Leek Textile Week
Celebrating the town's rich textile heritage

Running from 23-29 September 2024, Leek Textile Week produced by League of Artisans will comprise a series of community-focused activities, talks and exhibitions that celebrate the town’s rich textile heritage. We will weave threads of the past into the present, spinning new connections with artisans from India and beyond whose knowledge helped transform the local industry.
150 years ago, William Morris came to Leek to collaborate with Thomas Wardle, who in turn worked with Indian artisans, drawing on their expertise and sharing good practice around wild silk and natural dyes. Elizabeth Wardle set up Leek Embroidery Society, creating work for the leading artists and architects of the day: Walter Crane, Norman Shaw, John Sedding, George Gilbert Scott. Cultural collaboration is the foundation of Leek’s rich textile legacy and it is a living heritage, with older residents still alive who worked in the town’s many mills and dyeworks. Some still work in the textile industry, as designers, printers, makers, dyers. Leek was also the headquarters for the textile workers union, and we will celebrate this legacy of activism, as well as exploring what fashion activism looks like today.
Drawing on the legacy of Thomas Wardle and his work with William Morris, our community will grow woad and Japanese indigo, make natural dye vats, and learn how to dye and print with them. We will spin and weave cotton, silk, wool, as well as nettle and flax. We will create a textile map of the town, showing mills and dyeworks, sewing, printing and embroidering worker journeys and homes. Oral histories and archival research will culminate in a walking trail, with projections on buildings, soundscapes, and processions with our community group natural dye flags. There will be talks, workshops, poetry and more, our activities guided by our Community Steering Committee.
See what’s on during Leek Textile Week here and on the schedule and map here, and find out about the three artists that League of Artisans and OUTSIDE have commissioned to bring to life oral histories from Leek’s textile past below.

Deborah Bowness: If Walls Could Talk - Art trail
Deborah Bowness: If Walls Could Talk – Art trail
Venues: Walls across Leek – see map here showing paste-up sites
Open: 23-29 September 2024, day and night
FREE
If walls could talk, what stories would they tell about Leek’s diverse industrial heritage and the lives of local people? If walls could talk, they would share their many stories, revealing the layers of history contained within. Deborah Bowness will take wallpaper onto the streets, creating a trail of site specific outdoor paste-ups covering 300 metres of wall space. Her work will be informed by oral histories gathered from Leek’s textile workers, bringing to life heritage stories of the mills.
Artist, designer and maker, Deborah Bowness grew up in Yorkshire and has been designing, making and exhibiting wallpaper since 1999, working from her studio in St Leonards-on-Sea. A graduate of the MA Mixed Media course at the Royal College of Art, Deborah has developed a wallpaper and printmaking practice, designing and screen printing to commission for private and commercial clients including, Sothebys, Habitat, Paul Smith and Universal Records. Deborah has exhibited extensively in exhibitions and her prints are held in collections worldwide, including the Victoria and Albert Museum.
FREE Flag Making Workshop with Deborah Bowness & Oliver Crowther, 14 September – details here.

Amber Cooper-Davies: Animations based on oral histories - Art trail
Amber Cooper-Davies: Animations based on oral histories – Art trail
Venue: London Mill East, 12 London Street, Leek ST13 5LE.
The installation starts in the first floor stairwell with projections guiding visitors up to the second-floor space. There are two flights of stone stairs up to the second floor, then one step down to the main space the projections are being shown.
Open: 23-29 September 2024, 10am – 4pm, Friday 27 September till 7pm
FREE
Through a series of short animations (see video below) based on Leek’s oral histories, Amber will celebrate the materials, skills and culture of the textile workers of Leek. Featuring stories from machinists, dyers, spinners and manageresses across various Leek companies such as Lux Lux, AJ Worthington & Co., Premier Dying & Finishing Co. and Brough Nicholson & Hall. The films will recall the community spirit of the mills, the skill of the workers, and reflect on the loss the town has felt since losing much of the industry in recent years.
Amber Cooper-Davies is an illustrator and animator based in London. Her work is characterised by her love of physical materials, mixing colour and texture with intricate cutting and composition. Amber brings the tactile nature of her work to many formats, from traditional print media to digital, and onwards to live performances and augmented reality. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at home and abroad.
FREE Stop-Motion Animation Puppet Workshop with Amber Cooper-Davies, 21 September – details here.

Harry Pizzey - The Heritage Collector
Harry Pizzey: The Heritage Collector
Venue: Roaming
Open: Look out for the Heritage Collector around Leek on Friday 27 September 1-5pm, Saturday 28 September 11am-4pm, Sunday 29 September 11am-4pm
FREE
The Heritage Collector has been travelling around collecting stories of Leek’s cultural and textile heritage, and storing them in his portable cabinet of curiosities. Wherever he encounters a potential audience, he will fold out the legs of the cabinet and set it down on the floor. As the audience peers in, the Heritage Collector recounts the stories behind each scene, bringing to life the sounds, smells, and sights of Leek’s past.
Harry Pizzey is a freelance designer and artist living in Cardiff. He has worked across various sectors of the creative industries, including theatre, events, TV, opera, illustration and installation. Harry studied a Masters in Design for Performance at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and an undergraduate degree in Architecture at The Bartlett School of Architecture UCL. Recent projects include illustrating a series of books for Scotland Street Press and designing a touring production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for The Handlebards Theatre Company.
Leek Textile Week is funded through Arts Council England’s National Lottery Project Grants and Creative People & Places programme and Historic England’s Everyday Heritage Grants: Celebrating Working Class Histories.