Textiles

Over time, our funding for textiles initiatives has come to straddle both The Company and Foundation. Recently, as part of our effort to foster continuous improvement in our own governance, we have sought to delineate the distinct, but compatible, purposes of The Clothworkers’ Company and The Clothworkers’ Foundation, respectively.

The Foundation has nine Main and Small Grants programme areas, a number of major ongoing Proactive Grants initiatives, and another impending commitment towards Care Leavers. We felt it important to allow The Foundation’s grants team and trustees to dedicate their full attention to these matters, and to consolidate all matters to do with textiles within The Company.

This decision provides clear guidance for The Company’s modern purpose, which places textiles and trusteeship at the heart of its activities. There are encouraging signs of groundbreaking innovation in textiles (not least at the University of Leeds), and also of investment in the mills that bring this innovation to market. As a result, we felt it was the right time to reaffirm The Company’s roots in clothworking, clarify what direction our enduring interest in textiles should take, and discover how we might have the most meaningful impact on the industry. Therefore, in 2017, we interrogated our Textiles Strategy, an exercise last undertaken in 2012.

Previously, our objectives were to: support textile technology and manufacturing in the UK; maintain our support of academic excellence and innovation in technical textiles, traditional textiles, and colour science in the UK; encourage young adults to pursue studies and a career in these fields; selectively support and reward excellence in textile design; contribute to the preservation and accessibility of textile collections of national importance.

Over the past decade or more, The Foundation (principally) and Company, between them, have committed more than £11m in textiles-related support, with the categories of Academic Research and Innovation (42%) and Heritage and Conservation (34%) accounting for the lion’s share (with exceptional grants to the Victoria and Albert Museum and British Museum explaining the latter).

In evolving our strategy, we have now committed ourselves to applying our resources to meet the following objectives: prioritising British textiles; focusing on cloth, rather than costume, and on the manufacture of cloth; directing our involvement in textile design towards talented students at higher-rated institutions, with an interest in people who are studying or possess the ability to convert ideas into a product capable of being manufactured as well as an understanding of textile technologies; rigorously exploring prospective usage of equipment that we fund; directing our support in heritage towards cataloguing, indexing, storing, conserving, displaying and improving access to important textile collections and archives.

The above objectives also reflect our recognition that fashion and retail industries are too broad and well-supported commercially for us to make a meaningful difference. In essence, our principal interest in textiles as a craft guild will be to work with others to support innovation, technical skills, and links with the industry. We will also move away from funding art textiles and exhibitions in favour of funding initiatives directed at safeguarding the textiles heritage that informs our objectives in innovation and technical skills.

EDUCATION AND INNOVATION IN BRITISH TEXTILES

In 2012, we helped to establish the Clothworkers’ Centre for Textile Materials Innovation for Healthcare (CCTMIH) at the University of Leeds, with a £1.75m anchor donation. The Centre works to develop enabling technologies based on advances in textile science and engineering. It creates prototype products used in healthcare for the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, illness, infection, or injury.

We have been a major supporter of both the Textiles and Colour Science Departments at Leeds University since they were established and, over the past 20 years, have made grants to these departments in excess of £10m.

We currently provide bursaries for a number of postgraduate (MA and PhD) students across the two departments. In addition, we make the occasional capital grants to assist with the purchase of cuttingedge specialist equipment.

The Company and the University have been co-funders of an Innovation Fund to foster commercial ideas in textiles and colour science. Since 2005, the Fund has disbursed more than £1.2m to allow the development of early-stage innovations.

For a number of years, we have also funded student bursaries through the Royal College of Art, Central Saint Martins and the University of Huddersfield, as well as making capital grants for the purchase of specialist equipment.

SKILLS DEVELOPMENT

We encourage young people to go into the UK textile industry through subsidised work placements, organising the annual “Making It in Textiles” conference in Bradford to highlight opportunities in the industry, and fostering apprenticeships in Yorkshire.

We committed £90,000 over three years to the Crafts Council, funding its flagship education programme,

“Make Your Future”. This handson programme is designed to bring together traditional textilemaking with digital technologies, to stimulate the creativity of young people, and inspire future careers in textiles.

Our successful partnership with creative business incubator, Cockpit Arts, continues to flourish. The arrangement provides studio space and access to equipment for graduate weavers, enabling them to set up in business. Our support has allowed the studio to purchase the cutting-edge desktop looms currently in use by its resident weavers. Designs for the Future

DESIGNS FOR THE FUTURE

We are longstanding supporters of TexSelect (formerly “TexPrint”), New Designers, and the Bradford Textile Society Design Competition.

CONSERVING THE PAST

We are a major supporter of textile conservation in the UK. Since the 1980s, we have made capital grants, funded research, and provided bursaries for students at the Centre for Textile Conservation to the tune of £1.75m – supporting

the Centre when it was at the University of Southampton, and now in its relatively new home in Glasgow. In addition, we have funded internships in tapestry conservation through Historic Royal Palaces, at Hampton Court.

Five years ago, the Clothworkers’ Centre for the Study and Conservation of Textiles and Fashion opened at Blythe House. The Foundation’s £1m grant to the V&A, towards the £3m overall cost of the Centre, was to allow students, designers, and researchers greater access to the Museum’s extensive collection. The Centre was in the news this year for the vital role it played in helping director Paul Thomas Anderson and actor Daniel Day- Lewis in researching the movie Phantom Thread; two of the Centre’s volunteers, Sue Clark and Joan Brown, even landed supporting roles in the film.

In 2014, the British Museum opened its World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre. Our £0.75m grant to the Museum went towards the creation of The Clothworkers’ Organics Conservation Studio, housed within the Centre, to bring conservation and scientific research together under one roof with specially designed studios and laboratories.