Choose Your Cause

Here is the question the rest of this course hangs on:

How can I use our fashion tech runway show as a platform to advocate for an idea, issue, or cause that matters to me?

Everything you build from here — every circuit, every stitch, every design decision — will be in service of your answer. So it’s worth taking a whole lesson to choose well.

What makes a good cause?

One that’s yours. We’ve watched hundreds of students go through this process, and the pattern is unmistakable: pieces built on causes the designer genuinely cares about end up with more detail, more nuance, and more persistence behind them. When the hot glue fails at 4pm the day before the show, “I picked this because my friend picked it” doesn’t refuel you. “This matters to me” does.

Causes don’t have to be global. “Stricter gun laws” and “stop ocean pollution” have walked our runways — but so have “my brother’s music deserves an audience” and “being different isn’t scary.” School-sized, neighborhood-sized, and heart-sized causes are all real advocacy.

Activity: Find it, then pitch it

Work through the Cause Finder worksheet — a five-minute brain dump, the “change one thing” test, and two finalists.

Then comes the part that makes it real: pitch your cause to the class and convince at least two designers to join your team. Advocacy that can’t recruit two friends isn’t ready for a runway audience. If someone else’s pitch grabs you harder than your own — join them! Being convinced is not losing; it’s advocacy working.

For teachers: The pitch is the assessment. Don’t polish it into a presentation — thirty seconds, standing up, no slides. Teams of 2–4 work best; solo designers can be allowed but should be asked to re-pitch once more first. If a student is stuck, the worksheet’s four “change one thing” prompts (school / neighborhood / world / my life) unstick almost everyone.

Before you move on

• Your team exists, and each member can say the cause in one sentence
• Write that sentence somewhere you’ll see it for the rest of the course — it’s the north star every later lesson checks against