Field of Jeans comes to Sheffield city centre

Field of Jeans (Credit Gavin Duthie)

Field of Jeans comes to Sheffield city centre

An exhibition with a difference is coming to Sheffield´s Peace Gardens and Winter Gardens next week (12-13 September 2011) to showcase the world's first air-purifying jeans, as part of a project between the University of Sheffield and London College of Fashion.

Field of Jeans forms part of Catalytic Clothing, a venture which aims to explore how clothing and textiles can be used as a catalytic surface to purify the air we breathe.

Around 30 pairs of jeans, donated by the general public, have been treated with a substance that enables them to break down pollutants from the surrounding atmosphere. The jeans will be mounted on cane and grouped together in the Peace Gardens, and later some of the jeans will be scattered throughout the Winter Gardens for visitors to walk amongst.

Catalytic Clothing is the creation of unlikely collaborators Professor Helen Storey MBE, a practising artist and designer at London College of Fashion, and Professor Tony Ryan OBE, a scientist at the University of Sheffield. It is hoped the fusion of fashion and science will produce extraordinary results.

Professor Tony Ryan, Pro Vice-Chancellor for the Faculty of Science at the University of Sheffield, said: "Field of Jeans is the latest issue of Catalytic Clothing and a beautiful manifestation of a deeply technical process. There are more pairs of jeans than people on the earth. We are developing something using both of them, that is both user-friendly and technically excellent, to improve the urban environment."

With the shared purpose of tackling some of the world's most pressing environmental problems and the desire to improve the quality of our lives and those of future generations, the radical idea for Catalytic Clothing emerged.

Professor Helen Storey MBE added: "Catalytic Clothing is the most challenging, globally relevant project I have ever attempted. Behind almost all human advancement lies a science. Through my work, I try to share and involve the public with these possibilities."

The work links in with the University of Sheffield´s Project Sunshine, led by the Faculty of Science which aims to unite scientists across the traditional boundaries in both the pure and applied sciences to harness the power of the Sun and tackle the biggest challenge facing the world today: meeting the increasing food and energy needs of the world´s population in the context of an uncertain climate and global environment change. It is hoped that Project Sunshine will change the way scientists think and work and become the inspiration for a new generation of scientists focused on solving the world´s problems.

s: Field of Jeans will be on display in Sheffield as follows:
Peace Gardens: Monday 12 September 10am-5pm
Winter Gardens: Monday 12 September 6pm until Tuesday 13 September 6pm.

Sheffield City Council and DED Associates are partners in the project.

To find out more about Catalytic Clothing and Field of Jeans visit the link below.

Find Catalytic Clothing on Facebook at the link below.

To follow the project on Twitter and find out more about future Catalytic Clothing events, follow the link below.

To find out more about Project Sunshine, visit the link below.