SYDNEY.- Founder and executive director of the newly created Sherman Centre for Culture and Ideas (SCCI), Dr Gene Sherman AM, announced the Centre’s five-year vision to elevate fashion and architecture to a more prominent place alongside other mediums of cultural expression. SCCI is the latest evolution of the re-named not for profit Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF).

Dr Sherman said “Our aim is to provide a vibrant platform for the exchange of the most challenging and engaging ideas on architecture and fashion, within the broader context of culture. Fashion, in particular, has lacked serious attention as a sophisticated, intellectually rich and multifaceted mode of creative expression. Through SCCI, we seek to elevate it to a more prominent position alongside other artforms, and begin a conversation that is long past due. The very best of contemporary ideas on architecture, and its intersections with cultural, social, aesthetic and economic life, will also be explored intensively at SCCI.”

Dr Sherman revealed headline international guests, fashion industry participants and highlights of the panels, presentations and workshops that will feature in the inaugural SCCI Fashion Hub, to be presented around Sydney from 5 until 21 April 2018.

SCCI will be presented twice yearly, with a concentrated public event programmes held at locations in Sydney from 2018 until 2022. The annual SCCI Fashion Hub will be held each April/May, with the SCCI Architecture Hub being presented every September/October.

Three headline speakers anchor the first iteration of the SCCI Fashion Hub programme that encompasses more than 40 separate events. Hailing from France, India and Japan and collectively signalling fashion history, design and publishing, transnational boundaries blur and East meets West as Emmanuel Coquery, Akira Minagawa and Bandana Tewari’s thinking collide in a mash-up that expands outward through the SCCI Fashion Hub duration.

Deep Dive Forum days delve into the topic through the prism of words, ethics and the petites mains craftsmanship. Fashion films and fashion collecting add weight to these high-focus segments. Studio newGen looks to the young with age-specific workshops focussed on topic-related upcycling, animation, illustration and photography, whilst SCCI Atelier engages embroidery fashionistas as well as sutra stitching meditators. Textiles talk, performers perform and The Art of Fashion takes its rightful place in the cultural firmament.

The Deep Dive Forums, Performance Pods and Capsule talks have been devised in collaboration with fashion innovators and thinkers: journalist and author Caroline Baum, Wardrobe Crisis author Clare Press, documentary film producer Julia Overton, curator and writer Alison Kubler, fashion industry MD and senior board director, Julie Ann Morrison, custodian of The Darnell Collection, Charlotte Smith, and musicians and artists, Joanna Weinberg, Nasim Nasr, Brendan de la Hay and Katie Elle Reeve.

The past, present and potential future of fashion will be held up to scrutiny, the latter debated in panels and via films created in competition by AFTRS students.

SCCI’s inaugural partners include The Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, the University of Technology, Sydney, the Australian Film Television and Radio School and the Barangaroo Delivery Authority, with support from the Embassy of France in Australia.