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TEXTILES
Over the past decade or more, The Clothworkers’ Company and The Clothworkers’ Foundation have contributed in excess of £20 million towards textiles, including the investment of £8.9 million to cofund the Leeds Institute of Textiles and Colour (LITAC). Aside from our recent investment into LITAC (committed in 2021), grants for Academic Research and Innovation and for Heritage and Conservation have accounted for the largest share of our distribution of funds.
The Clothworkers' Company is responsible for the direct administration of its contributions and grant-making towards textiles (ie, the grant-making of The Clothworkers' Foundation is separate, and directed towards different programme areas). Our expenditure towards textiles is considered The Company's 'Industry Mission’.
Ground-breaking innovation is happening in textiles, and investment in the skills that help bring this innovation to market is required. Our Textiles Sub Committee is responsible for developing our grant-making strategically in order to champion textiles and make meaningful contributions to support the industry.
TEXTILES STRATEGY
The Company aims to:
• prioritise British textiles; • focus on cloth, rather than costume, and on the manufacture of cloth; • direct our involvement in textile design towards talented students at higherrated 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 explore the prospective usage of equipment that we fund; • direct our support in heritage towards cataloguing, indexing, storing, conserving, displaying and improving access to important textile collections and archives.
Facing page: Members of the Court and Textiles Sub-Committee on the annual visit to Leeds University (2022), and the inaugural visit to the new Leeds Institute of Textile and Colour. Master Philip Portal is in the centre, with First Warden Alex Nelson to the left, and Past Master and Textiles Sub-Committee Chair Jonathan Portal to the left of Alex.
TEXTILES
Left: Members of the Court and Textiles Sub-Committee on the annual visit to Leeds University (2022), and the inaugural visit to the new Leeds Institute of Textile and Colour.
Photos are taken in the Bragg Centre for Materials Research. In the bottom left, Clothworkers bursary holder Nathaniel Crompton showcases some of his research with polyester and dyes. See page 12 for more.
ACADEMIC RESEARCH & INNOVATION
In 2012, we helped to establish the Clothworkers’ Centre for Textile Materials Innovation for Healthcare (CCTMIH) at the University of Leeds, with a £1.75 million anchor donation. The Centre works to develop enabling technologies based on advances in textile science and engineering. From bioactive wound dressings that are capable of speeding up healing rates in the management of diabetic ulcers, to implantable devices able to promote the regeneration of bone or skin – the application of textiles in healthcare is a rapidly developing field.
Working with nurses, orthopaedic, dental and cardiovascular surgeons to identify unmet needs in current clinical procedures, the CCTMIH team is developing physical prototypes that overcome the performance limitations of existing products.
The Company has been a principal supporter of the Textiles and Colour Science activities at University of Leeds since they were established. In 2021, we made our largest-ever commitment to the university, investing £8.9 million (over 10 years) into the
Leeds Institute of Textiles and Colour (LITAC).
In addition to this capital funding, we have continued to provide bursaries for a number of postgraduate students at Leeds and beyond. Aside from our investment into LITAC, we previously funded a PhD bursary (2018-2021) for the School of Design that has led to award-winning concept and product design (see page 12).
Finally, we awarded £20k towards an MSc in Product Innovation in Textiles at the University of Huddersfield and another £15,000 towards an MA Material Futures at Central Saint Martins (UAL).
TECHNICAL EDUCATION & VOCATIONAL SUPPORT
Breakthrough ideas in textiles – and materials more widely – must satisfy the demands of sustainability and, where possible, bring a societal benefit for future generations. For exciting innovation to make the journey from concept to commercial success, laboratory to the marketplace, it is important to nurture the technical skills that enable apprentices, students and trainees to succeed.
Last year, out of more than £150,000 distributed under this area of our Textiles Strategy, more than £50,000 was directed towards UKFT, including with a number of programmes aimed at building the international reputation of the UK textiles industry and delivering training and skills development. We funded the Made It 2021 programme (skills development and a competitive placement programme), the Young Technician Training Fund (which has helped nearly 30 young people access training), UK Careers Campaign and PopUp Factory, and the UKFT Open Education Resource.
Since 2010, we have contributed almost £300k to The Weavers’ Company Entry to Work Scheme, securing placements and creating job opportunities for young people in textile manufacturing – including a further commitment for 2021-22. We have also continued to fund the Edu4Tex programme at the Textile Centre of Excellence.
Our partnership with creative business incubator Cockpit Arts continues to flourish. Cockpit provides studio space and access to equipment for graduate weavers, enabling them to set up in business. Our support – repeated again in 2019 with a grant of £66,000 (over three years) – is allowing a fresh round of applicants to benefit from the facilities and business mentoring programme Cockpit offers. Peipei Wang, Fadhel Mourali, and
TEXTILES
Ashley Jess Knight received bursaries in 2021. We were able to expand our support to Cockpit by sponsoring a booth for the 2018 and 2020 Clothworkers' bursary holders, Vicky Cowin and Millie Thomas, at the inaugural Livery Fair, which was part of the expanded programme of events for the Sheep Drive on London Bridge in September.
CONSERVING THE PAST
The Company has been one of the foremost supporters 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, supporting the Centre to the tune of £1.75 million when it was at the University of Southampton, and now in Glasgow. The Clothworkers’ Centre for the Study and Conservation of Textiles and Fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) was made possible by our £1 million grant towards the Centre, established to offer students, designers, and researchers greater access to the V&A’s collection. In 2024, the Centre will move to the V&A East Storehouse site, in Stratford, and become part of the V&A East Museum cultural campus. In 2014, the British Museum opened its World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre, supported by our £0.75 million grant towards the creation of The Clothworkers’ Organics Conservation Studio, housed within the Centre. In 2019, we awarded £45,000 to the Worthing Museum and Art Gallery, supporting the creation of a costume research centre. The facility opened to researchers in January 2022, and the museum has begun a successful programme of public workshops related to costume and textiles.
That same year, we also provided a grant of £70,000 to support the Manchester Art Gallery in
Left: Merzia Qahramany, a second-year BA Fashion Design student (Bucks New University), completed an eight-week production internship at the 200-yearold Scottish outerwear company Mackintosh. Merzia's placement was part of the UKFT Made It scheme, offering fashion and textile design students opportunities to gain real-life manufacturing or sourcing experience in the UK. © UKFT, 2021.
Simon Hartley, Head of Textiles Production at Arville
Right: Ben Freeman, Ryan Byrom and Simon Dixon from Arville Textiles in Wetherby gained in-depth weaving training on Picanol looms in Belgium to facilitate the company’s capacity expansion. Support from UKFT’s Young Textile Technician Fund covered 50% of costs associated with the two week residential training course for these young technicians . © UKFT, 2021.
relocating its clothing, textiles and fashion accessories from Platt Hall to its new city centre gallery; the Fashion and Textiles Gallery is due to open in October 2022.
In 2020, The Company awarded £265,000 to the University of Oxford Textile Study Centre, which will form part of the university's new Collections Teaching and Research Centre. This funding will support two roles over three years during an ambitious £10 million capital project. The state-of-the-art facility will enable two of Oxford's museums, the Ashmolean Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum, to better store, conserve, display and educate around their world-renowned textile collections (including more than 12,500 items). The pandemic delayed progress on the facility, and it is now due to open in April 2023.
DESIGNS FOR THE FUTURE
The Clothworkers’ Company awarded another £20k to the University of Huddersfield to support BA/BSc bursaries in Textiles Practice and renewed our annual grant to Central Saint Martins, supporting a printed textiles bursary for a third-year student and the cost of materials for up to 10 final-year students. We continued to support New Designers and the Bradford Textile Society Design Competition, although the former was completely virtual in 2020 and 2021 and the latter was delayed due to the pandemic. For the 2021 New Designers competition, Clothworkers Cherica Haye and Emily May (herself a past New Designers award recipient) served as judges and bestowed our Printed Textile Prize upon Vicky Huang. Emily also serves as a judge for the four awards The Company sponsors in the Bradford Textile Society Design Competition.
LITAC SPOTLIGHT: REVOLUTIONARY DYEING PROCESS WINS CIRCULAR FUTURE FUND PRIZE
The Leeds Institute of Textile and Colour (LITAC), founded in 2021, is already making a name for itself and building a reputation for ground-breaking research. This past spring, a project to develop a new polyester dyeing technology has beaten more than 245 projects in a competition to win a share of the Circular Future Fund.
The prize will enable Leeds researchers to further explore the creation of a circular economy for polyester and the ability to recycle it, as well as assessing the economic and environmental benefits of what has been dubbed the 'polyester-infinity loop'.
Polyester is the world’s most consumed textile fibre, yet recycled polyester only contributes to 15 per cent of total production, almost all of which is made from plastic bottles.
A major barrier to recycling polyester fabric is the presence of dyes, which makes fibre-tofibre recycling almost impossible. Researchers at LITAC, in collaboration with the Wolfson CO2 Laboratory in the School of Chemistry, are developing a solution that uses new technology to deploy carbon dioxide and separate dyes from fibre. Currently, recycled polyester (rPET) is not based on end-of-life-clothing, but on mechanically recycled polyester from plastic bottles. This new CO2 technology will facilitate fibre-to-fibre recycling, creating a truly circular process.
Richard Blackburn, Professor of Sustainable Materials in the School of Design, said: 'This award from the Circular Future Fund will allow us to take a significant next step in tackling the global environmental and economic issue of polyester recycling. Polyester is the global clothing industry’s most consumed fibre, yet fibre-to-fibre recycling for the material is unfeasible because of the chemicals involved in the dyeing process. In order to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal of recycling 90 per cent of PET plastic by 2030, chemical recycling – and specifically fibre-to-fibre recycling
Image: Chris Rayner, Professor of Organic Chemistry (left) and Richard Blackburn, Professor of Sustainable Materials (right).
– is essential.' Prof Blackburn went on to say, We are very grateful to The Clothworkers' Company for the funding for the initial research.' The Company funded a PhD bursary for Nathaniel Crompton, whose postgraduate research (201821) was central to this achievement.
Polyester is dyed with disperse dyes – a synthetic type of dye – and auxiliary chemicals, both of which are essential in the dyeing process. However, 10 per cent of disperse dyes applied are lost in the process. The new dyeing technology, developed by Leeds researchers, removes the polluting auxiliary chemicals, recycles the water, and uses less energy. Furthermore, removing the dyes from the textile allows for both the dye and fibre to be recycled.
The Circular Future Fund is an initiative run by John Lewis Partnership and the environmental charity Hubbub. Each year the fund awards £1 million to pioneering projects that are working to create a circular economy – one which eliminates waste and pollution, circulates products and materials, and regenerates nature.
Three other projects have been awarded a share of the £1 million prize, these include: expandable and recyclable children’s shoes, a menstrual cup use, and a 'lend and mend' scheme for household goods and clothing within Scottish libraries.
The winners were chosen by an independent panel of industry experts, including senior representatives from John Lewis & Partners and with support from Hubbub. More than 245 projects applied for the fund. The four winners will be supported by Hubbub over the next year to develop and achieve their ambitions.
