Outcomes - Seminar 5
Full transcription of delegate debate

DELEGATE DISCUSSION

Mary Schoeser

Well maybe I could kick off with a first question to all four panellists: everything has changed in the last few years.  What do you see as the major opportunity that faces us all over the next say… two or three years.  Would you like to start, June?

June Hill

I think it’s important to document what’s happened over the past 30, 40 years. I think that’s something we need to do at this particular time.

I think June’s right that it’s time to take stock at the moment and  from my position I think that issues to do with funding streams and collecting and exhibiting and the problems with that are absolutely of paramount importance at the moment, and I think, therefore, it’s extremely necessary to marshal evidence to be able to continue to make the case to all constituents, be they policy makers of the Government or anyone else.

Giselle Eberhard-Cotton

Still we need to survive.  We need to make sure that the works survive until the wave is up again.  I mean at the moment, obviously, for a lot of textile artists it’s quite…down.  Well, we have to wait because next generation suddenly we’ll rediscover an interest in things that, that had happened 40 years or 5, or 50 years ago, and if there’s nothing to show, to show them that is a disaster.  And, obviously, the trend at the moment is into fashion, and I see that the major Swiss exhibition the past 3 or 4 years have all been related to fashion.  All of the public collections that have textile collection emphasise this side and they work with firms, that create textiles for the haute couture in Paris, and we have to promote that this is only one side of textiles.

Lesley Miller

I was very interested, Giselle, in your description about the Lausanne Biennale. Obviously I knew it very well, and visited many times, and that now the Biennale is no more, then the galleries have disappeared and the university is no longer teaching textiles anymore, or maybe even textiles, I don’t know.  In terms of focussing of attention on current practice, do you think such a showcase is essential?

Giselle Eberhard-Cotton

Yes, I think it is essential.  It was shown for 35 years.  It supported a whole movement and is very sad to see how it can disappear in 10 years, and because it’s a vicious circle.  If you have no showcase then you don’t attract the students.  If you don’t attract the students you don’t attract the professors.  And the professors now have nothing to show so they don’t teach textile.  It goes round and round, and in the circle is included all the work by the galleries and the collectors, and everything is tied together.  There’s one thing that I think some curators tend to forget.  That all these actors of the same world are tied together.  They all work towards development of one, of one medium in particular or one type of art in particular, and if, if, and if the line is broken at one point then it’s very difficult for the rest to survive.

Lesley Miller

And this leads very much into our debate about whether it’s important to have a textile specific venue or programme across venues.  Would that mean that textiles were only shown in that place, or would it mean that in fact we had somewhere in which we could demonstrate excellence. This issue has been  central within the debate that we’ve been having.  Whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Mary Schoeser

Is there anyone here who actually feels strongly that to have a textile specific venue is ‘ghettoising’ textiles, that it would be wrong to have a dedicated textiles base?

Catherine Barnes

I feel very much that the history of textiles in contemporary art to date has been specialised.  We’ve had textile specific exhibitions, and that’s been good, but that’s kind of been the kindergarten of textiles growing up and going into contemporary art.  Maybe by insisting upon textile only venues, textile only exhibitions, we’re staying in the kindergarten and it’s time we went out to play in the full art world.

Giselle Eberhard-Cotton

I would like to respond to that point. You’re not the only one to think along these lines. In the very last years of the Biennale there were a lot of artists making these very points, and saying well we don’t want to be considered only at textile artists, we are artists, that’s it, and we chose to work with textile as we might chose to work with ceramic or wood or whatever, and that’s why the mixed media came into being.  But, on the, on the other hand, there is something about the attraction of public towards textile that I think can be worked on and that can be used to promote artists’ work.

Andy Taylor

In the world of fine art you have a society of watercolour painters, you have the society of etchers, you have the society of women artists, you have all sorts of societies that are specialist areas.  They’re not kindergarten areas.  They’re specialist areas for specialist people.  There is no reason why textile artists can’t become part of the big art family, but still have textile galleries because if you have areas like the Contemporary Applied Arts, the Crafts Council, textile exhibitions can only happen maybe once every three months because you have all the other disciplines.  There’s nothing wrong with having a textile gallery in the whole scheme of things.

Sue Lawty

I was going to say exactly that point, that I think we could have both and I think it’s really important to have centres of excellence and whether that be a roving centre of excellence or to have something like a Biennale or major exhibitions that are showcases and focuses for really superb work and that we can also have our work in other places, in other venues, and do things that aren’t specifically textile and work with other people; it isn’t an either or situation.

Mary Schoeser

So, if there is going to be a gallery for textiles, has anyone any idea about how this is going to happen?  Who might do it?  What sort of formal shape it might take?

Woman

I’m concerned about funding. I don’t think anything’s going to happen without money. We’ve heard today that various bodies now are not receiving any Lottery funding or any source of finance and we’ve talked about private partnerships, the need for private patronage.  How is this being approached?  Has this started?  I just don’t understand where the funding is going to come from, and I think this is the core of the whole problem.  Where, where’s, where’s the money?  There’s plenty of money in the fine art market.  We’re hearing about that very recently.  So how are textiles going to break into this?

Lesley Millar

Without a showcase I don’t see how we can make these funding breakthroughs. The focus of today is the absence collectors and collections of textiles.  We have three examples here in front of us, but they are very rare. Is it important that there are no collections and collectors? Do we need to find ways to help people collect textiles, because without those collections there it is very difficult to demonstrate what is excellent and what isn’t excellent.  What should be funded and what shouldn’t be funded. 

Michael Brennand Wood 

I’m going to say this, because I don’t think anybody else is going to say it, but I actually find it really quite regrettable  that if Nottingham puts together a major collection for contemporary textiles, which is a really rare moment in time, the piece of work that they choose to flag the exhibition is Grayson Perry. And, to me, that just underscores exactly the kind of situation that, that I feel that I face perennially. The applied arts have generated a great deal of alternative research and ideas and methodologies and ways of doing things, yet it is so difficult for these to be accepted and acknowledged. As we have seen this afternoon, the Contemporary Arts Society is collecting a vast range of work.  And what’s slightly worries me is just that sense of how do you cater for all of that?  It’s such a large area, and you have got to tease out from the area very particular, you know, arguments and areas of concern.  I mean, the fact that the Lausanne Biennale in one sense I could say well it’s like Cubism.  It’s like suddenly people not looking at Cubism for 20 years and maybe in 10 or 15 years time people will re-look at that period of work that you showed and actually see that in a completely different way.  However, my point basically is the Grayson Perry which deeply irritates me I would have to say.

Mary Schoeser

To come back to funding, does anybody have the any ideas about this issue of funding?  It is clearly something critical. I can remember the early days of the Biennale, and I can also remember very clearly when I was working with the weaver’s workshop in Edinburgh, the budgets were very small, nearly non-existent.  We just had ideas and we did all sorts of things.  There was not the same requirement to justify, to frame, to define what it was about, it was a much more open-ended sort of process, and things simply didn’t seem to cost so much. I know that there are factors, I myself am involved in training, the costs that you simply can’t avoid, but I do think maybe one of the things which could come onto our agenda here is, is really thinking outside the box.  Thinking of ways that are outside the now established high cost venue with full colour publication, with all the support vehicles.  All those sort of things that go with it. T actually start thinking of ways that we can approach an audience, define what seems to be the kind of textile we’re talking about.  In my head I’ve started making up a word for it, it’s called ‘gallery textile’, that’s to distinguish it from commercial textile, which is an equally professional occupation, and then of course to distinguish it from amateur textile. I think that it’s a case of looking creatively at first of all how one defines gallery textile. How collectively one assumes that there’s some kind of enthusiasm, supported participation in this concept and then how one finds sites to make this movement accessible to the public, because it is as you say, it’s the whole constituency who are needed.  You need the public, you need the galleries, you need all those other people, but I think that in a way to worry about the funding, to draw back because you can’t see the source of the funding is stopping at the end of the journey when you haven’t even started it yet.  First to be optimistic and to agree.  That’s what these seminars have been about; to agree some kind of agenda.  It might not be a seamlessly integrated single thing.  There is plenty of room for lots of voices, but to actually agree that there is some need to move forward and to achieve certain things and to set forward with that kind of youthful optimism if you like.  Youthful in terms of a new movement.  This movement is young.  It’s early days for the re-definition and re-positioning of gallery textiles.  To be optimistic and move forward and to look for opportunities. I’m hoping that there are some people here who might actually have some ideas about what those, if you like, more informal or less structured opportunities might be to create this kind of new audience and this new definition of gallery textile.  Does it appeal to anyone?

Victoria Mitchell

One of the ideas that occurred to me is that, in a sense, collecting begins at home, and that probably everybody in this room has in some small way something which somebody else looking at it would call a ‘collection’. Norwich Castle at one stage did a very interesting little exhibition of peoples collections, and it’s an ordinary thing, collecting, in a sense, rather than a special thing.  It’s a fleeting thing.  It’s like fashion.  It’s something that happens every day, and quite often strays into perhaps what some people would call social history. Nevertheless, audiences do respond to the kind of informality of collections in that way. That’s one side of things.  And on money, I’m interested in Europe as a sort of grouping and the kinds of cultural bodies, UNESCO etc., with those incredible swathes of money. I know that textile isn’t high on the agenda but, but textile is such an important commodity at so many levels, I think it’s a question of framing an intention in such a way as to draw on the interests of those who are trying to create political agendas. I think that there are things that can be done at that level. It was very interesting hearing Rebeca San Andres talk about FIT and thinking of New York and the incredible money there. I think that there are an awful lot of very clever people who are making an incredible amount of money in Europe out of textiles, out of fashion, and I do think that we should really look to be engineering relationships where money is, in particular European funding.  I also wanted to just mention that Tilburg is very interesting in terms of Europe and textiles. It has  a very interesting collection, but also has all the technology.  It’s based on a relationship with textiles and t echnology to a certain extent.  It’s very interesting to go to Tilburg because there’s also an incredibly grand fine art collection just up the road where you see textile in another context under another label, but not the label textile

Jessica Hemmings

I think the other side of Victoria’s comments is also to look broader than Europe.  The series of exhibitions in China, and I’m not quite sure on the history of why they adopted ‘From Lausanne to Beijing’, I would certainly like to know a little bit more about that.  I was able to go to the most recent one, and I think it is certainly the type of exhibition at the moment is doing us absolutely no help as far as raising the profile of art textiles, however we want to describe it, but there’s obviously an awful lot of interest and energy. I think that maybe when we’re thinking about funding and, and problems with funding closer to home, there are maybe places, not in Europe, that seem to have an enormous amount of energy and enthusiasm if, at the moment, it might seem  - maybe misguided is a little bit cruel, but not necessarily of the standards that, that we would hope for it to be.

Giselle Eberhard-Cotton

I haven’t been to China unfortunately, I wish I had, and I wish I could get hold of the catalogues so if, if you have one I’m very interested. But, funnily enough, in 97, two years after the last Biennale, one of those Chinese professors, unfortunately I can’t remember his name, came to Lausanne, without checking, assuming that there was going to be a Biennale. When he discovered that there would be no more Biennale’s, he went back to China and said we’re going to start something there.  This is why it’s called from Lausanne to Beijing Biennale, but I’m afraid that he never contacted us at all.

Liz Cooper

A comment about going where the money is.  I was talking to some collectors of fine art and craft at ‘Collect’ this morning, and I was, as I always do, banging on about how I didn’t think there was enough textile work in ‘Collect’, and they said, yes, we’ve come every year and we think there’s less every year. They visited ‘SOFA’ last year, and it was wonderful for textiles. I don’t have an answer but it does puzzle me why, maybe the American approach is more mature, but they do seem to be better at things like ‘SOFA’. Going out and finding really good contemporary textile work to present to collectors and I don’t see it happening yet over here. I know Lesley’s made the point in her introductory paper about the poor setting of venues for contemporary textiles.  Certainly in London.  It’s better in other places in the UK, but certainly not in London.

Diana Springall

I am a maker and very modest collector. I’m also a friend of the Royal Academy and a couple of years ago in the Friends magazine, the president was waxing lyrical about the fact that they’d got this new space, Burlington House, at the back of the Academy, and they didn’t know what to do with it.  So I wrote to him and said I’ve got some ideas, I’ll even stand you lunch at your favourite restaurant, and he never replied.  You see, I feel that from a point of view of the money question, money is where the fine art is.  If we could all focus on trying to persuade bodies like the Royal Academy which has no State funding, so they are able to make their own decisions.  If we could in fact get even a once a year venue - once a year borrowing the Burlington space.  What are they doing with it?  They had a fabulous fashion show there when they first received it. There have to be ways in which we could perhaps nudge more closely with the fine art world and because I don’t want to speak again, I’d like to just ask Ceri - is, is there some way that some of us could come and be supported in our modest collections as to where we should be going?  I can, I can see that this is the only way that work of say the last 50, 60 years is going to be represented, that some of us should give what we’ve got in the way of collections, but we need help in, in building them perhaps.

Ceri Lewis

To respond to that – yes, absolutely, but, with my fine art hat on now, working with contemporary art collections, there are undoubtedly enormous amounts of money coming through the fine arts sector. However, not enough of that finds its way into public museums and galleries and there are the same problems of funding as we were discussing for collections, for exhibitions and other areas. you know.  Overall, the outlook is that organisations are going to have to be far more… I mean the buzz word being entrepreneurial. Essentially looking at combining their public funding with other sources of funding and looking around to put a package together, be it through sponsorship, be it through private collectors… really working towards bringing initiatives and networks together, and making the argument, because I, I don’t think we’ll be back to a point where there are the sorts of substantial amounts of Lottery funds that were available a few years ago. In terms of how and where private collectors with collections, the Contemporary Arts Society is the membership organisation. We work closely with collectors and patrons, many of whom then give us works that we then give public collections. And that is an absolutely vital role.  In fact, in many ways what we’re looking to do at the moment is to re-develop a it’s much more active relationship, maybe very much more connected with specific venues directly, rather than say us being the conduit.  So…certainly I’d erm give you more information about that.  Earlier this year, Ann Sutton, who had been very connected to the Contemporary Arts Society and certainly in the 80’s re-instigated it’s craft buying policy, craft in the broadest sense.  Last year she gave CAS a substantial body of her own works from the 60’s onwards, and we will be placing that within public collections.  But Ann saw that very much as a kind of call to other patrons of craft, fine art if necessary, to try and develop that relationship with collecting and exhibiting organisations. I think that  the art world, art in it’s widest context, is one that encompasses all those areas.  It’s private collectors, it’s public organisations and it’s other initiatives, and for it all to work all those things have to link up.

Michael Brennand Wood

This is an aside to the comment that was made before about, about ‘Collect’ and ‘SOFA’. From my understanding of it there’s really no point in going to ‘SOFA’ and showing only once. You actually have to go fairly consistently and collectors obviously have to build up a level of confidence that they’re actually investing in something which is going to be investable in.  And I think that one of the things they’re essentially trying to do is make people aware of what’s happened and of the strength and diversity of people’s careers over a long period of time, or maybe a short period of time, but essentially that there’s a sense that you buy one star piece and it’s fine, you’ve got one represented within your collection. Whereas, if you look at the examples at with the Tate or wherever, you will buy more than one piece by that artist.  And what you’re signifying is the development of that artist’s work over a period of time. You’re also really educating your audience to get excited by what might happen next.  And one of things that I would really hope from any kind of overview of textiles is that it actually reveals an unseen history.  It actually empowers people to understand what’s gone on before. I think that’s part of the problem.  That actually a lot of people would have no awareness of what happened in Lausanne.  They would have no awareness of what happened in the 80’s. Whether that awareness is changed through writing or through a consistent series of really intelligently curated shows. If you look at what happens in London, you may have an exhibition on African art, and there would be a whole series of satellite shows, private galleries all getting behind that idea, plus films at the National Film Theatre etc.  And you’re really educating your audience to understand where all of that particular art is coming from.  And I think we kind of need something that has that sort of intellectual weight to it, and forward planning. I’m  not just talking about a gallery situation, maybe collectively if we looked at something over a 10 year period, what would we hope to achieve from that, for individuals, galleries, collections. A really thought through kind of targeted, aspirational, plan.  A forward plan as to how we could move so that the public, collectors and writers actually understand what what we’ve done, where we come from, what we can do.

Mary Shoeser

So how does one progress that?

Woman

They have the year of the artist or they have the year of the something or other. There could be a year which was somehow mapping textile Britain, that enabled all the different currents and currencies of textiles to just on the mind. Something to trigger people’s imagination and get a bit of airwave coverage.  Whilst we have a tendency to see difficulty, in actual fact there are all sorts of very, very exciting things happening and I think that quite often textiles for example, find their way into the whole business of interpreting permanent collections in museums. They play an important role in all sorts of ways, but it’s about raising the profile of what is already happening, and  through that raising of the profile then it might become fashionable. 

Jennifer Harris

I wanted to pick up something that Michael just said, but also something June said right at the very beginning of this discussion session. I want to use it to also to put down a sort of marker of something I’ve been thinking for some time now. I keep giving lectures on the history of textiles and fine art practice, to use my own phrase, from the 1960’s onwards, and writing short articles and pieces, but finding people coming over and over again with, as Michael’s just said, no understanding really of the fact that there is at least a 40 year history.  So what I’m going to do is use this opportunity with the microphone to put down a marker that said I think I’m going to have a stab at it.  I’d like to know if other people are doing it in this room, it would be very useful.  Maybe June’s got it planned, or Lesley, but it’s got to be done.  It also occurs to me that it’s, it’s a very big history bringing in Asia and the USA and Europe. It’s a big picture and it has to be understood in the context of fine art as well.

Sue Prichard

I’d like make a plea for the other side of the coin, and that’s a bit more about guerrilla curatorship where we just go out there and do it.  We don’t get too bound up with programming and we don’t get too bound up with funding.  We look for spaces which we can claim for 24 hours, we go in there and we do it.  We send out text messages to our friends.  We get them to bring their friends and we just do it that way.

Mary Schoeser

I have to say to that, hear, hear.  I was lucky to live in Los Angeles in the mid 1970’s and so I was there when whatshisname nailed himself to the back of a Volkswagen and the event was the garage doors came up, the Volkswagen was rolled out for15 minutes and it went back in, and it seemed perfectly right.  We didn’t have text messaging and somehow we all knew when these events were happening, and it was a supremely exciting time to be in Los Angeles.  Nothing really like it has since in Los Angeles, and it is one of those ideas that bubbles around the world, and I agree with Jennifer about the history.  One has to sort of argue about where it starts, but the 50th anniversary of this field, as a mature art textile field, is coming soon and we do need to, to find a way to preserve that history and to celebrate that history and to use it as a springboard going forward. Maybe prior to the agenda that Michael’s talking about, prior to what Sue’s talking about as well, that there is a kind of formal curatorial response to it, but that also a series of windows of opportunity, platforms that we as a group aim to establish as potential sites for these guerrilla events, and actually do it in a realistic co-ordinated way.  We make it kind of warfare sort of agenda.  It isn’t going to happen by someone else coming along and saying do you really want this to happen?  It’s only going to happen… this does seem to be the core group.  It is remarkable that there are some people who’ve been to every single one of these seminars.  So, so having said that, I don’t want to digress from this discussion.  Where are these rare spaces then?  That seems to be the next question.  Are there any obvious ones that people here are familiar with and could identify now or is there anyone who’s prepared to go out and search for these kind of spaces and how do we feed back that information into this, this group? [PAUSE]  Audience, no?... Well, I could say I have one, you see, I’m a senior research fellow of Central St Martins and, and the University of the Arts, London, has a, a lot of various spaces.  What it lacks is a persistent and, and rather aggressive gallery textile lobby coming to it and saying look, we want you to programme a space and it could just be the lobby space.  There is the lovely gallery, two galleries, which has sort of heavy programming.  It takes the Jerwood, at various times of the year it takes TV shows.  But there’s also the lobby which at the moment is permanently occupied with the catwalk video that the MA Fashion Show.  It’s a textile related space if you see, already, unconsciously a textile related space.  But one could argue does it really have to show… I mean, it’s publicity and it’s all valid and it’s their space and it’s their Course and it’s famous … we know all of those things, but does it really have to show that video of the fashion shows?  Isn’t it possible that for four days, for a week, that space could be taken over?  Is it possible that even with the video running in the background there could be something else there? There must be literally hundreds of spaces like this if we begin to think.  I’m challenging you now to, to come up with a few of these places.  So you have sort of to think on your feet and think of whether it’s do-able, because if it’s not do-able it’s a great idea but if we can’t think of these spaces, it isn’t going to happen. That’s my challenge to you.

Woman

I wanted to add quickly another area that’s quite useful for guerrilla tactics is when there’s re-development of buildings, and spaces are left vacant or in development for a long time.  I know of a series of projects…one up in Yorkshire where they were able to take over a fantastically large space for a designated period.  It’s those sorts of areas that I think, you one should be looking at really, and there are lots of them, and even some of the money might come from that as well.

Woman

This is quite a short comment and I’m from a different area, from ceramics rather than fashion, so it’s quite interesting seeing all the ideas …we’re in a different area.  But I think one of things that’s very interesting is what makes textiles so special?  And there is definitely something that does make so special, which is why you’re all here and why you’re all talking about it and why I’m here.  But I can’t articulate that myself and that’s what you need when you’re going into those spaces.  You need to be saying, this is so fantastically special because… whatever it is.  This is why it’s different from fine art or from jewellery, or from whatever it is.  When you were talking about Lausanne, there’s something about the accessibility of textiles and that touch stuff,  and maybe we need to get some of your students to articulate,  theoretically.   What is it about textiles that gives it so much meaning for people who don’t normally look at fine art, or who don’t associate it with fine art.  Whatever it is.  And their love gives you that thread…sorry to use the thread, to then join up your guerrilla tactics, and to back it up with that sort of theoretical underpinnings which is only important to some people, but it does mean you’ve, you’ve got a way of connecting it all and keeping it all going.  Instead of needing a building to co-ordinate it all you need something else to co-ordinate it all.  A programme rather than a building, and that means, using the Web or something. 

Sue Prichard

I think that we need to think outside the box.  We have a converted audience here so we need to look at more public spaces, different public spaces.  Maybe corporate spaces, corporate lobbies.  We need to build up a body of collectors.  One of the biggest problems with ‘Collect’ is that if textile artists are having to pay £6000 for a stand and collectors are not buying, you’re not going to see them next year.  So we need to get out there.  We need to look at different types of spaces.  Corporate spaces.  Public spaces.  And start banging our drum.

Woman

I’ll just proffer this as something that happened locally.  It was a 2 or 3 year short lived art group but basically they contacted the council, all the local shopping malls, etc, etc, and just found out where property was vacant and very, very quickly moved in, pushed in an exhibition, maybe a week long, and moved out.  It didn’t last more than a couple of years because it frankly took a hell of a lot of organisation.

Mary Schoeser

Well, that does bring up the logical question.  Are you going address that, Lesley?

Lesley Miller

I was going to say with textile you do have a vulnerability problem.that has to be taken into account.  Sue and I have talked about doing guerrilla textile exhibitions and it’s very exciting, but there are only certain kinds of textiles that you could actually do that with.  I’m absolutely completely in agreement.  I think it would be a very exciting way to build up public awareness.

Woman

I wanted to say how exciting the thought of guerrilla tactics are, and that the key thing to me seems that we can all come up with really good ideas I should imagine, given some time, and we could do things… we’re talking about, if you’re talking about 3 or 4 days, or even a week, or even 2 weeks, it’s still a very, very short time for people actually to see the art, and the same even when you have a month long exhibition or even longer, only relatively few people actually see that, and so always how we disseminate that information seems to me absolutely crucial.  The articles that are written, the things in newspapers and magazines and the publications,  and of course, the Web, but some sort of co-ordination if we could manage it to publicise the event and also to document those events so that they are then seen as a whole and they’re not lost in the history of time.

Mary Schoeser

So, what you’re suggesting is that what’s needed is some kind of central sort of informal central repository to… to keep track of this kind of information?

Woman

I haven’t got a really a solution, but it seems to me absolutely vital that if we’re going to put the energy into doing it, then the documentation of that both before in terms of getting people and particularly during, is so important, so that we have that as the history, that that is really, really important. And if we could feed that into something, if there was something established at a centre of learning, or somewhere like the Whitworth, already established as a centre of textiles, if we could feed that information in so that it is documented and if we have some help through people involved in journalism or through the press to be able to get the information out there initially…

Mary Schoeser

I have a final question for Lesley, or possibly for June.  This is theoretically our last seminar and it’s clear from what people are saying in all their different ways that there is a desire to take a lot of these ideas forward to, to do something and to, to go on finessing what that something might be.  So, my question to you, I, I suppose on behalf of the audience I assume that’s everyone’s question really, what next?  What happens to context and collaboration and all this discussion we’ve been having?

Lesley Millar

Well in practical terms, there will be the Report that goes forward to the AHRC and will be published by them. It will also be published on the project website and on the V&A website, and a summary will be in Textile: the journal of cloth and culture. In aspirational terms, there are things that I want to do, and hope I will be able to do. But I am just one person. We have here today, and have had throughout the seminar series, representatives from all of the identified sectors – museums and galleries, HEI’s, funders and professional practitioners – if we do really want something to happen then we all have work together to make sure it does. It is not down to one person, there are lots of ideas and strategies that have emerged from these seminars, now it’s up to you, as well as me, all of us, to change things. Thank you.

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