Motto - Kendal's Textile Heritage comes to life!

Have you ever seen a flock of sheep wandering through the streets of Kendal? Well you just might when the Brewery’s new project Motto: Cloth is my Bread, reaches its woolly climax next year - and we want you to get involved.

The Brewery Arts Centre would like to work with the whole community to tell the untold story of Kendal’s textile heritage. For centuries the main trade in & around Kendal was wool & cloth industries. Farming produced wool, but incomes were supplemented with weaving & knitting. These textile industries have gone; the last factory, Goodacres, moved production to Poland in 2006. Unlike other textile towns and cities, such as Lancaster, which have reams of documentation and books on the subject, Kendal’s textile history has very few published books, perhaps the most significant being out of print.
Through Motto local textile artists will work with different communities in Kendal to bring traditional skills back to life, using contemporary materials to create exciting new 21st Century art works. We hope that this expertise, along with other art forms and based on historical references and artefacts, will inspire everyone to engage with and take pride in Kendal’s textile heritage.

This project is for all ages, including schools, community groups, families and special interest groups in and around Kendal, with plenty of opportunities to take part. Fancy learning traditional songs or exploring aspects of the textile trade through movement and contemporary dance? Have you ever wanted to learn how to work with wool or find out how Kendal’s famous green dye was produced? The project is wide open for everyone to get involved and we want to know what you want.

Motto will culminate in a community open day, celebrating the work produced with exhibitions, performances, activities and demonstrations based around our textile traditions. Look out for flocks of sheep through Kendal’s streets and giant sheets of cloth on tenterhooks drying in the wind.

If you’d like to know more about the project, have a group that may like to be involved, or if you can offer your time for research or provide historical information, we would love to hear from you. Call the Brewery Box Office on 01539 725133 or email george.grange@breweryarts.co.uk.