MA Fashion Business and Marketing

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)

Course content related to sustainable development

The global fashion industry faces increasing pressure to address environmental and ethical challenges. Fast fashion, unsustainable sourcing, and wasteful production models have significant impacts on climate change, resource depletion, and workers’ rights. The MA Fashion Business and Marketing programme was designed to prepare graduates to lead change and drive ethical transformation in the fashion industry, combining creative innovation with ethical business practices to highlight that sustainability is not an optional add-on, but a core business driver. Students not only learn about sustainability, but they also apply it directly in projects, research, and enterprise, ensuring their work has measurable social, economic, and environmental impact.

Sustainability is embedded across the programme’s Intended Learning Outcomes, assessments, and live industry projects. Students are encouraged to analyse sustainable markets, suppliers, and funding opportunities through strategic research; explore and evaluate alternative fashion business models with a critical focus on sustainable practices; and evidence ethical management, sourcing, supply, and production in their business plans. Students develop, test, and refine a viable business or start-up concept that must incorporate sustainable strategies.

Teaching integrates concepts such as the circular economy, government legislation, promoting sustainable production and consumption models based on sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing, and recycling, working alongside industry partner ACS Clothing. This approach is paired with ecological awareness, encouraging students to view climate challenges as opportunities for innovative business leadership. Joint delivery between Salford Business School and the School of Arts, Media and Creative Technology ensures a blend of commercial and creative expertise. 

Graduates leave with the skills to lead ethically and respond to changing consumer and environmental demands. One notable example is Stephanous Polyviou, a 2024 graduate who won a Create Student Award for his initiatives in sustainable fashion. His work actively promoted environmental awareness and drove change within the industry, demonstrating how ESD principles translate into real-world impact.

Competencies for sustainability

A key element of ESD is supporting learners to develop competencies that will help them to tackle and cope with sustainability challenges. Within the MA Fashion Business and Marketing the key competencies developed are: 

• Empathy: The programme explores how there is often a lack of empathy within the industry particularly for factory garment workers and unethical practices within the supply chain. The programme uses material from academic sources and includes information from the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, The Transparency Index and industry pressure groups, and students learn about the value of owning and running a sustainable business.  
• Critical thinking: When investigating the advertisement industry, particularly around products such as recyclable polyester, it is important to acknowledge it is still polyester and so still creates microplastics in our waterway systems. The programme also looks at greenwashing and questioning sustainable practices amongst fast fashion brands.

Pedagogical approaches

ESD uses action-orientated and transformative pedagogical approaches to facilitate taking sustainability knowledge and competencies into practice. Teaching methods and pedagogical practices used in the MA Fashion Business and Marketing include:

• Case studies
• Experiential project work 
• Stimulus activities
• Real-world learning

Questions to Deborah Smailes

How do you link ESD to industry?

The programme engages closely with industry leaders and pioneers championing sustainable practices, with a strong focus on practical solutions. This includes ACS Clothing, whose Sustainability Manager delivers a guest lecture at the sustainable fashion symposium, covering textile and garment recycling as well as regenerative textiles. The session also explores technology, particularly AI and how it plays a significant role in the fashion supply chain, highlighting the collaboration between technological innovation and sustainable infrastructure.

Students also visit ACS’s facility, gaining first-hand experience of large-scale garment recycling processes. These visits provide powerful, real-world context, allowing students to see how the theoretical principles taught on the course are applied in industry. Many students describe these visits as eye-opening, reinforcing their understanding of sustainable systems and inspiring them to integrate similar practices into their own business ideas.

The programme also leverages Manchester, Salford, and the wider North West’s vibrant fashion scene as a real-world laboratory for sustainable business practice and introduces students to a wide variety of guest speakers and events that promote sustainable business operations. These range from exploring alternative sustainable fabrics, offering valuable insight into the environmental and ethical issues associated with these materials, to understanding industry certifications and new EU & UK government legislation.

The 2023-2024 External Examiners' report on this programme said: 'The skills developed throughout the course prepare and allow for students to enter into self-employment, fashion management or further study with clear interactions with industry prior to graduation.'

How do you link ESD to other priorities such as decolonising the curriculum, acknowledging and learning from Indigenous Knowledge, and wider equity, diversity and inclusion?

The programme addresses all four pillars of sustainability, including the cultural dimension. Inclusivity is a core priority, with teaching that examines issues such as cultural appropriation in the fashion industry and the lack of recognition for certain artisan practices.

The curriculum also explores alterative economies such as the degrowth economy, which shifts the focus from purely monetary profit to valuing health, community, workers, and the land. This approach encourages students to critically question traditional economic models and consider alternative frameworks that prioritise equity, diversity, and sustainability.

Why did you include ESD in your teaching?

I am passionate about equipping learners with the knowledge and skills to adopt sustainable practices within the fashion supply chain, incorporating all four pillars of sustainability: economic, social, environmental, and cultural.

We are seeing an influx of students with a strong curiosity about sustainability. Many have been engaged in initiatives such as the School Strikes for Climate, and they arrive in higher education prepared and rightly determined to question institutional inaction. As academics, we have a responsibility to be ready for these students and to provide them with the critical tools they need to lead change.

Our students recognise the destructive practices embedded within fast fashion and ultra-fast fashion business models, and they are actively exploring innovative strategies to counteract these. Many go on to gain work experience within sustainable business departments and subsequently move into permanent roles in the sustainability sector, translating their learning into tangible industry impact.

Feedback from students about the programme

• “Studying fashion business and marketing has been a life changing journey that has enhanced both my knowledge of the industry and professional ambition. It has helped me to understand the fundamentals of the fashion industry, and to be a successful and responsible entrepreneur. With outstanding lectures from experienced lecturers, including workshops, and seminars by professionals within the fashion industry, alongside a trip to ACS clothing and a guest talk from the sustainable business manager at ACS clothing during our symposium on circularity, technology, ethics, and promotion was an eye opener that has given me the experience and confidence I need to succeed in the ever-changing fashion industry”.
• “Deborah’s teaching in the Circular Economy and Responsible Management module fundamentally transformed my understanding of sustainability, not just as a concept, but as a tangible, actionable framework for the future of fashion. She created a learning environment that encouraged critical thinking, real-world application, and meaningful innovation. This comparative approach gave me a truly global perspective on sustainability”
• “One of the most memorable and impactful components of the module was the visit to ACS Clothing. Seeing their advanced garment repair, refurbishment, and rental logistics in action brought circular economy principles to life. It demonstrated how technology, operational efficiency, and customer engagement can align to create a scalable, sustainable business model.”
• “The course also emphasised responsible leadership and regulatory awareness, topics that are increasingly vital in today’s fashion industry. Learning about Extended Producer Responsibility, green claims legislation, and transparency requirements equipped me with the knowledge to build a brand that is not only sustainable by design but also compliant and credible in a regulated market.”
• “It gave me the space to explore my interest in sustainability and circular practices in a way that felt practical and relevant to the fashion industry. The course helped me think more deeply about how sustainability can be integrated into business and marketing decisions, rather than being treated as an add-on.”
• “The visit to ACS Clothing was a particularly impactful experience, as it brought circular economy concepts to life within a real-world fashion context. Seeing how clothing rental, reuse, and lifecycle management are successfully implemented at an industry level strengthened my understanding of how sustainable practices can be both environmentally responsible and commercially viable.”
• “The MA Fashion Business and Marketing course has played a key role in developing my understanding of sustainability and circular practices within the fashion industry. The course encouraged me to critically examine the environmental and social impact of fashion through topics such as circular business models, responsible sourcing, product life-cycle, and sustainable marketing strategies. These themes were integrated across the course, allowing me to explore sustainability as a core business consideration rather than a solo concept.”