Border Living which is distributed to residents living along that stretch of land which divides loyal Broncos and Roosters fans. 

The second representation also makes good sense to the thousands of tourists who flock to Moree each year - the area is famous for its natural artesian hot springs, believed to have health benefits for anyone keen to dip in a toe or two.
According to TAFE New England Institute's Belinda Pring, who heads up the fashion faculty at the Moree Campus, there's a lesser known but equally intriguing hook to the area.

"There's a thriving fashion community here." She should know. The institute has been building ties to local clothing, textile and accessory businesses and designers for over a decade. It started with a collaboration between students of TAFE New England and unisex wholesale group Goondiwindi Cotton, a business which now produces 20,000 garments per year.

Those enrolled in the Clothing Production Certificate course were invited to work on Goondiwindi Cotton garments, and at completion of their training, able to start working for the company from home. The Goondiwindi-headquartered brand produces polo shirts, rugby shirts, shorts, skirts and pants as well as a range of corporate wear for both men and women.

Pring says the initiative made a substantial contribution to the local community and created employment opportunities for local Aboriginal people. Today, the company supplies 200 stockists throughout Australia and increasingly many other countries throughout the world.

"The company helped to train sewers and in turn, the production manager used our premises," she recalls. "The company has gotten so big now it's had to move offshore, but there are still opportunities for our students to learn there."  

The Goondiwindi Cotton project was just the start in a long line of community collaborations. In 2001, work and headwear company Newcastle Hats relocated to Coonabarabran with the intention of harnessing the institute's talent pool. The business produces thousands of garments for corporate, consumer and wholesale clients across Australia, North America, Europe and New Zealand. Its claim to fame is washable, squashable hats, which it created soon after Bob Cruickshank and Carol Graham founded the company in 1988.

New owners Rob and Annie Lord say they would not have purchased the business and relocated to the area had it not been for the "outstanding" TAFE textile, clothing and footwear training facility.

"On relocation, we then started to work with TAFE on assessing staff and training needs," the Lords recall. "In the next one to two years, a small textile association was formed with four other businesses and TAFE with regular meetings to network, provide technical support and generally improve each other's business."

Subsequently, the institute was asked to modify the delivery of its Certificate Two course so that it could run four days per week over a three-month period. "This was very successful with several people employed from the course," the pair say.

Over the past seven years, five staff from Newcastle Hats have attained either Certificate Two or Three through traineeship programs provided through the academy. The Lords believe relocating to Coonabarabran has enabled them to expand their manufacturing capacity and better compete against cheap imports.

Outside of corporate arrangements, TAFE New England also encourages students in its Aboriginal-based fashion classes to engage in local trade. Sewing and screen printing classes have worked in conjunction with Mehi Murri, a business founded by students of the Aboriginal Arts and Tourism course, to produce promotional items for the burgeoning tourism market. Mehi Murri products are made on-site with students also responsible for the design of their own packaging and advertising. 

"We've got an arrangement where tour buses actually come into the TAFE campus and see how the students work," Pring says. "In the colder seasons, the area gets about 2500 tourists a month so it's quite a busy little industry. They look for things like promotional bags for conferences and printed fabrics."

Students harness both traditional and contemporary Aboriginal concepts during the design process with products such as T-shirts, aprons, tea-towels and clothing featuring river, bush and indigenous motifs. Classes have also been involved in sewing Christmas flags for Moree Plains Shire Council and aprons and bandanas for special community events. Pring says demand for such skills is never short in supply.

"The launch of these projects came through community approaching TAFE for help in sewing and printing bags for advertising. The more students produced and printed, the more interest there was. The tourists that came through Moree to visit the Hot Artesian Baths would often call in to buy tea towels with [special] designs on them to take back to family. And it continues to grow from there." 

Community ties

It's not just regional institutes which are building bridges to local community. Susan Wall, head teacher of fashion technology at TAFE Macquarie Fields, recounts how the institute is reaching out to the area's migrant population.

:"At Macquarie Fields the Fashion Staff work closely with other support units in TAFE specifically staff skilled in ESOL (English as a Second Language) and Language and Literacy programs so that our multicultural cohort of students can cope with the reporting and communication requirements of the fashion industry. Close attention has been paid to specification sheets to keep them informative but simple in language and still industry relevant.

Specific community groups are catered for as we are in the final stages of a Certificate II in Clothing Production being delivered at the college and at Fairfield Migrant Centre. This was a commercial venture under the "workskill" voucher system to recognise existing skills in the community and gap train to a Certificate II level qualification. Initially classes were at the centre so that the group became comfortable with the education process. Students were then gradually introduced to the college and its facilities to broaden learning. Students will go on to a higher level certificate or look for work.

By Assia Benmedjdoub