Emeritus Professor Clio Padovani

• Design heritage as a driver for innovation policy in the textile industry
• Narrative and material culture of textile production, with special interests in community narratives and retention of textile heritage
• Speculative thinking on textiles and interdisciplinarity through film, weaving and writing

As a weaver and digital media artist, I have built a body of work that visually explores how cloth can function as a repository of personal narratives and material histories. Working with post production techniques to construct the digital screen as a fabric, I developed an original visual language where video images are informed by textile methodologies such as folding, weaving, layering, quilting and lace. The consistent aim of the research has been to engage audiences with valorising and recovering textile skills, the shared cultural significance of making cloth and the renewal of industry informed by heritage and social values.

Ongoing research explores how public policy can help retain textile manufacturing heritage, and to what extent the creative social capital of skilled textile manufacturing communities is enabling growth and innovation in EU textile and fashion SMEs. This underlying question is at the centre of all recent outputs. My research findings indicate that textile making can be understood as a social and progressive process of identity creation, inflected by the clustering of diverse narratives.

My current focus is on how these narratives of construction engage with social values, and by extension, policy agendas and entrepreneurial environments in support of the creative industries. I'm involved with the Creative Industries Federation, Creative Skillset, Westminster Media Forum, and SMEs that have developed educational accreditation to upskill fragile local communities. My most recent research is aimed at exploring collaborative creation of new products and socially sustainable manufacturing models.

Since 2008, I have been working with other international stakeholders on EU funded projects, exploring design heritage as a driver for innovation policy in the textile industry. My writing explores the narrative and material culture of textile production, with special interests in community narratives and retention of textile heritage. Clio publishes speculative thinking on textiles and interdisciplinarity through film, weaving and writing. I am co-author of Sustainability and the Social Fabric - Europe’s new textile industries, 2017, Bloomsbury Academic, and a peer reviewer for Bloomsbury manuscripts.

Competitively funded EU projects: 

Academic project leader: EurotexId, EU Culture Programme programme project, 2008-2010

Research fellow: Plustex, Interreg IVC project, European Regional Development Fund, 2011-2014.