DIASPORA PROJECT WITH GRAY SCHOOL OF ARTS
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVYEQNfiDi6/?igsi=MWF2cmQ0d2lmYWxkdQ==Diaspora Project with Gray’s School of Art
NABA Clothing’s collaboration with Gray’s School of Art at Robert Gordon University brought together fashion, culture and emerging creative talent through a project centred on the meaning of diaspora.
For NABA, diaspora is more than movement from one country to another. It is the experience of carrying your identity, memories and cultural influences into new environments and allowing them to evolve without losing their roots. Having established NABA in Nigeria before continuing the brand’s journey in the United Kingdom, this subject reflects both the personal story of founder Oluwadamilola Adeola and the wider direction of the brand.
Working with second-year students at Gray’s School of Art created an opportunity to explore this idea through fresh creative perspectives. Students were introduced to NABA’s story, design language and relationship with African identity, contemporary streetwear and global culture. They were then encouraged to interpret the theme of diaspora through their own research and creative practice.
The project developed into a multidisciplinary exchange featuring ideas for prints, hoodies, T-shirts, stickers and jewellery. Each response offered a different interpretation of identity, migration, belonging and cultural transformation. Rather than presenting diaspora as one fixed experience, the work demonstrated how people carry multiple stories, places and influences within them.
The collaboration also allowed NABA to engage directly with a new generation of designers and artists. Conversations throughout the project highlighted the importance of collaboration in fashion not simply as a way of creating products, but as a way of exchanging experiences and developing new ways of thinking.
For NABA, the experience reinforced the brand’s evolving philosophy: Rooted in identity. Evolving globally. Our heritage remains central to what we create, but it is continually reshaped by new environments, relationships and creative encounters.
The Diaspora Project with Gray’s School of Art represents an important chapter in NABA’s journey. It connects education, cultural storytelling and contemporary design while demonstrating how fashion can become a language through which identity is remembered, shared and reimagined.
As NABA continues to grow, the brand remains committed to creating work that reflects the stories people carry and the different places they call home.
