Wear It Again: Taking Responsible Management Education Beyond the Classroom
How can responsible management education move beyond the classroom and become something students can experience first-hand? In this guest blog, Dr Lisa Rees-O’Donnell of Salford Business School explores how Wear It Again brought together students, academics, businesses, charities and community partners to examine sustainable fashion, circular enterprise and responsible business in practice. Through creative reuse, cross-disciplinary collaboration and direct engagement with practitioners, the initiative demonstrates how PRME principles can inspire meaningful, applied learning.
Wear It Again: Taking Responsible Management Education Beyond the Classroom
By Dr Lisa Rees-O'Donnell, Salford Business School, University of Salford
What happens when sustainability moves beyond lecture theatres and academic frameworks to become something students can see, question and experience? At the University of Salford, Wear It Again brought together students, academics, businesses, social enterprises, charities and community partners to explore sustainable fashion, circular enterprise and responsible business practice. The result was a celebration of creativity, collaboration and the possibilities of sustainability in action.
Making sustainability visible
As business schools, we have a responsibility to prepare graduates who understand not only how businesses operate, but also the wider economic, social and environmental consequences of business decisions. The Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) provide an important foundation for this ambition. However, bringing these principles to life requires us to think beyond traditional teaching spaces and create opportunities for students to experience responsible business practice first hand.
This was the thinking behind Wear It Again: Fashion, Community and Circular Style, a sustainable fashion and thrift event held at the University of Salford on 24th September 2026 as part of the University's Centenary Planet 100 programme.
The event was developed through collaboration between Salford Business School, our fashion and creative disciplines, Salford City Council, GM Business Growth Hub, local charities, sustainable businesses, social enterprises and alumni.
Our ambition was to create something that went beyond raising awareness of sustainable fashion. We wanted to bring together people who were already making a difference, showcase practical alternatives to conventional consumption and give students the opportunity to explore the realities of responsible business.
Fashion provided an ideal starting point. Clothing is something we all engage with, yet behind every garment are questions about resources, production, working conditions, supply chains, consumer behaviour and waste.
By focusing on thrift, repair, reuse and upcycling, we could make these complex issues accessible while challenging perceptions of what sustainable consumption looks like.
From thrift purchases to the runway
One of the most engaging aspects of Wear It Again was the opportunity to demonstrate how unwanted clothing could be transformed into something desirable, practical and creative.
Throughout the day, charity and thrift stalls provided opportunities to explore pre-loved clothing, while upcycling activities encouraged participants to rethink the value of garments that might otherwise be discarded.
Rag Revival contributed practical repair and upcycling activities, demonstrating how relatively simple skills can extend the life of clothing and offer alternatives to replacement and disposal.
A particularly important contribution came from Deborah Smailes, Programme Leader for MA Fashion Business and Marketing, who brought together fashion students to transform thrift purchases and pre-loved garments into contemporary designs for the fashion showcase.
Working with reclaimed clothing, the students applied their creative and technical skills to reimagine garments for different purposes and occasions. The design challenge encouraged consideration of functionality, wearability, aesthetics and the responsible use of materials.
The resulting fashion showcase brought these ideas to life, demonstrating that circular fashion is not simply about reducing waste. It can also inspire creativity, innovation and new approaches to design and enterprise.
For those watching, the runway offered a powerful visual reminder that garments do not necessarily lose their value when their original owner no longer wants them. With imagination and practical skills, they can have an entirely new life.
This was sustainability in action, made visible through the creativity of our students.
Learning from businesses putting sustainability into practice
Alongside the practical activities, Wear It Again created opportunities for students to engage directly with sustainable business founders, entrepreneurs, alumni and practitioners.
Two panel discussions, moderated by Dr Gabi Round, brought together contributors from businesses and initiatives including DAEZ, Rose & Co Bare, Closet Remix and Fashion Fusion CIC, alongside sustainable fashion entrepreneurs and a postgraduate fashion student.
The conversations explored some of the most pressing challenges facing the fashion industry, from production and supply chains to consumption, waste and the growing interest in circular business models.
Importantly, the discussions moved beyond the assumption that sustainability is simply a matter of making better choices.
For smaller businesses, adopting more sustainable practices can involve difficult commercial decisions. Ethical sourcing, responsible production, affordability and customer expectations must often be balanced against limited resources and the need to remain financially viable.
The panel discussions encouraged students to consider these realities.
What does sustainable fashion mean in practice? Can repair, resale and upcycling become commercially sustainable business models? How can smaller enterprises balance their environmental ambitions with the costs of doing business? And how can businesses demonstrate genuine impact rather than simply making sustainability claims?
These were not hypothetical questions. They were explored through the experiences of people establishing and operating businesses in this space.
For students, hearing directly from practitioners offered an opportunity to question assumptions, recognise competing priorities and understand how ethical and sustainable business decisions are made in practice.
Connecting the experience to responsible management education
A central ambition of Wear It Again was to connect the event with student learning rather than treat it as a standalone activity.
The initiative was embedded within the Level 6 Business Ethics and Sustainability module at Salford Business School, creating an opportunity for students to explore the relationship between business ethics, sustainability and commercial practice through direct engagement.
A structured learning activity encouraged students to attend the panel discussions, explore the thrift and upcycling stalls, speak with businesses and identify examples of responsible business practice.
Rather than simply recording what they had seen, students were encouraged to question the environmental and ethical challenges being addressed, consider who benefited from different approaches and identify the limitations or trade-offs involved.
They were also asked to connect their observations to academic theory, Carbon Literacy and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. This provided a direct link to their assessments, including a Carbon Literacy Reflective Portfolio and a Blueprint for Ethical and Sustainable Business Practice.
The intention was not for the event to replace academic research, but to provide authentic examples and questions that students could subsequently investigate through theory and evidence.
For us, this is an important distinction
Responsible management education should not be limited to understanding frameworks or identifying examples of good practice. It should also develop students' ability to question business decisions, recognise tensions between competing priorities and consider what responsible action might look like in different organisational contexts.
By engaging with sustainable businesses and social enterprises, students could see that responsible management involves judgement, compromise, innovation and a willingness to challenge established ways of working.
The value of bringing different disciplines and communities together
One of the strongest features of Wear It Again was the breadth of collaboration involved.
Business students approached sustainability through the perspectives of ethics, enterprise, stakeholders and commercial decision making. Fashion students contributed knowledge of materials, design, garment construction and creative reuse.
Together, these different perspectives demonstrated how sustainability challenges can be approached through both business thinking and practical
