Textiles strand meeting, 15 September, 11-12

Thanks all for a really helpful first meeting of the newly expanded textiles strand meeting.

In attendance was: Asa Calow, Carol Chung, Paul Craddock, Ros Cranston, Graeme Gooday, Helen Graham, Jamie Unwin, Nina Webb-Bourne, Katie Belshaw, Kylea Little, Bernard Musesengwe, Simon Popple, Arran Rees, Maggie Smith, Tim Smith, Jane Winters, Stefania Zardini Lacedelli (let me know if anyone is missing - I couldn't see everyone!).

An overview of how the textiles strand meetings had developed was given and Stefania shared some information about how some initial data sets had been used in experimenting with Omeka.
Stefania, Tim S, Alex and Arran gave an overview of the mini-inquiries undertaken between the first Leeds workshop in June and the reflection workshop in July. They also gave an update on how those inquiries were developing:
- Stefania, along with Nina are looking into text-to-speech software for working with oral history recordings without digitised and accessible transcripts.
- Stefania, along with Simon and Paul are exploring folk songs and poetry as ways into aural or sonic forms of history pre-oral history recordings.
- Tim S spoke about some potential future work with The Brick Box, a culture and arts organisation based in Bradford. The collaboration would focus on trans-local connections between Bradford, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and his own archive of work connected other (inter)national collections.
- Alex explained that his work was developing through ongoing work with Colin, Caroline and Steve, who are associated with the Saltaire Collection, and how his interests are developing alongside the idea of flows of materials and chemical and dyeing processes.
- Arran explained how he was working with Jamie, and hopefully Alex and Stuart Prior at Wikidata, to scope out how a Wikidata project might help facilitate use of digital 'connective tissue' data in connecting collections.
Arran, Alex, Stefania and Tim gave a brief overview of the visit to Quarry Bank Mill, particularly the archive and connections to collections in Northern Ireland and plantations in the Caribbean, as well as links to the energy strand.
Arran and Helen gave an overview of the October workshop in Manchester (20/21 Oct) and the cfp approach taken to opening up participation in the project.
Opened up to ask for any insights into how the meetings should be run going forward. Suggestions of collective agenda setting, saving links from chats, potentially using Zoom and also potentially using breakout rooms for discussions.

Jamboard link is here.