Make your own

The CLOAK Protocol →
Make Your Own CLOAK Event

CLOAK: Queer Science, Fashion & STEMM brought together scientists with emerging fashion designers to reinvent the lab coat as a symbol of queer pride. The CLOAK PROTOCOL, first designed and implemented by the CLOAK Collective is shared for others to adapt and iterate for their own interdisciplinary contexts, for research and practice that builds and centers community.

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Our project implementation team included six researchers. Of these, one person was designated to take ethnographic notes as part of the commitment to documentation and reproduction of the project. Another team member was highly skilled in photography, and was responsible for both documentary photography during the first workshop as well as formal art direction guiding a team of photographers and videographers for documentation purposes during the second workshop.

Other responsibilities of the research team included outreach and recruitment, budgeting, ethics and photography approvals, venue booking and timeline management. They were also responsible for facilitating the workshops. One researcher was also a scientist-participant in the project.

Our project first recruited scientists through the partner group QueersInScience (NSW), an advocacy organisation which one of the researchers was a member of. Through initial outreach, 35 people expressed interest. They were then contacted and asked to fill out a response form which asked them to confirm their identification as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community and a member of the STEMM community. The third question was open response and was designed to capture any other aspect of the participants identity that they thought might be relevant. It asked respondents to “share a little more about yourself below (e.g. STEMM discipline, identity within the LGBTQI+ community, cultural/ethnic background, disability, age and anything else you might like to share).” From this response, 12 participants were selected to achieve maximum diversity in race, ethnicity, disability and neurodivergence.

The fashion design students were recruited through a member of the research team who led a university fashion design course. Students in the fashion design program were emailed with an invitation to take part in the project with the understanding that not participating would in no way prejudice their study or results. Details of the commitment (two half-day workshops and a project launch) and remuneration ($200 honoraria per workshop) were also provided in the communication. At no time did we ask the fashion designers to identify themselves in terms of gender or sexuality. 

In the first workshop, participants initially sat wherever they chose, dividing in this case naturally into scientist and designer halves of the room. With guidance from the facilitators, participants ran through several ice breakers, such as describing the atmosphere of the room.

The participants were then broken into pairs. Playing cards were used to randomly assign fashion students to scientists, except for the two senior designers who were each paired with one of the two established scientists, to even out disparities of rank.

Meaningful collaboration emerged through extended time to collaborate. Participants discussed a range of topics throughout the initial design consultation, such as:

Self and identity
Day-to-day job role
How participants became interested in their respective fields
Relationship to family, culture and religion

Scientists and designers were also prompted to discuss fashion in pairs, including:

What they normally wear to work (eg PPE)
What they wore today and why
Their overall style and relationship with fashion

During the fitting stage, some scientist-participants also brought along significant objects, such as pride flags or beloved items of clothing, to inspire the design process. Events like shared lunches and after-workshop informal drinks were also used to connect participants and build cohort community.

Housekeeping at the beginning of workshops explicitly acknowledged Country, as they were being held on unceded, colonised lands and this was an important context for supporting project goals of acknowledging those who are unrepresented in traditional research outputs.

Bathrooms were explicitly included in housekeeping, including accessible bathrooms for those with physical access needs, and all-gender bathrooms which ensured that genderqueer participants were considered in the space.

Participants were engaged to approve photographs at the time they were taken, and images were deleted on the spot if a participant did not approve them. Participants were also encouraged to provide feedback or share ideas about the photographic process to create a more welcoming environment.

Workshop one was held in the design student’s studios, while workshop two was held in a lab environment more familiar to the scientists.

Documentary photography and staged photography were both major components of this project’s outputs. In the first workshop, outcomes included photographs of the design consultation in progress among participants. In the second workshop, headshots of the scientists in their cloaks, photographs of scientist and designer pairs with the cloaks, and various group photographs were taken. A video was also produced, which included multiple sites and a catwalk-style shot of the scientists posed in a wet lab. Specific directions (look serious, look silly, etc) were used to engage participants who are unused to photoshoots.

As one of the scientists had a strong social media presence tied to their scientific research communication work, they took photographs of their cloak for social media. Other participants also took photographs on their phone for personal documentation.

Ethnographic notes were taken by a researcher throughout the process, to maximise the material which may be useful for later outputs such as publications.

The CLOAK Protocol is licenced under CC_BY. This enables re-users to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. Suggested text: "With thanks to the original creators of CLOAK: Queer Science, Fashion & Photography, who play a role in providing project advice and linkages between previous, current, and future iterations of the CLOAK protocol."