Join the conversation about textiles, sustainability and collaboration.

seam collective is delighted to invite you to join the conversation at Textile Talks; textiles, sustainability and collaboration on Friday 3 October 2025. The one-day symposium will be in-person in Somerton, Somerset, UK with online options too. It’s part of Warped and Wasted, seam‘s next ambitious textile art project.

Early bird tickets for Textile Talks: Textiles, sustainability and collaboration are now available until the end of July via The Loom Shed website here!

Speakers

We’re thrilled with the stellar line up of invited speakers and are really looking forward to hearing their talks and together adding to the critical dialogue around these important topics:

Judith van den Boom, our host, leads the MA in Regenerative Design at Central St. Martins in London and she has been mentoring the Warped and Wasted project. Judith’s talk Warped and Wasted: A Collective Process to Practice Life, explores how we can understand sustainability not as a passive concept, but as an active, living-learning practice.

Paula Orrell, the National Director of CVAN England (Contemporary Visual Arts Network), will speak on the role of the visual arts, including textiles, as vital cultural infrastructure and as a driver of social and economic growth.

Helen Carnac with seam members Lou Baker, Oliver Bliss, Nina Gronw Lewis, Angie Parker and Nicola Turner in-conversation. Helen, an artist and curator who has also been mentoring seam, will lead the conversation, asking the members to reflect on the Warped and Wasted project and how it is changing their approach to sustainability in their collaborative and individual practices.

Becky Earley, a designer, researcher and educator whose work is concerned with the climate crisis. Becky set up a print design studio in London in 1995, curated the Crafts Council’s Well Fashioned: Eco Style in the UK survey in 2005, and in 2020 she co-founded World Circular Textiles Day 2050 to highlight advances being made in circular textile design and production.

For full details of the speakers, their talks and the order of the day, please click here.

We are also very lucky to be supported by Liz and Louise at The Loom Shed who have been facilitating their own fabulous textile events for the last five years and are collaborating with seam for Textile Talks. Many thanks, Liz and Louise!

Making and thinking

Here at seam collective, we feel that making and thinking go hand in hand. In fact, for many of us, making generates thought, so the symposium, Textile Talks: Textiles, sustainability and collaboration, is a really important part of our Warped and Wasted project. It will accompany the Warped and Wasted experimental installation which will be exhibited at ACEarts in Somerton from Saturday 23 August – Saturday 11 October 2025. Made exclusively with 100% waste, existing second hand and biodegradable textiles, the exhibition will be open to all and free to visit. We’re also having a Meet the Artists event in the gallery on Saturday 30 August, 11am-1pm. Come and join us!

Over the past weeks, team seam has been working collaboratively, researching and developing ways to work more sustainably, distilling our ideas into a cohesive vision both in theory and practice. We’ve been very grateful to have worked with two brilliant external mentors, Judith van den Boom, who leads the MA in Regenerative Design at Central St. Martins in London, and Helen Carnac, an artist and curator who has experience in facilitating collaboration in fine art projects. They have facilitated some of our recent Collaboration meetings, both in-person and online, challenging our thinking and supporting our learning about the complexities of textile waste and sustainability… and also guiding us through our processes of collaboration. Many thanks, Judith and Helen!

Read more about what we’ve been learning together in our recent blog posts, Collaboration Meeting 1, Collaboration Meeting 2, Collaboration Meeting 3, and Collaboration Meeting 4 on the seam website. 

And of course, we’ve been making new work. Some of us have been using treasure from our stashes, others are using second hand or gifted materials, others still are making work that will be fully biodegradable. We’re all very excited to witness the different ways that each seam member is exploring ways to be more sustainable in their individual practices. Each of us has been experimenting with our chosen materials, transforming them into an idiosyncratic and ecletic selection of art works. We can’t wait to share them with you, as part of the installation at ACEarts!

The seam members taking part in Warped and Wasted are: Alice Marie Archer, Lou Baker, Oliver Bliss, Youngye Glory Cho, Jane Colquhoun, Julie Heaton, Desiree Jeans, Nina Gronw Lewis, Helen MacRitchie, Joy Merron, Lydia Needle, Angie Parker, Nicola Turner and Penny Wheeler

Through the Warped and Wasted exhibition and the symposium together we hope to stimulate thought, conversation and action about the issues surrounding textile waste and how we, as artists, can make changes in our individual practices to care for the environment.

Book your tickets now! Come and find out more about what we’ve been learning at
Warped and Wasted – Textile Talks: Textiles, sustainability and collaboration
Somerton Parish Rooms + ACEarts, Market Place, Somerton, Somerset, TA11 7NB
Friday 3 October 2025, 10am-4pm.

Early bird tickets are available until the end of July. We also have a limited number of discounted tickets for students, so if you’re a student, don’t delay!

See you there!

Lou Baker

Note: Updated on 7 September 2025 to reflect a change in speakers. Heath Lowdnes can no longer join us on the 3 October 2025. We are thrilled however that Becky Earley is now able to join our line up for the 3pm talk.