BFTT: SME R&D Support Programme Funding Call | Round 2

1 July 2020 |
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The Business of Fashion, Textiles & Technology (BFTT), SME R&D Support Programme is now open for Expressions of Interest (EOI).

The fashion, textiles and technology related sector (FTT) is  innovative and multidisciplinary, informing many adjacent sectors in the wider industry. Quite literally, spanning agriculture to advertising.

This funding call is looking to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the development of the next generation of products, services and experiences in the fashion, textiles and technology sectors – with sustainable innovation at their core.

They look forward to hearing from FTT companies, and those in the wider STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) fields interested in collaborating with the FTT sector, who would like to achieve a step-change in their business trajectory.

You can find more information about the programme, including eligibility, selection criteria, core funding themes and key dates here.

Core themes:

  • Reimagining materials and production
  • Inspiring sustainable consumers
  • Uncovering hidden data and insight
  • Designing new experiences

This year they are also open to partnerships (joint applications), from SME / SME, or SME / SME+ partnerships helping scale the proposed innovations

BFTT SME R&D Support Programme – Expression of Interest Form

BFTT SME R&D Support Programme Round 2 – FAQs

Deadline to register your Expression of Interest: 7 September 2020

Learn more about the 10 R&D projects funded during the initial funding call here.

Text: BFTT. Image credit: © AWAYTOMARS Ltd

Online Exhibition: Complexity 2020 | Innovations in Weaving

29 June 2020 |
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Complexity 2020 | Innovations in Weaving

Complex Weavers is an international organisation of weavers dedicated to expanding the boundaries of handweaving. The group encourages members to develop their own creative style, and to inspire others through research, documentation, and innovative ideas.

Its members challenge their skills and imagination by sharing information and innovations with fellow weavers worldwide – both directly and through study groups, Seminars, Complex Weavers Journal, and biennial juried exhibition Complexity.

Every two years members are invited to submit new work for jurying, and the final selections are formally exhibited to the public as Complexity. This year the physical exhibition planned for Knoxville, Tennessee, has been replaced with a virtual exhibition, which has the added benefit of being accessible to a world-wide audience.

The show presents recent textile creations that bear within them some form of complexity, whether they have been woven on a dobby, treadle, table or Jacquard loom. All were made by hand and designed by humans, and all exhibit technical excellence. Complexity 2020 opens at midday on 29 June 2020. Continue reading →

Cockpit Arts: Festival of Making

19 June 2020 |
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Cockpit Arts will be hosting their annual Festival of Making event from Friday June 19th – June 21st 2020. Running over three days, this free virtual celebration will feature 65 events run by over 80 of London’s leading makers. The festival is taking place across Zoom, Instagram and Facebook.

Featuring a range of workshops, panel discussions, live demos and studio tours, all led by some of London’s most exciting makers. Three woven textile artist and designers will be delivering the following exciting events across the weekend:

Friday June 21st  at 7pm Nadia-Anne Ricketts, an award winning woven textile designer, invites you to ‘Tune In’ to a live virtual immersive, meditation sound bath experience, where you’ll be taken on an inward exploratory journey to the field of infinite creative possibilities, by playing the sound vibrations of the gong woven into the frequencies of crystal bowls

Saturday, 20th June at 12pm. Vicky Cowin invites you to virtually visit her Deptford studio. You will see  Vicky’s loom and hear about her experience as one of several Cockpit makers supported by a Clothworkers’ Company Award.

Sunday, 21st June at 12pm. Weaver Kendall Clarke, working from home in a temporary studio, will show you how you can discover local colour from your doorstep in this introduction to natural dyes from summer plants, weeds and leaves. Continue reading →

Scholarships: QEST

14 June 2020 |
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The Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust (QEST) awards scholarship and apprenticeship funding of up to £18,000 to talented and aspiring craftspeople working in a broad range of skills, from farriery and cheese maturing to jewellery design, textiles, silversmithing and sculpture. Their next application round is open 14 July – 24 August 2020.

QEST celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2020 and since 1990 has awarded over £4.5million to more than 550 individuals working in over 130 different crafts. They define craft broadly and welcome applications from all areas including rural skills, contemporary craft, conservation, luthiery and much more. A directory of all their alumni can be seen on our website, along with more details on how to apply – www.qest.org.uk QEST have two application rounds each year – in January and July.

Job: The Bristol Weaving Mill Ltd | Maternity Cover

6 June 2020 |
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Sales & Design Manager Maternity Cover Role.
The Bristol Weaving Mill Ltd.
Role to commence in August 2020 under a fixed-term contract

BWM are looking for a creative and technically confident woven textile designer with product development and sales experience, and the ability to manage project timelines with meticulous attention to detail. The successful applicant will work to nurture and maintain client relationships through pro-active and responsive communication and design work. This role involves overseeing and managing sales, design, and manufacturing schedules for new and on-going projects.

Bristol Weaving Mill  work across both fashion and interiors, designing, developing and manufacturing woven products and fabric for a variety of outcomes. End uses include but are not limited to Ready to Wear and Couture Menswear and Womenswear fabrics, finished shawls and scarfs, interior drapery, tapestry panels, upholstery fabric and finished interior soft accessories and products such as throws, blankets and cushions.

From their largest commercial client to their smallest personal project, each of their client relationships is based on offering a service catered to their individual needs. Most of their customers seek not only the small-batch and locally managed production capabilities of the mill but are also looking to for BWM to provide input and direction creatively, offering technical advice where necessary.

This job will involve working closely and strategically on sales, building upon the existing client
relationships and establishing new ones. In particular, the role will involve management of key client accounts and overseeing commercial design and manufacturing of finished woven products for home interiors. The successful applicant will need to be an excellent communicator and extremely organised with impeccable attention to detail and quality.

As a designer, the ability to assume the aesthetic identity of a wide range of clients is essential. They should be able to handle multiple projects at once, while maintaining excellent communication with customers and colleagues. The ability to self-motivate and work independently as well as in a team is essential.

Continue reading →

Company Profile: Pink House by Rebecca Cole

21 May 2020 |
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Pink House by Rebecca Cole collection is championing the traditions of Aso-oke hand weaving in the Yoruba region of Nigeria to the Interior Design Industry. The influx of cheap, imported textiles and mass-produced European style clothing has drastically diminished the artisan weaving industry in Nigeria leaving fewer weaving communities able to make a living from their craft.

By taking an innovative approach to using the beautiful striped and patterned woven strips, as a form of passementerie for interior design, textile designer Rebecca Cole has identified a way to support the traditions of weaving that she first encountered in the 1990’s.

Whilst on an introductory visit to her husband’s family in Nigeria “I fell in love with not only the magic of Nigeria but also the sense of heritage and family contained in the textiles that had been created and safeguarded by my mother-in-law from every family event. There is family history attached to each piece of As0-oke she has kept.”

The traditions of Yoruba weaving date back to the 10th and 12th Century in Nigeria. The Aso-oke cloth is traditionally woven by men in the Southwestern region of Nigeria on horizontal looms. As early as the 17th Century, Aso-oke cloth was recorded as a valuable trading commodity with the British. Continue reading →

Online Exhibition: Material Textile | Modern British Female Designers

19 April 2020 |
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Material: Textile is an online exhibition of historically important and highly collectable textiles by some of the most important Modern female designers working in Britain. Brought together for the first time – and offered as an online and virtual exhibition by The Messums Wiltshire, with an accompanying catalogue and podcast – the exhibition highlights the relevance of these mid-century textiles and the vital role they played in the evolution of taste and culture. It offers us all a unique insight into the artistic vision and originality of these women.

Britain’s history is intricately woven together with the history of textiles and never more so than following the Second World War. This exhibition celebrates the bold vision of the leading lights of 1950s – 70s textile design and introduces their iconic work to new collectors.

Throughout the period the designs created by an inspired group of women artists including Lucienne Day, Marian Mahler, Jacqueline Groag, and later Barbara Brown and many more, brought modern and contemporary art into the home, making it quite literally a part of the furniture.

Many of the textiles on show – produced by Heals, David Whitehead and Hull Traders – sit within collections including The V&A and The Whitworth. They have also featured in exhibitions worldwide in recent years and in publications on the history of the evolution of textiles and the textile industry, and our catalogue includes essays by preeminent historians Lesley Jackson and Mary Schoeser.

Text & Images: Messums Wiltshire website. Top image: Calyx Blue, 1951, Lucienne Day. Bottom image: Mezzanine Yellow, 1958,Lucienne Day

Awards: Cockpit Arts | Currently on hold – see below for details

18 March 2020 |
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Cockpit Arts currently has four Awards open for application for talented makers to join the Cockpit Arts community. Each of these Awards will provide a subsidised or free space to a Maker, and this round has two open discipline Awards so it really is open to everyone. Currently these awards are on hold due to Covid 19 – they will reopen once the situation has changed but please continue to register your interest by emailing Maxine Clark maxine@cockpitarts.com

There are no age limits or educational requirements (except for the Clothworkers’ Award) they just want to see craft skill and a real drive to turn their passion into their professional business.

This Award round equates to approximately £19,000 worth of generous support from our funders and Cockpit are ready to match that and invest in 8 new Makers to join their community. Alongside the free or subsidised space they will receive a workshop programme tailored to Awardees and be assigned one of their in-house business coaches for regular 1 to 1 coaching.

All of the Awards are for at least 12 months, with the Clothworkers’ Award offering up to three years of support on a sliding scale.

Awards at Cockpit Arts open for application.

We are delighted to announce that there are  Cockpit Arts Awards now open for applications. All Awards comprise business support provided by Cockpit Arts as well as subsidised studio space for one year.

The Cockpit Arts / The Clothworkers’ Company Awards
Open to graduates within the last five years, these awards aim to assist weavers to set up in business. Weavers can be working in any form, for example, creating products; visual art; working with mills and making samples for industry.
Deadline for applications: 5pm, Tuesday 14 April 2020

The Cockpit Arts / Clear Insurance Award
Aims to support professional makers who have been in business for less than three years and aspire to develop their craft business in any craft discipline.
Deadline for applications: 5pm, Friday 17 April 2020

The Cockpit Arts / Newby Trust Craft Excellence Awards
Aims to support two makers to practice their individual craft at a key stage in their skill development, to grow as an independent maker and to support their craft business to achieve financial sustainability.
Deadline for applications: 5pm, Thursday 14 May 2020

Further details and application forms are available to download from their website – https://cockpitarts.com/awards-bursaries/, or please contact maxine@cockpitarts.com for further information or to express an interest.

Image: Jacob Monk

Exhibition | Unbound: Visionary Women Collecting Textiles

16 February 2020 |
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Unbound: Visionary Women Collecting Textiles tells the story of seven pioneering women who went against all established norms to create some of the richest, most diverse and global public collections in the UK today.

Textiles and costume give us a beautiful and intensely human insight into our history. Unbound: Visionary Women Collecting Textiles celebrates seven women who saw beyond the purely functional, to reveal the extraordinary artistic, social and cultural importance of textiles. From the exquisite anthropological collections of traditional Balkan costume by Edith Durham, to the ground-breaking contemporary South Asian collection of Nima Poovaya-Smith, these women defied the ‘traditional’ concept of collecting – an activity still more often associated with men – and forged the way for textiles as crucial documents of social history as well as works of art in their own right.

This major collaborative project explores the innovative approaches of Edith Durham (1863 – 1944), Louisa Pesel (1870 – 1947), Olive Matthews (1887 – 1979), Enid Marx (1902 – 1998), Muriel Rose (1897 – 1986), Jennifer Harris (working 1982 – 2016 at the Whitworth, University of Manchester) and Nima Poovaya-Smith (Senior Keeper International Arts 1985 – 1998, Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford), and presents the objects from a previously unexplored perspective, that of the female collector.

Unbound: Visionary Women Collecting Textiles includes sculptural 18th-century costume, intricately embroidered Balkan towels, headdresses and waistcoats, the 1920s and 1930s block printed fabrics of Barron and Larcher, as well as contemporary works: Alice Kettle’s huge machine embroidered panels Three Caryatids (1989 – 91), Yinka Shonibare’s 2007 copy of the last slave ship The Wanderer reimagined with ‘African’ batik fabric sails and Sarbjit Natt’s 1996 geometric patterned silk sari. These sit alongside archival photographs, sketchbooks and letters, many of which have never been shown in public. The exhibition looks at how these collections continue to influence us today and asks why textiles still have to fight for their place amongst the more established visual arts.

Continue reading →

Profile: Alicia Rowbotham

9 February 2020 |
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Alicia Rowbotham, a recent graduate of the BA (Hons) Textile Design course at Central Saint Martins is a designer amongst a growing group of emerging talent exploring the relevance of fast fashion against the environmental destruction it ensues.

Working within the fashion industry as a stylist for a leading online fashion retailer throughout her degree gave her great insight into the destructive cycle of fast fashion and disposable products. This provoked her to create the collection ‘Waste not, want not’.  The collection aims to emphasise and encourage collaboration between manufacturers and designers to harness the potential of textile mill waste and utilise this resource for the benefit of both the industry and the designer.

The collection consists of handwoven body adornments and fashion accessories made entirely from textile industry waste including reams of beautiful waste silk, miscellaneous fibres and ‘deadstock’ materials from textile mills in the UK.

The collection was shortlisted for the LVMH x MAISON/0 Green Trail awards 2019 as well as The Mills Fabrica sustainability prize 2019. The collection was then shown as part of the London Design festival exhibition ‘Designing in Turbulent Times’ amongst other provoking Central Saint Martin’s graduate projects. Rowbotham finished 2019 being featured as ‘one to watch’ in the winter issue of textile publication, Cover magazine.

Starting the new year, pieces from the ‘Waste not, Want not’ collection were showcased as part of the innovation hub in the Sustainable Angles 9th Future Fabrics Expo; the world’s largest showcase of sustainable materials for the future fashion industry.

Rowbotham continues to pursue her fascination for a more circular fashion and textile industry through the aid of craft and design working in collaboration with Evan James Design to create interior accessories for the Surface Design Show 2020. Continue reading →

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