Practice and Industry

The practice and industry group arrange a variety of activities for TFSW members. These include workshops, such as the Creative Leather and Sheepksin workshops with Basil Kardarsis (an international designer and professor at the Royal College of Art), which were held in 2006 and 2007. We also organise opportunities for TFSW members to sell their work, such as taking a TFSW stand at the Walford Mill Contemporary Craft Fair in August 2007.

At the first meeting of the practice & industry subgroup the idea of portfolio surgeries was welcomed by both professional and amateur makers alike. Portfolio surgeries will be scheduled as required for TFSW members, so if you would like to make use of this service please contact Sharne Lott to arrange an appointment (details below).

Members of the management committee with both academic and professional expertise will conduct the surgeries in the first instance. There will be 2-3 people to discuss each set of work. Surgeries should take 1 hour.

You will be asked to bring a range of work that shows some developmental progression, plus supporting research, either a sketchbook, photographs, samples, etc. Original pieces are preferred to copies and you will be discussing only the work shown. Any new ideas therefore need to be sketched or outlined in a way that can be viewed. The portfolio surgery fee is £25.

The professional practice and industry sub-group has two main aims, first, to connect designer makers (i.e. those who make and sell small batch production, one-off or commissioned textiles) with other practitioners to form a network to share good practice and secondly, to seek out and engage with any relevant customers, retail and commissioning agencies in the south west region and beyond.

The initiators of the group have a wide and varied range of experiences in design education at BA, MA and post doctoral level. They consist of both lecturers and textile designers who have experience in the business practices of working to commission, selling direct to the public and wholesaling to stores in UK and abroad; publishing, writing, illustrating, making and sampling for books and magazines. The group will engage in various activities from mentoring for designers at all levels of experience, e.g. portfolio reviews to develop collections and ideas to a professional standard for interviews and other public outputs, to practice based workshops tackling methods of bidding, costing and developing work to commission.

We aim to:-

* Liaise with established business mentoring groups in the area for input to develop small businesses and research relevant markets.
* Locate and introduce specialist agents and commercial fabric agencies for sample based selling to the designer trade (both - fashion and interiors).
* Liaise with other subgroups to develop commercial opportunities linked with museums and galleries that have strong connections with our textile heritage e.g. lace and wool, possibly inaugurating selling exhibitions based on existing textile collections.
* Establish a database of interested people and institutions from theTFSW conference and welcome input from other textile practitioners who want to connect with a group of established designer/makers to make things happen for ourselves

If you are interested in any of the above or can add to this set of criteria for developing professional textile prospects please contact Sharne Lott, the practice and industry subgroup leader, for further details.

Contact Sharne Lott, Practice and Industry Subgroup Leader.

Email:sharnelott8@hotmail.com

Address: 10 Willow Close, Portishead, Bristol BS20 6XW.

Please mark any correspondence 'TFSW Practice and Industry Group'.