Cloth Cultures with Amber Butchart

Throughout the Cloth Cultures podcasts and associated exhibition, fashion historian Amber Butchart explores movement, migration and making through cloth, speaking to artists, historians, makers, and scientists to shed light on our textile history. Focussing on four fabrics – silk, linen, wool and cotton - Amber investigates the global strands of local stories that link Lancashire, at the heart of the textile industry in Britain, to areas throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Throughout the Cloth Cultures podcasts and associated exhibition, fashion historian Amber Butchart explores movement, migration and making through cloth, speaking to artists, historians, makers, and scientists to shed light on our textile history. Focussing on four fabrics – silk, linen, wool and cotton - Amber investigates the global strands of local stories that link Lancashire, at the heart of the textile industry in Britain, to areas throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Throughout the Cloth Cultures podcasts and associated exhibition, fashion historian Amber Butchart explores movement, migration and making through cloth, speaking to artists, historians, makers, and scientists to shed light on our textile history. Focussing on four fabrics – silk, linen, wool and cotton - Amber investigates the global strands of local stories that link Lancashire, at the heart of the textile industry in Britain, to areas throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Throughout the Cloth Cultures podcasts and associated exhibition, fashion historian Amber Butchart explores movement, migration and making through cloth, speaking to artists, historians, makers, and scientists to shed light on our textile history. Focussing on four fabrics – silk, linen, wool and cotton - Amber investigates the global strands of local stories that link Lancashire, at the heart of the textile industry in Britain, to areas throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Throughout the Cloth Cultures podcasts and associated exhibition, fashion historian Amber Butchart explores movement, migration and making through cloth, speaking to artists, historians, makers, and scientists to shed light on our textile history. Focussing on four fabrics – silk, linen, wool and cotton - Amber investigates the global strands of local stories that link Lancashire, at the heart of the textile industry in Britain, to areas throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Throughout the Cloth Cultures podcasts and associated exhibition, fashion historian Amber Butchart explores movement, migration and making through cloth, speaking to artists, historians, makers, and scientists to shed light on our textile history. Focussing on four fabrics – silk, linen, wool and cotton - Amber investigates the global strands of local stories that link Lancashire, at the heart of the textile industry in Britain, to areas throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Throughout the Cloth Cultures podcasts and associated exhibition, fashion historian Amber Butchart explores movement, migration and making through cloth, speaking to artists, historians, makers, and scientists to shed light on our textile history. Focussing on four fabrics – silk, linen, wool and cotton - Amber investigates the global strands of local stories that link Lancashire, at the heart of the textile industry in Britain, to areas throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Throughout the Cloth Cultures podcasts and associated exhibition, fashion historian Amber Butchart explores movement, migration and making through cloth, speaking to artists, historians, makers, and scientists to shed light on our textile history. Focussing on four fabrics – silk, linen, wool and cotton - Amber investigates the global strands of local stories that link Lancashire, at the heart of the textile industry in Britain, to areas throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Throughout the Cloth Cultures podcasts and associated exhibition, fashion historian Amber Butchart explores movement, migration and making through cloth, speaking to artists, historians, makers, and scientists to shed light on our textile history. Focussing on four fabrics – silk, linen, wool and cotton - Amber investigates the global strands of local stories that link Lancashire, at the heart of the textile industry in Britain, to areas throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.Throughout the Cloth Cultures podcasts and associated exhibition, fashion historian Amber Butchart explores movement, migration and making through cloth, speaking to artists, historians, makers, and scientists to shed light on our textile history. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Amber Butchart is joined by artists Jeremy Hutchison, and Sunny Dolat of the Nest Collective. They discuss one of the major themes of the British Textile Biennial this year: textile waste imperialism. It's a deep dive into how the trade in secondhand clothes from the Global North is mapped directly onto previous colonial routes and relationships, reproducing those same inequalities. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amber Butchart is joined by curators Uthra Rajgopal, Ligaya Salazar and Vancci Wahn who are each curating a group show for the British Textile Biennial this year. They discuss the practice of curating textiles, including themes such as indigeneity, craft practices, regenerative knowledge, and sustainability and labour. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amber Butchart talks to artist Hendrickje Schimmel (Tenant of Culture), and Cottonopolis Collective researchers Arianna Tozzi and Ali Browne. They discuss their work for the British Textile Biennial this year, which includes investigation of pollution and the environmental impact of the textile industries, the problems with unchecked consumer culture, the life cycles of garments, and the intersections of cotton, science and agriculture. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amber Butchart talks to artists Nick Jordan and Jacob Cartwright, poet Emily Oldfield and English Heritage historian Andrew Hann. They discuss Larksong - a collaborative work by Nick and Jacob for this year's British Textile Biennial which was a joint commission with English Heritage, and takes place at the nonconformist place of worship, Goodshaw Chapel in Rossendale. Tune in to hear about how hand loom weavers built the chapel, the connection between the land, music and poetry, the Larks of Dean, inspiration from the pre-industrial landscape and the history of the space. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amber Butchart is joined by artists Victoria Udondian and Ibukun Baldwin, both of whom are creating incredible collaborative pieces for the British Textile Biennial this year. Tune in for discussions on migration, clothing and economic empowerment as well as the power of clothing and textiles in storytelling. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amber Butchart talks to researcher Dr Mila Burcikova of the Centre for Sustainable Fashion and artist Rebecca Chesney. Tune in for discussions on fashion, agriculture, and regenerative potentials, festival textile waste, and the fashion seasons vs the actual seasons. As well as art and bees, and tending our wardrobes in the same way we would tend our gardens. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amber Butchart talks to artists Christine Borland and Eva Sajovic about everything from feminism to fustian. Both Christine and Eva are exhibiting at the British Textile Biennial in the area around Pendle Hill in Lancashire, notorious today for the Pendle witch trials in the early 17th century that saw 10 people executed for witchcraft. They explore the status, power and identity of women in early modern europe, and the changes brought about by the interconnectedness of the industrial revolution, capitalism and the colonial project, through to AI and its use in contemporary art. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amber Butchart is joined by artist Lucy Orta who has an expansive survey exhibition of her work with her partner Jorge at the Biennial this year, and writer and professor Jessica Hemmings. They discuss everything from texts to textiles, incarceration and craft, and how Lucy's work highlights humanity's impact on the planet, including themes such as displacement, climate change, and migration. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amber Butchart is joined by artists Sarah Rosalena and Crystal Bennes about their work which inspired by residencies at major scientific facilities: Mount Wilson Observatory in Los Angeles County, California, and CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) in Switzerland, the home of the Large Hadron Collider. They discuss the erasure of women and people of colour from conventional scientific histories, as well as the power and precarity of archives, and links between computing and looms. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amber Butchart talks to artists Tania Candiani and Porfirio Gutiérrez about their work centred on cochineal. The cactus-dwelling cochineal insect can be used to produce a bright red pigment, a sacred indigenous colour which was exploited by colonial powers following the Spanish conquest of the area today known as Mexico. This colour transformed European art, but at a great cost. They discuss land, labour and ancestral knowledge through this lens, as well as the conceptual, colonial and economic context and value of art vs craft. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amber Butchart is in conversation with artist and academic Claire Wellesley-Smith, about their co-curated exhibition The Synthetic Revolution. The show looks at the development of the first polyester fibre made from crude oil by-products in Accrington, which was later branded with the name Terylene. They discuss how this local story became not only global but intergalactic in the post-war decades of the 1950s and 60s. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amber Butchart talks to artists Dhara Mehrotra and Ninon Ardisson who are both creating work for the British Textile Biennial this year. Tune in to hear them discuss everything from mycelium to slime mould and our potential to learn from these networks, as well as their radical potential for textile futures, biomimicry in design, and the false dichotomy between art and science. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Max Leonard and Henry Iddon are in conversation with Amber Butchart about their book, Mountain Style: British Outdoor Clothing 1953 – 2000, and related exhibition at the British Textile Biennial this year. Listen in for discussions on the evolution of outdoor clothing from mountain summit to street, moving from Everest in 1953 to football terraces and rave subcultures, as well as the factors that made this possible, from indigenous Inuit knowledge to the Right to Roam movement and the importance of Lancashire mills. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.