Textiles & Place
  • CONFERENCE 2021
  • PAST EVENTS
    • 2018 Conference >
      • Call for Papers 2018
      • REGISTRATION
    • Lucy Orta
  • LOCATION & INFO
  • CONFERENCE 2021
  • PAST EVENTS
    • 2018 Conference >
      • Call for Papers 2018
      • REGISTRATION
    • Lucy Orta
  • LOCATION & INFO
Textiles & Place
TEXTILE AND PLACE 
11th- 15th October 2021


This conference is hosted by Manchester School of Art
Manchester Metropolitan University

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please note in the conference will take place online
The Textile and Place conference explores the politics of textiles. It takes place online from the 11th- 15th October 2021.   Hosted by Manchester School of Art, the conference builds upon the debates from the first Textile and Place conference which took place in 2018 and postponed from April 2020 thanks to the pandemic, it is now presented online. We are delighted to be partnering with the British Textile Biennial, who are hosting a range of events and exhibitions online https://britishtextilebiennial.co.uk/.

The conference explores how textiles describes and maps places through traditional methods of making, through memory and through site-specific and community-based practices. It examines how textiles carries within its fabric and in its production, the stories of trade, the transmission of histories, the crossing of cultural boundaries, of migration, and postcolonialism. We use the word politics as a broad term to indicate how textiles is implicated in particular places and is part of the relationships between groups or organisations and used to confront issues of power.  Textiles can fix us to a place and also be part of the process of making change.

The conference seeks to examine how textiles enables connections between sociability and communities; is a medium of protest and engages with alternative narratives; participates in economies of production, and the environment. Providing context for discussion is Manchester’s rich textiles histories as well as today’s political challenges which are contributing to shaping our everyday lives.
 
The conference will be opened by Maria Balshaw, the Director of the Tate and former Director of the Whitworth, University of Manchester and Manchester City Galleries. Other days will be opened by Rosy Greenlees OBE Executive Director of the Crafts Council 

Penny Macbeth, Director of the Glasgow School of Art and former Dean of Manchester School of Art and co-curator of Textile and Place conference 2018.
 
Key Note Speakers include:
Jessica Hemmings, writer about textiles. Her editorial and curatorial project, Cultural Threads, is a book about postcolonial thinking and contemporary textile practice (Bloomsbury: 2015) accompanied by a travelling exhibition Migrations (2015-2017). She is Professor of Crafts & Vice-Prefekt of Research at the Academy of Design & Crafts (HDK), University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
 
Assadour Markarov, Professor in Fibre Art, China Academy of Art, Hangzhou; Curator of Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art 2016 with Hu RenRen Director of the Hanshan Art Museum Suzhou, China.

Amber Butchart is a writer and broadcaster who specialises in the cultural and political history of textiles and dress. presented the BBC Four's A Stitch in Time, a six-part documentary series which "explored the lives of historical figures through the clothes they wore".
 
Registration for the conference will open March 2021.
The £50 fee will give access to 5 days of key notes, conference presentations, forums, films and exhibitions.
 
This website will be updated as the programme develops.

KEYNOTES
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Maria Balshaw
Jessica Hemmings
Assadour Markarov

with introductions by:
Alice Kettle
Rosy Greenlees
Penny Macbeth
The British Textile Biennial 

Conference Schedule 
Monday 11th October
Panel theme: Politics and activism

Tuesday 12th October
Panel theme: Colonial and postcolonial narratives

Wednesday 13th October
Panel theme: Reclaiming power

Thursday 14th October
Panel theme: Past to Future

Friday 15th October
Panel theme: Strategies of sustenance


Conference booking will open on 1 MARCH 2021

Tickets:
General admission: £50 
All Students and MMU staff: £20 

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We would like to thank the peer review panel for their work and support: Dr Claire Barber, Dr Sian Bonnell, Professor Steve Dixon, Professor Kate Fletcher, Professor Catherine Harper, Professor Alice Kettle, Penny Macbeth, Professor Lesley Millar, Dr Annie Shaw. 
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