Textile + Place Conference
October 11-15, 2021
The Textile and Place conference explores the politics of textiles. 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.
Textile and Place is delighted to be partnering with the British Textile Biennial,
who are hosting a range of events and exhibitions online.
Read the full program and register here: https://www.textileandplace.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.
