British Textile Biennial 2025
2 OCTOBER TO 2 NOVEMBER 2025
East Lancashire, UK
British Textile Biennial (BTB) is a free festival of contemporary art, commissioning artists and designers from all over the world to make work inspired by the context and legacy of the textile industry in East Lancashire and its global impact, often in the places that were created by it.
Every other October, East Lancashire becomes an exciting cultural destination that welcomes visitors from all over the country and the world, set against the beautiful backdrop of our moors and hills and hosted by our local partners and volunteers who give everyone a warm Lancashire welcome.
PIONEERS OF THE MATERIAL WORLD
– from sea snails to Star Wars
In October 2025, the British Textile Biennial (BTB) explores invention and innovation, past, present and future, through indigenous knowledge to space-age technology from the earliest form of shelter, the tent, to space suits, and from plant-based dyes to the first polymers.
With artists and designers, BTB25 looks back to see how the textile pioneers of 20th century Lancashire were inspired by a bold vision of the future that revolutionised our lives and investigates how our own material future must learn from a distant past that is almost lost to us.
As in previous years, BTB25 will present its exhibitions, installations and performances in former mills and other rarely accessible spaces created by the textile industry across the centuries. Once again, major artists will be given the opportunity to make new work on a grand scale, as Lubaina Himid, Christine Borland and Jasleen Kaur have done in the past.
Find more information online here.
