Elections special: fashion meets politics

“To make politics relevant, you need to take it out of its normal space.”

Fed up with politics as they stood, Amisha Ghadiali, a 27 year-old jewellery designer based in London, also an associate director of the Ethical Fashion Forum, decided to launch her own campaign and turn politics into something completely new: something fun. 

“I suddenly realised it was an election year but I wasn’t excited,” Ghadiali says. “I felt my generation, which in many ways has been active and has taken to the streets, had been let down.”

Enter Think Act Vote, a campaign that Ghadiali thought up and set up alone, although not without the help of her friends both inside and outside of the industry. Behind it were three principles. 

“Choosing a future, understanding how important the single act of voting is and realising that you commit political acts every day, not just on election day.”

Rather than be a purely politically driven campaign, Think Act Vote, has had the signature of a young ethical fashion activist from the beginning, using creative energy to mobilise people and their opinions. No preachiness, just a bit of fun to get people engaged.

From a t-shirt competition that asked people to put forward designs they thought would best represent the campaign, to a poetry competition, to an invitation to take part in a shoeless march, things have never become boring, negative or repetitive.

Ghadiali is actually used to combining her skills and interests. Far from following the classic path of a jewellery designer, she studied Politics and Parliamentary studies at university, and was a researcher in the British Parliament as well as an intern on Capitol Hill. Later, while she was setting up her own label Amisha, she decided to donate 10 per cent of all the profit she made to charity.

In this case, rather than asking people “what’s the future you choose?” and having the answers simply posted on the website or on Facebook, she decided to make a beautiful photography coffee table book out of it, filled with people’s positive ideas about the future.

The book, entitled The Future I Choose, should be presented to the British prime minister in June and hopes to inspire him with people’s genuine dreams and hopes.

“When it comes down to it, politics is about creating the world we want to live in, not about going through a list of policies.” 

Whichever prime minister it turns out being, fingers crossed he listens.

www.thinkactvote.org

www.amisha.co.uk