Thinking Through Textiles, held on February 21, 2025 at University of California Los Angeles’s Broad Art Center in the EDA: Experimental Digital Arts Space, explored the role of textiles in education, technology, and sustainability.
“At its core, this initiative is about taking action—if we want change, we must create the opportunities to make it happen.”
In this Q&A, organizers Cameron Taylor-Brown, Lesley Roberts, and Chandler McWilliams discussed textiles as tools for thinking, making, and understanding our world.
This conference grew from our shared experiences as textile makers and our observations of textile production on a larger scale. Many in the West are disconnected from the origins of fiber and the labor, energy, and resources behind it. Meanwhile, education has shifted from hands-on learning to abstract, screen-based knowledge. Working with textiles reengages our senses, connecting us to material histories, craftsmanship, and the broader systems that shape our world.
Technology, especially as it manifests through AI, surveillance, and robotics, is transforming our lives at an exponential pace. Ironically, tech’s foundational logic is the slow and laborious work of textile production. Working with textiles encourages us to think, with and through our hands, about the concrete reality in which we live, as well as how textiles and technology are intimately linked throughout human history.
We imagine this conference as the beginning of a discovery of the people, places, and projects already happening and an opportunity to find each other. Approaching the subject from multiple lenses will also offer us an opportunity to think creatively about future ways of supporting each other’s work.
The throughline of these perspectives is an understanding that textiles are embedded in every discipline. We’re all thinking about systems through a textile lens because textiles have influenced or shaped every aspect of human civilization. What’s exciting about their varied perspectives is anticipating that so many people will be able to imagine something new by piecing together different aspects of what they hear. It’s heartening to note also that we’ve had interest from all over the world.
Textiles shape economies, history, and social structures, yet their impact is often overlooked. Gaining hands-on textile skills fosters a deeper connection to these systems and can enrich—and even sustain—our lives.
This conference is just the start of a regional focus on textiles in education. Future gatherings could expand into full-day events, workshops, exhibitions, and industry collaborations. We closed the day with a short brainstorming session, so beyond merely speculating about what people want next, we asked them. One of our key approaches is believing in our agency—because we are makers at heart. If we want to see change, we need to be the ones who build the structures or create the opportunities that can make change possible.
Learn more at https://conditional.arts.ucla.edu/thinking-through-textiles/
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Cami Smith is the Fiber Art Now media manager, community engagement coordinator, and a mixed-media artist.
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