Communicating sustainability: curating the ‘Making it Real’ installation, Trinity Leeds

With growing drives towards greater sustainability within the retail sector and growing requirement to conform to existing and emerging legislation, companies from ostensibly disparate sectors face the common challenge of encouraging the reduced consumption of saleable products, while simultaneously maintaining financial prosperity. Initially focused on knowledge exchange between the energy and water utilities and fashion retailers, TRANSFER (Trading Approaches to Nurturing Sustainable consumption in Fashion and Energy Retail) is now working together with a diverse group of large and SME (small- and medium-sized enterprises) retailers from a number of sectors, with the aim of successfully addressing this paradox. Combining the experiences of our commercial partners with academic expertise from a team of psychologists, fashion and management experts from the University of Sheffield and University of the Arts, London, TRANSFER is also investigating how efforts to promote sustainable consumption within retail are received and responded to by consumers. In fulfilling the project aims we hope to foster a more complete understanding of how retail sector initiatives can be successfully designed and implemented in order to have a positive impact on both retailers and their customers. This article provides a summary of the TRANSFER ‘Making it Real’ installation, held at Trinity Leeds shopping centre, (February 2015). This innovative, interactive exhibition was conceived of and developed upon the basis of discussions held with TRANSFER partners at a commercial partner workshop held in April 2014. TRANSFER is a knowledge exchange project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Retail Sector Initiative 2013 (ES/L005204/1).