A short textile program, “KIT Holistic Textile Summer School 2016,” was held from July 20 to 27, 2016. The first half of this program was also part of the 12th “YDK Symposium,” a collaborative textile program with participants from Yeungnam University (Korea), Donghua University (China) and KIT. In the YDK symposium, professors from Japan, China and Korea lectured before a rapt audience and participants gave insightful poster presentations, and visited a Toyobo Co., Ltd. research institute to observe their cutting-edge facilities.

The latter half of the summer school consisted of a newly developed program involving Hong Kong Polytechnic University undergraduates. With the support of an authorized NPO, “Kita-kinki Mirai,” we carried out a 2 day tour to northern Kyoto. In addition to visiting locally rooted textile companies such as Gunze Ltd. in Ayabe city and the Tango Chirimen weaving industry “Tayuh” in Kyotango city, participants experienced dyeing material and learned about the successive processes of unreeling silk from cocoons, spinning it into thread, weaving the threads into cloth, dying it and finally sending it to market as a garment. This also served as an opportunity for them to learn some modern Japanese history related to the textile industry. Participants all stayed the night at the KIT Kyotango campus, where they had a great time helping each other cook Japanese curry and rice.

A total of 36 students took part in the program in its entirety. This group included students from Pamukkale University (Turkey), Unversitat Politecnica de Catalunya (Spain) who were in Japan to work on other projects and KIT international students. Twelve KIT textile laboratories (in the Department of Advanced Fibro-Science and the Department of Biobased Material Science) were open to the students and three lectures were given to introduce the variety of textile research that KIT prides itself in.

On the last day the students divided into several multi-national teams and prepared presentations on the theme “Planning an Academic Tour of Textiles in Kyoto.” Students presented their impressions and thoughts on what they had learned through the program and proposed new ideas. They also remarked that they had enjoyed not only studying about textiles but also experiencing Japanese culture, food and scenery. They found working in cooperation with students with different cultural backgrounds to be interesting and highly stimulating, and had great expectations for next year’s program.

• Visiting laboratories
• Stencil dyeing experience
• Preparing presentations in teams
• Program completion ceremony