Guest Lecture on Wool at Bath Spa University
Image: Edwardian glasshouse at BSU’s Newton Park Campus Credit: Harriet Fletcher-Gilhuys
In my capacity as Fashion Roundtable’s Wool Researcher, I recently delivered an exciting and empowering guest lecture to Dr. Lori Bystrom’s ‘people and plants’ class at Bath Spa University’s Newton Park Campus. Addressing students from a wide range of disciplines to encourage cross disciplinary learning, the lecture explored the power of Plants and People and how these relationships overlap into many disciplines such as science, engineering, textiles, fashion and materials.
BSU is currently in the development and planning phase for starting a ‘purposeful plant garden’ to engage students in a wider range of teaching and learning activities. The garden will put sustainable development at the forefront while making use of the incredible grounds that Newton Park has to offer, including the tranquil view of sheep that graze the land.
The day began with a tour around the Edwardian glasshouse which is located in a walled garden area. It houses a student-run allotment with a range of different fruits that grow along the walls (apples, pears, cherries, plums etc.).
It is also home to a variety of different plant species, wild flowers and many historical books. The space acts as a central hub for learning and engagement, allowing students to meet with expert gardeners and engage in participatory learning experiences outside the classroom. Next, we toured around the rest of the walled garden with Penny Snowden, the BSU Grounds Manager, to see the brilliant work she and her team have done to restore the gardens to their former glory, including a student-led fruit and vegetable garden, detailed plant labelling using original tags, and of course the space where the natural dye garden will be planted.
We then headed over to the lecture theatre to meet the students. Dr. Bystrom began the lecture discussing plant taxonomy or in other words how plants are classified. The focus was mainly on plant families and their key botanical features. She also explained the Latin scientific names (binomial nomenclature) of plants and how these names are derived from their appearance, biological effects, provenance or other languages.
It was also highlighted that the evolutionary relationships of plants can be used as a source of design inspiration, as shown in the Bristol Botanic Garden's Angiosperm phylogeny display. This garden design is a clever way to guide visitors around the gardens while teaching them about the evolutionary relationships and categorisation of flowering plants.
Image: Harriet Fletcher-Gilhuys delivering her guest lecture at BSU Credit: Harriet Fletcher-Gilhuys
This led smoothly into my lecture, which focused on natural dyeing for fashion and textiles. I started by discussing the launch of the Nottingham Trent University dye garden in 2018 and how this sparked my interest around natural dye processes and the current gap in teaching around these heritage crafts. I walked the students through my research journey throughout my BA and MA, where I was heavily inspired by Fibreshed to set myself the challenge of creating my own internal natural fibre and dye system. This included harvesting, collecting and naturally dyeing all of my materials myself, with the garden becoming an integral part of my learning.
This then led into an overview of my work at the Royal College of Art, where I took a regenerative systems thinking approach to design methodology, analysing British wool systems at both a micro and macro scale. This took place alongside a cross-disciplinary group project, where we designed a regenerative dye garden and secured funding, which is now being used for established at RCA Kensington.
My aim for the lecture was to highlight to the students the importance of relationships between plants and people, and how we have become so disconnected from the natural world and ancient crafts, particularly natural dyeing, which is rarely taught at universities or available as a resource in dye labs.
This lack of access can make it hard for interested students to know where to start, and to secure base knowledge such as the realistic time frame from harvesting to end result, and to understand the importance of giving yourself enough time to practise in order to ensure that results can be repeated. I emphasised to the students the importance of starting these experiments in their first year in order to be confident in their colour mastery by the final year.
We had many fruitful conversations referencing the amazing work of Babs Behan from Botanical Inks and Jenny Dean’s book ‘Wild Colour’, many of the incredible books and sources that have travelled with me over the years during tests and tribulations.
The purposeful plant garden at BSU is an exciting venture that will create extensive research opportunities around bio-mordants and add an extra level of sustainability and traceability knowledge to BSU students’ learning. Establishing the garden will also ensure the relationship between plants and people can naturally evolve to get students thinking about how they can incorporate these practices into their work for years to come, while also working to preserve heritage crafts in the next generation.