09/12/2023
A CERTAIN DEGREE The Future of Textile Education
‘A liberal arts programme, where students create their own curriculum, allows classes in textiles to sit alongside mathematics, engineering, botany, astronomy and chemistry for one student, while the same classes, can be combined with poetry, history, women’s studies and art history for another. This interdisciplinary syllabus produces graduates who can approach problem-solving tasks from different perspectives and apply their knowledge to a wider range of potential careers’.
institutions are still training students to be textile and fashion designers. The formula broadly rotates around observational drawing, developing a design and producing samples by hand, often in different colourways. Yet in the last half century, the textile industry, and society as a whole, have undergone a seismic change. De-industrialisation has radically transformed the textile industry, triggered by the shift in manufacture eastward, leaving only small-scale specialist production in the west. The vast majority of textiles we consume today are made from petroleum, knitted into a textile and constructed using cut and sew assembly, with digital print used to differentiate. Still, textiles remain fundamental to our culture, and conscious textile design is key to solving the environmental crisis. Contemporary society needs an educated workforce who are equipped with transferable skills and the creativity necessary to find new ways of defining our relationship with textiles. Textile courses are expensive; they require large amounts of specialist equipment, studio space and technical staff to run effectively.
The economics of this model have become obsolete. Let's consider some of the alternatives that might provide clues as to how we can best make textile education relevant to contemporary society.
This is an edited excerpt from issue 109 Rise Up, available in digital or print at the link in the bio or selvedge.org. Text by Polly Leonard.
