Contemporary Voices in Printed Textiles: Using traditional African commemorative cloths to inspire political engagement and social comment from Scottish students

This collection of fashion garments is the result of a collaborative partnership between National Museums Scotland and University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh College of Art's textiles programme.

National Museums Scotland’s African collections development includes contemporary printed textiles commissioned by political, religious and non-governmental groups and include cloths which commemorate famous people and events. As a distinctive feature of African post-colonial material culture, these cloths function as visual expressions of national histories, community identities and cultural concerns.

This collaborative project with Edinburgh College of Art was an opportunity to engage new audiences with contemporary African arts, creating links across cultures and introducing the Museum’s African collections as an inspirational resource for students and researchers of material creativity.

The student brief:

‘This project between the National Museums of Scotland (NMS) and ECA will complement the traditional African cloths held in the collections by encouraging contemporary students studying in Scotland to highlight current famous people, events and social comment pertaining to them as ECA students of 2016/17. The project will record personal interests, beliefs, and preoccupations in what are changing and turbulent times in the world, capturing them in printed samples and lengths of cloth.’

Students studied the cloths interpreting key messages, content and technical production methods in the fabrics.

Subjects and figures included:

The plight of the Syrian refugees
Donald Trump and his controversial bid for presidency
Scottish wildlife at risk of extinction
Raif Badawi, Saudi arabian journalist jailed and tortured for blogging

The final printed cloths were sewn into garments using zero waste principles and shown at ECA fashion show. This collection reveals an innovative response to contemporary African textile culture, and the potential for new ideas and cultural connections.