British Textile Biennial is a charity registered with the Charity Commission no.1194433 and a company limited by guarantee registered in England & Wales no. 13228972
The British Textile Biennial is over for another year and we’re now looking for people to join our new British Textile Biennial Advisory group!
We’re really sorry to say that we’re unable to open the group show Indigenitude this week due to unavoidable international shipping delays.
We are looking for 2-3 energetic and confident individuals to deliver engaging educational tours with a passion for the subjects British Textile Biennial delivers across.
Would you like to be part of a fun creative project and gain experience performing?
Have you got a piece of fabric or a textile object that has been handed down through your family, mended and repaired over the years or travelled with you as you’ve moved from place to place?
If so, we invite you to get involved with Material Memory, a crowd sourced exhibition as part of this year’s British Textile Biennial that celebrates these cherished items and the stories they tell in the crypt of Blackburn Cathedral.
For BTB23 artist Rebecca Chesney will create a field of windsocks from this discarded tent fabric which serve as an indicator of current conditions; a barometer of the climate crisis of our own making and we’re looking for volunteers to help us collect them.
A major contemporary textile art exhibition brings together 17 South Asian artists from across the world for the first time at British Textile Biennial 2023.
A workshop for the Festival of Making – By Jeremy Hutchison
Our friends at Mourne Textiles have just announced their latest Crowdfunding project. This is an important initiative that could bring the UK a step closer to creating homegrown, homespun linen.
Our full BTB23 programme announcement.
We are now looking for a Development Manager to work with the Director and the board to identify and pursue fundraising and other income generation opportunities.
We’re looking for people from across East Lancashire to work with us to create a new performance!
British Textile Biennial returns in autumn 2023 with new artist commissions, exhibitions and performances presented against the backdrop of the impressive historic industrial infrastructure in Pennine Lancashire.
Using the sites and spaces left by the cotton industry as inspiration, context and venue, we ask, can the making of textiles be a regenerative act?
BTB are partnering with English Heritage at a time of exciting new developments. In 2022 English Heritage embarked on a national creative programme working in partnership with other organisations to commission contemporary artist to respond to its sites.
Mid Pennine Arts are delighted to be able to offer a 104 page hardback publication documenting the Banner Culture exhibition from British Textile Biennial 2019. This book features essays from prominent banner makers, and images of many of the 200+ banners displayed that covered a century of crusades.
On Friday 21st October The Lewis Textile Museum building will play host to the launch of the 2022 RE: Fashion
Zine and Awards Event.
Back in July BBC Counctryfile came along to our Homegrown/Homespun 2022 flax harvest in Audley.
Anita Rani and the film crew came to chat to our volunteers, and partners Patrick Grant and Justine Aldersey-Williams about what our project is all about.
This Sunday’s episode of Countryfile ‘Field to Fashion’ will feature what we got up to that day, and explore our movement to revive Britain’s flax industry!
6pm, Sunday 16th October, BBC One or iPlayer
Modern Lancashire is built on a powerful heritage of textile manufacturing and global trade.
The Lancashire Textile Gallery project aims to build a new digital resource & gallery which highlights and brings together significant local and global textile artefacts from museums, archives, galleries, and manufacturers across the county. Through a series of new digital exhibitions, downloadable resources and community curated responses, this online presence will collectively build an understanding of the significant impact that textiles have played in shaping people’s lives, not only in this county, but across the globe.
Modern Lancashire is built on a powerful heritage of textile manufacturing and global trade.
The Lancashire Textile Gallery project aims to build a new digital resource &gallery which highlights and brings together significant local and global textile artefacts from museums, archives, galleries, and manufacturers across the county. Through a series of new digital exhibitions, downloadable resources, academic research and community curated responses, this online presence will collectively build an understanding of the significant impact that textiles have played in shaping people’s lives, not only in this county, but across the globe.
The Re: Fashion Challenge is back. Gawthorpe Textiles Collection and UCLan Fashion are working with Super Slow Way this year in Blackburn. Young people from across Lancashire will work with our Fashion Design mentors to create fashion collections using recycling, up-cycling and great ideas.
On Saturday the 16th of April we will officially begin our Homegrown/Homespun 2022 programme.
Do you want to support the creation of new green spaces, meet people who share your passion for sustainability and, learn traditional skills?
If so, why not join us in a ground-breaking sustainable fashion project, happening in Blackburn, where we become the first town in modern times to grow its own clothes!
Over Spring and Summer 2021 we turned unused land in the town into a field of flax and woad. The flax was then harvested, spun into thread and woven live during last year’s @britishtextilebiennial to create the first Homegrown/Homespun fabric.
This year we have three fields to plant and tend, and we’re looking for people to help us with the whole process, from sowing the seeds during the spring to harvesting our flax and woad in the autumn. We will then be using ancient methods of preparing and extracting the linen and the indigo and learning how to spin, weave and dye the cloth.
If you’d like to meet new people, spend time outside and learn new skills, come and join us!
The initial planting day is Saturday April 16th, however there are recurring open sessions are from 10am—12noon every Friday. These will continue through until late August with weeding, clearing, crop harvesting and flax processing activities.
Jan’s Conference Centre, Higher Audley Street, BB1 1DH Parking on site.
Contact uzma@superslowway.org.uk
On Thursday April 28th, fashion historian Amber Butchart gives a guided talk through the Cloth Cultures online exhibition created as part of BTB21.
Alongside Gawthorpe Textiles Colleciton curator Rachel Midgeley, fashion historian Amber Butchart gives a guided talk though the Cloth Cultures online exhbition.
Exploring movement, migration and making through cloth, using pieces found in the Gawthorpe Textiles Collection, to tell the stories behind what we wear. Cloth Cultures focuses on four fabrics – silk, linen, wool and cotton and investigates the global strands of local stories that link Lancashire, at the heart of the textile industry in Britain, to areas throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
@amberbutchart
@gawthorpetextiles
The event will included a guided talk and then a Q&A session.
Today’s @easterneyenews the leading newspaper for UK’s Asian community, highlights Bharti Parmar’s commission #Khadi for the @britishtextilebiennial and Prof #Corinne Fowler’s forthcoming book The Countryside: Ten Walks through Colonial Britain published by Penguin.
The Cloth Cultures online exhibition is now live!
Curated by @amberbutchart this digitally curated exhibition explores movement, migration and making through cloth, using pieces found in the Gawthorpe Textiles Collection, to tell the stories behind what we wear. Focussing on four fabrics – silk, linen, wool and cotton.
She investigates the global strands of local stories that link Lancashire, at the heart of the textile industry in Britain, to areas throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
Available in the link below, the Cloth Cultures podcasts are also available on our website!
We’re delighted to share that we’ve been successful in receiving further funding for our Homegrown/Homespun project.
The funding from The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest funder of community activity in the UK, will focus on supporting a long term, sustainable homegrown textile and clothing system with the communities across East Lancashire.
Homegrown/Homespun is a collaboration between Super Slow Way, designer Patrick Grant, his brand Community Clothing and North West England Fibreshed. It is an innovative, regenerative natural textile and clothing project, which has far reaching benefits for the environment and nature, for the health and cohesion of the community, and for the stimulation of a local green economy along the Leeds & Liverpool Canal corridor in #eastlancashire
We’ll be sharing news about growing sites and open days in the next couple of weeks, so keep an eye out!
@patrickgrantism can truly say #igrewmydye as having planted Woad in Blackburn last April, next month he’ll be modelling his own ‘Blackburn Blue’ indigo pocket square on the @bbc @britishsewingbee Christmas Special.
This was dyed together with volunteers using freshly picked leaves and the salt rub method on August 13th – harvest day.
It’s imperative that we divest from #fossilfashion and #fossilcolour by reducing consumption and choosing renewable fibres and dyes.
BTB21 Exhibitions still open!
Our exhibitions in @blackburnmuseum from artists @bharti.parmar.studio @azraamotala and our Homegrown Homespun exhibition are on display until December 18th!
The @the62group exhibition at The Whitaker is also still open until November 28th.
Image: @smillie_lee
We are looking for 2-3 energetic and confident individuals to deliver engaging educational tours with a passion for the subjects British Textile Biennial delivers across. Training on each exhibition, the education pack content and the schedule will be provided; but we are looking for individuals who can self-manage and dynamically support our education groups needs and schedule
We’re very excited that C.P. Company will be taking part in the British Textile Biennial 2021 programme, presenting a retrospective dedicated to five decades of Italian Sportswear, and Massimo Osti’s lasting legacy.
For British Textile Biennial 2021 artist Brigid McLeer creates a memorial to the hundreds of workers who die in factories and sweatshops across the world that supply the global garment industry. Made in collaboration with local embroiderers and inspired by a large-scale lace panel from the Gawthorpe Textile Collection commemorating the Battle of Britain, the work will be a moving testament to the lives lost to feed the West’s seemingly bottomless appetite for fast fashion.
For British Textile Biennial 2021 artist Brigid McLeer creates a memorial to the hundreds of workers who die in factories and sweatshops across the world that supply the global garment industry. Made in collaboration with local embroiderers and inspired by a large-scale lace panel from the Gawthorpe Textile Collection commemorating the Battle of Britain, the work will be a moving testament to the lives lost to feed the West’s seemingly bottomless appetite for fast fashion.
British Textile Biennial returns this year with new artist commissions, exhibitions and performances presented against the backdrop of the impressive infrastructure of the cotton industry in Pennine Lancashire.
If so, we want you to join us in a ground-breaking sustainable fashion project, happening right here in Blackburn, where we become the first town in modern times to grow its own clothes!
In 2021, British Textile Biennial turns its attention to the global nature of textiles and the relationships they create, both historically and now. As part of this year’s biennial we are inviting people across the country and hopefully the globe to share their own story of migration and belonging in a crowdsourced collection of stitched hoops curated by Jamie “Mr X Stitch” Chalmers.
Using a 6” hoop, stitchers are encouraged to share the stories of how they ended up where they are now. Whether this journey be across continents or down the street, in a literal depiction or an abstract impression, we invite you to share in stitch what your place and community means to you now.
Call for participants from British South Asian women aged between 18-30 to take part in a project with Lancashire based artist Azraa Motala.
Artist Azraa Motala is creating a new series of portraits exploring themes of identity, belonging, culture and heritage co-commissioned by British Textile Biennial 2021 and The Harris in Preston. Unapologetic will challenge the ongoing narrative of “otherness” and provide a platform for an overlooked community of young British South Asian women from Lancashire – too often invisible and unheard – to express how they want to be represented.
A New Archive Created To Capture The Memories of Rave Parties Scene In Blackburn, Lancashire
We are very excited to announce that as part of the first British Textile Biennial this October we’ll we’ll be presenting the adidas SPEZIAL exhibition in the Blackburn Cotton Exchange,
British Textile Biennial is a charity registered with the Charity Commission no.1194433 and a company limited by guarantee registered in England & Wales no. 13228972