Newham Heritage Month
"We put on an open day as part of the Newham Heritage Month where members of the public could come to see some of our work and have a go themselves. This was a fun day and some of the people who attended really enjoyed modelling some of our costumes." Sandra Elliott, ELTA Volunteer
Our six week project with Newham Heritage Month centred around introducing a variety of World Textile techniques to Newham textile enthusiasts as well as starting to make records of the 13 year life of ELTA. This included beginning an oral history project and recording in our book the major projects we have undertaken.
We plan to develop this work and have submitted an application to the Heritage Lottery Fund to do a much larger project stretching over two years. We wait to hear if we are succcessful!
Here are some photos from our photoshoot with the McGrath Makers group, ELTA's Learning dissabled group. The clothes modelled were all made by ELTA members. The McGrath Makers feature in a big way in ELTA's history.
Here is a link to our Newham Heritage Month page.
Here is a link to the History of ELTA we made for Newham History Month. It is a collection of the best photos of our projects made over the 13 year life of our project. This book we hope to expand through our next heritage project We should hear by December if we are successful. We want to add projects previously not covered, research the recent history textiles in Newham, including the factories that have closed since the 1970s and 80s and writing about the home-working textile workers. we hope to extend the history to include the young Newham fashion designers we now see on Instagram. There will be more written about the lives of ELTA people who make all the beautiful embroidery and clothes, and about the very diverse cultural and textile backgrounds they came from and the skills they brought into the borough. We can't wait to get started.
ELTA's Heritage Videos
And here is a link to our new
East London Textile Arts Heritage Videos.
available to all on Youtube
on these vieos you can hear people talking about how they made their textile pieces. More will soon be added and if our application to the Heritage Lottery Fund is successful we will add How-to-Make videos.