CREATIVES WANT CHANGE

PRE-COLLEGE SUMMER PROGRAMS TO BUILD AN EDUCATIONAL PIPELINE IN FASHION DESIGN

With so few Black senior and executivelevel leaders in fashion and retail industries, Creatives Want Change (CWC) saw an opportunity to raise awareness within the Black community and help cultivate Black creative talent beginning in high school and continuing into early professional development. “Our program pillars create an educational pipeline that starts with pre-college programs and feeds those high school students into mentorships, internships, and eventually into top apprenticeships and full-ride undergraduate scholarships,” explained Namasha Schelling, CWC Program Director. “This network that the students build over the years will help them in their early professional careers and we hope it will eventually land them in leadership positions at fashion and retail companies.”

CWC provides students with lifechanging opportunities that shape their high school, college and early career trajectories.

With funding from The VF Foundation this past year, CWC was able to send a new cohort of students to pre-college programs. The VF Foundation also participated in CWC’s mentorship program. Eunice Lee, Global Creative Design Director at The North Face®, mentored CWC Fellow Dayne Thompson through the highly competitive application process. Dayne was recently accepted into New York’s prestigious Parsons School of Design.

Namasha said, “The only way to get more Black creative talent in the industry is to cultivate this talent, starting at the high school level. It is too late to start in college. Since many Black high school students cannot afford college, we must disrupt the system with alternatives, like paid apprenticeships, that can circumvent the college system and give companies the trained employees they need. Additionally, companies across the country have made significant pledges to meet ambitious and necessary diversity, equity, and inclusion goals. And they can only reach these goals if there is an educational pipeline like ours that will train BIPOC students with the needed skills.”