Name: A Radical History of Textiles: illustrated talk and optional crafting workshop
Start: 2025-02-02T16:00:00+00:00
End: 2025-02-02T18:00:00+00:00
Location: 14A Long Row, NG1 2DH Nottingham, United Kingdom

A Radical History of Textiles: illustrated talk and optional crafting workshop

Join Five Leaves’ Sarah Wilson for a whistle stop tour of how textiles have been an important part of political and social history across the world, and how we might think about them in activism spaces today.
From miners’ banners to narrative quilting, defiant embroidery to yarn-bombing: textiles have a varied and radical past. Often viewed as part of ‘women’s work’ and classified as insignificant labour, textiles have been used to tell silenced histories, to celebrate political victories, and push back against fascism and oppression for thousands of years in many inventive ways.
Come to an illustrated talk covering some of these examples, moving from Palestine to Wakefield, Hawaii to Nottingham, in which we will look at techniques and the political import of materials in the fight to change material conditions.
There will be a 45 minute talk with time for questions, and then the option for people to stay and try out some crafting themselves for the following hour. Materials will be provided (though feel free to bring anything you’d like to embroider/print/darn) as well as in person guidance and print instructions.
Refreshments will be provided