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The Cutting Circle is an international research initiative by fashion designers/patternmakers and educators Timo Rissanen, Julian Roberts and Holly McQuillan. By exploring alternative methods of making clothes and patterns, we have employed 'risky' design practice, research and teaching to develop zero waste fashion and subtraction cutting. The project manifested as an intensive two-week practice-based research event, where via a series of collaborative collisions, experiments and design intersections, we asked the following three questions. What costs/benefits can we identify to aid the development of a sustainable fashion industry through risk taking at the intersection of our design practices? What new knowledge arises in risky collaborative design practice? And how can this new knowledge be best communicated to foster an environment of risk-taking within the traditionally risk adverse fashion industry? This paper primarily discusses our responses to the first two questions and related issues raised. It covers how experimenting with each other's design practice and practicing in each other's creative space as we both designed and made, enable the free transfer of ideas and cross-pollination, thus expanding our ability to identify links, gaps and opportunities. The Cutting Circle project has developed experimental practices with emphasis on the fusion of aesthetics, patternmaking, craft and socially invigorating design.

THE fourth of the Aircraft Production Conferences organized by the Southern Section of the Institution of Production Engineers was again held at Southampton University. The theme this year was ‘Speeding Aircraft Production’. At this conference the inaugural Lord Sempill Paper was given by Sir Roy Fedden. This, and the other papers are summarized below, together with a fairly full report of the discussion on each paper.

Mail questionnaires were distributed to corporate donors in France, Germany and the UK in an attempt to ascertain the extents to which European businesses applied commercial principles to the management of their philanthropic activities. Substantial commercial orientation towards the corporate philanthropy (CP) function was observed among firms in all three countries, especially France. Majorities of businesses in the three samples located responsibility for CP in a marketing or public relations department, and large majorities of French and German respondents stated that CP was considered when drafting marketing plans. Significant differences in national approaches to the management of CP emerged in a number of areas: objective setting, centralisation of CP decision taking, use of external advisors, evaluation, and the degree of integration of CP into a company’s marketing communications mix. In general, respondents reported favourable perceptions of the contributions that CP could make to marketing communications.

It has often been said that a great part of the strength of Aslib lies in the fact that it brings together those whose experience has been gained in many widely differing fields but who have a common interest in the means by which information may be collected and disseminated to the greatest advantage. Lists of its members have, therefore, a more than ordinary value since they present, in miniature, a cross‐section of institutions and individuals who share this special interest.