Museums and Heritage

What is heritage and curation?

The museums and heritage sub-group of Textile Forum South West was established to explore textile issues related to the museum and heritage sectors and develop textile activities in these areas.

The TFSW Museums and Heritage group explore the rich and remarkable heritage of textiles we have in the Southwest, whose wealth was built on broadcloth. How do we make this accessible, not only as an inspiration for artists but for a whole range of potential audiences for textiles? We will look at collecting, preserving and interpreting textiles, and at how we can communicate their fascination through the material heritage. We welcome archivists, librarians, museum professionals, textile artists and designers, textile lecturers and teachers and anyone with an interest or expertise in this area.

Past events

'Exploring Textile Traditions' was held as part of the Stroud Textile Festival on Saturday 12th May 2007. The programme for the day included speakers Caroline Broadhead (textile artist - installations), Freddie Robbins (knit/textile installations), Dr. Jenny Balfour Paul (indigo), Sue Bradley (knit/costume) and Janet Haigh (embroidery). The event brought together a diverse audience from different areas of textiles, including authors, lecturers, makers, designers, artists and curators; providing a stimulating day of textile presentations and discussion. Our 2007 conference 'Textile Identities' was held on Saturday 17th November in Taunton, where speakers such as Helen David of textile company English Eccentrics, weaver Rezia Wahid and artist Paddy Hartley, discussed how their textile practice was informed by personal and cultural identity. 

Meetings

The museums and heritage group has now held four meetings. The first at Exeter in June 2005 began to set our agenda.  The second at Taunton in September 2005 focused on the conservation of textiles in the region, with an excellent talk by Helena Jaeschke of RAMM, Exeter, which sparked off a discussion of the needs and amazing range of the South West's textile collections, in and out of museums. The third meeting held at the Holburne Museum in Bath on Saturday 3rd June 2006, included a talk by Holburne education officer Cleo Witt on 'Working From Museum Collections'. The fourth meeting on 9th September 2006 was held as part of a one day event 'Bath Textile Collections' for TFSW members, which included tours of the textile collections at the American museum and the Holburne museum and talks by the curators.

Next activity

Museum and Heritage group activities are open to all TFSW members. For further details of our next meeting please contact Cleo Witt (details at the end of this scrolling page).

What are we about?

These are the group's focusses for discussion and action:

*Promoting the richness of textile collections in the region

*Raising awareness of textile conservation.

*Linking with regional galleries with textile interests for joint events and activities.

*Museum and gallery education using textiles

*Developing a forum with artists and educators.

*Sharing good practice in the region: how do we develop this?

*Linking with members of other TFSW subgroups.

*Liaison with other groups e.g. West of England Costume Society and using textiles from a particular period or collection for an education-based 'costume day'.

*'New work for old' - using museum textile collections as inspiration for design liaising with practitioners subgroup, possibly culminating in an exhibition.

*Discussing cataloguing and recording textiles - including good computing practice.

*Collector's issues for public and private textile collections.

*Organising visits to textile exhibitions in the region.

We need you to come and develop these ideas, and to take part in web discussion:  if the textile heritage is important to you, please join the museums and heritage group or email the group your ideas.

Join the group by contacting Cleo Witt, the Museums and Heritage subgroup convenor for further details.

Contact Cleo Witt, Education Officer.
Address: Holburne Museum, Great Pulteney Street, Bath, BA2 4DB
Telephone: 01226 444656
Fax: 01225 333121
E-Mail: E.C.Witt@bath.ac.uk
Web: www.bath.ac.uk/holburne