Event Details

Historically our clothing and fibre was an agricultural product – rooted in our land base, and connected to those that stewarded land. Now, we are disconnected from the source of our materials and our extractive fibre industries are responsible for environmental degradation, atrocious working conditions and millions of tons of landfill waste.  

We can build regional textile and fibre arts communities that work to regenerate land, strengthen our agricultural systems and provide meaningful employment in rural communities. A re-emergence of cottage industry fibre arts can lead to healthier environments and a soil-to-soil textile model connects us to land, animal and community.

This lecture highlights the current situation for the source of our fibre/materials and draws on some of the history and destruction of infrastructure for processing fibre. It ends with calls to action and a hopeful answer for connection to the soil, land and animals that produce our fibre and how to build resilient fibre arts systems