BTB21 turned its attention to the global nature of textiles and the relationships they create. Turner Prize winner, Lubaina Himid presented an epic installation using (so called) Dutch Wax Print in the Great Barn at Gawthorpe Hall, while three artists, Jamie Holman, Jasleen Kaur and Masimba Hwati revealed the residual cultural identities of the British Empire embedded in textiles, In the grandiose surroundings of Blackburn Cotton Exchange.

In the year marking the 90th anniversary of Gandhi’s historic visit to Darwen, Re-Thinking Khadi was an exhibition of new work by Bharti Parmar that took the textile archive of Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery as its focus, exploring how textiles, and specifically Khadi, might represent the ‘Black’ Indian body. Gandhi’s homespun philosophy was the inspiration behind Homegrown/Homespun; a collaboration with designer Patrick Grant, Super Slow Way and North England Fibreshed, seeking to create the town’s first homegrown and homespun garment.

The tension between the industrialisation of cotton manufacturing and traditional cottage industry was the starting point for James Fox’s new work at Helmshore Mill that included new film collaboration with Maxine Peake. At Queen Street Mill, Burnley, works by Reetu Sattar, Raisa Kabir and Brigid McCleer explored the different dimensions and impacts of the UK’s appetite for fast fashion and profit on the textile industry in South Asia across the centuries.

Azraa Motala produced a series of works that provided a platform for an overlooked community of young British South Asian women from Lancashire, too often invisible and unheard, in a powerful series of portraits that were displayed in Blackburn Museum and reproduced on giant banners on civic buildings in Blackburn, Pendle, Accrington and Burnley.