Safeguarding and Teaching Intangible Textile Cultural Heritage

STITCH aims to transform our approach to vanishing textile cultural heritage and its craft into opportunities to educate and inspire future design. In the industrial world, textiles are cheap and mass produced, and as a consequence, traditional textile craft skill and knowledge are not always valued, and often forgotten. The market for such work thus becomes even more restricted, which results in the diminution of traditional textile craft and a loss of knowledge. With this diminution, an important piece of heritage is lost – not only the garments themselves but the methods of producing them and the intangible cultural manifestations of a community’s traditional dress. STITCH will create an open space for this important interplay between heritage, education and modern design via innovation within the process of safeguarding traditional dress and via an innovative learning programme for current fashion and textile students. Techniques that are typically not used in the classrooms will be brought forward by STITCH making full use of available technologies. Teachers will be joined by artesian educators and craftspeople through webinars to impart more practical courses. This will enable students’ access to knowledge, which is normally not part of the University training. A link between generations will be created and a sense of understanding, appreciation and respect will be formed. This will enrich the official and regulated training of design studies, providing new perspectives, knowledge and new ways of doing and creating by favoring the conservation of artistic and cultural heritage, which is one of the fundamental objectives of higher artistic education.STITCH will prove possible to develop and deliver a hands-on course of design studies in an online manner serving as predecessor for other practical design studies. Specifically, STITCH focuses on:•CATALOGUING INTANGIBLE HERITAGE: This includes the skills, the tools and the history of production and the events, traditions and social history associated with each heritage costume. The project emphasizes the need to preserve and share the living textile heritage of European communities when cataloguing traditional dress in museums or cultural centres. •DIGITAL INNOVATION: It will use 3D scanning and film to improve the documentation of historical dress and facilitate the teaching of traditional textile and garment making techniques.•TEXTILE HERITAGE EDUCATION: There is a need to amplify the opportunities for inspiration and conditions for innovation resulting from traditional textiles and their craftsmanship. As education is the ‘strongest tool in preservation of heritage’ participating HEIs will assume a role within safeguarding and continuing textile heritage.As a result of these innovations STITCH aims to drive the improved safeguarding of European textile heritage and its continued role in the modern world of textile design and production. Multiplier events, stakeholder engagement as well as seminars will support the correct dissemination of project results as well as knowledge transfer between participating organisations.