So, what’s next for seam?
We’re planning another ambitious project, Warped and Wasted, for 2025, which will focus on sustainability and collaboration. This follows our successful two-year Arts Council-funded exhibition tour of A Visible THREAD, and our reflections on our practice as a collective and how we can elevate the ambitions of seam.
However, we need your help to secure match funding for our Arts Council application so we’ve started a crowdfunder! We have some very special seam collective rewards available for you including:
- Artworks by Jane Colquhoun and Joy Merron
- Products by Helen MacRitchie and Desiree Jeans
- Workshops with Penny Wheeler, Nina Gronw-Lewis and Lydia Needle
- An online talk with Julie Heaton
- Mentoring by Oly Bliss and Youngye Cho
- Afternoon tea with Lou Baker
- A studio tour with Angie Parker, and
- An artist dinner with Nicola Turner!
What is Warped and Wasted?
Warped and Wasted will build on what we’ve learned through working together during A Visible THREAD. We’re now challenging ourselves to work collaboratively to develop an authentically sustainable, immersive and experimental textile installation which will be exhibited at ACEarts, in Somerton, Somerset, UK over seven weeks from August-October 2025.
We are also planning a Warped and Wasted symposium to coincide with the exhibition which will highlight issues of sustainability, specifically in fine art textile practices. Disseminating what we learn through our research and making, we want to stimulate critical dialogue and provoke thought, conversation – and action. Watch this space for more details!
We’re excited by our ideas, but some aspects of the project are outside our comfort zones. We recognise that, as artists, sustainability is such a complex issue, and we have a long way to go… However, we are committing ourselves, individually and as a collective, to find ways to work towards making art that doesn’t add to the climate crisis.
Your generous donations will allow the artists time for research and development, enabling us to hold in-person meetings, going through a structured process of ideas generation and consensus-building towards the final work. With mentoring support, we will distil our ideas into a cohesive vision. We have developed a clear plan to make this goal achievable, focusing on collaboration and sustainability.
The Rewards
We have a huge variety of rewards, to suit all pockets and to give you, our wonderful audience, lots of opportunities to learn from, purchase from or engage with the many individual and talented seam members. There’s a mix of online and in-person events, one-off products and original artworks, so do take a look! If you’d like to show your support without claiming a reward there’s an option for that too (just click the pink ‘support’ button and enter the amount you’d like to pledge).
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