New Member – Laura Burrill

How would you describe your business/creative practice ?

I am a community arts practitioner and textile artist exploring textiles as a language for memory, identity and belonging. Through slow, story-led making, I work with communities, museums and heritage organisations to create collaborative artworks that bring people and stories together. Alongside this, I am developing a research-led practice exploring women’s histories and lived experience through stitch, cloth and surface.

 

 

Can you tell us the story behind why you started your business/practice and your journey so far.

I’ve had a lifelong love affair with textiles. I studied Fashion at university and spent some time working in the industry before moving into marketing, but I never really stopped making. Along the way I had various creative side hustles, from making wedding dresses and evening wear to designing play clothes for children while living in Singapore. I’ve also been lucky enough to live and work abroad, including in Berlin and Singapore, and wherever I’ve been, textiles and making have followed me. In 2018, I started a Master’s in Public History, and it was something of a lightbulb moment. Suddenly, all the seemingly disconnected threads of my life – heritage, history, textiles, making, community and place – came together. For my dissertation, I developed a large-scale participatory project exploring whether craft could be used to create meaningful change within a community. The project changed my life. I was hooked, and I knew I had found what I wanted to do. Over the past five years, I’ve developed a practice creating large-scale, participatory textile projects with communities, museums and heritage organisations. I love bringing people together, creating spaces where stories can be shared and turned into something tangible and collective. With an established community practice that I love, I’m now interested in spending some of my time turning my methodology inwards. So much of my work has been about asking other people to tell their stories; I’m beginning to ask how I might tell my own. I’m exploring women’s histories, memory and lived experience through textile, using my studio time to experiment, take risks and develop a creative voice that feels truly my own.

 

Did you study at University? If so, where did you graduate from and what course did you study?

BA Hons Fashion Surrey Institute of Art & Design MA Public History & Heritage – University of Derby

 

As a Derby Grad where there any University services that you found particularly useful when starting your business/practice?

E.g. Enterprise Service, Pitch Perfect, Careers Service, work experience/placements, etc.

I was incredibly lucky at the University of Derby. The quality of teaching was fantastic, but one of the most important influences on my practice was my dissertation mentor, art historian Freya Gowerly, now Senior Lecturer in History of Art and Liberal Arts at the University of Bristol. She believed in my seemingly madcap plan to combine academic research with a live, participatory project, and gave me the confidence to pursue it. Kedleston Road Library was also a favourite place. I spent countless hours immersed in arts-based research, participatory arts, community practice, art history and textiles. That time gave me the research foundations that continue to underpin my practice today.

 

 

What UoD networks did you find useful during your studies and post graduation, if any?

I was incredibly fortunate to be part of a fantastic cohort at UoD. We supported and encouraged one another throughout our studies and those relationships have continued long after graduation. We still meet up years later, share opportunities, champion each other’s work and celebrate one another’s successes. In many ways, that informal network has been one of the most valuable things to come out of my time at UoD, a group of people who understand the journey, genuinely want each other to succeed and continue to inspire me.

 

What do you hope that being part of the Banks Mill community will do for your creative business/practice? Is there one thing in particular that you’re looking forward to?

Space! A dedicated space where I can focus without being distracted by life, kids, washing and the postman. Having somewhere that is genuinely mine will give me the headspace to experiment, develop new work and allow my practice to grow. I’m also really looking forward to being part of a creative community – connecting with other artists, sharing ideas, learning from one another and simply being surrounded by creative people. I’m fascinated by print and have lots I want to explore, so I’m particularly excited about connecting with Green Door Studios and seeing where that might take my textile practice.

 

Do you have any other work experience/support/or training that’s relevant to what you’re doing now?

Much of my experience has been gathered through the practice itself. Alongside my degree in Fashion and Master’s in Public History, I worked in marketing before developing my creative practice, giving me useful skills in communication, project management and running a small creative business. Over the past five years, I’ve worked with museums, heritage organisations, charities and communities across the UK, developing and delivering large-scale participatory textile projects. More recently, Mental Health First Aid and trauma-informed training have had a significant impact on my practice, making me even more thoughtful about how I design and deliver community projects, particularly when working with sensitive stories and experiences.

 

What are you working on at the moment?

At the moment, I’m collaborating with Leicester Cathedral on Windows of Leicester, a large-scale community textile installation celebrating the city’s rich heritage, cultures and stories. Drawing inspiration from Leicester’s stained glass, architecture, gardens, migration stories and diverse communities, visitors and friends of the Cathedral are coming together to create three large-scale hanging window panels. Each participant is adding their own story through a small, collaged textile artwork, which will be joined with hundreds of others to create a collective portrait of the city. Together, the panels will tell the story of Leicester through the people who live, work and belong there, woven together through fabric, stitch, memory and storytelling. Alongside this, I’m working on a small project for Derbyshire’s Creative Health Strategy, with plenty of other irons in the fire, including, of course, numerous funding applications in progress!

 

Tell us about your work/techniques/how long a piece takes to complete?

My practice is rooted in textiles, particularly appliqué, collage and slow stitching. I love working with reclaimed fabrics and textiles from domestic spaces. I’m fascinated by the stories and memories that cloth can hold. A piece of clothing, embroidered linens, even bedsheets and blankets can carry traces of the people and places they have belonged to, bringing another layer of narrative to the work. I’m interested in the physicality of working with cloth, layering, cutting, joining, stitching and allowing materials to retain traces of their previous lives. I’m increasingly drawn to collage as a way of building narrative and experimenting with colour, texture and surface, and this is something I’m keen to develop further in the studio. My research-led project The Red Thread is giving me space to explore this more personally, alongside the large-scale community work I’m known for. Textile work is inherently slow, and the timescale varies enormously depending on the project. A personal piece might develop over weeks or months, while a large community project such as Stitching Ashbourne can take anywhere from six months to a year, from initial conversations and workshops through to the finished artwork. For me, that slowness is part of the process, allowing time for stories, relationships and the work itself to develop.

 

 

What are your plans for your business/practice for the next 12 months?

The next 12 months are about building on the practice I’ve established while creating space to develop my own artistic voice. I’ll continue delivering large-scale, participatory textile projects with communities, museums and heritage organisations, alongside developing new commissions and partnerships. A key priority will be using my time at Banks Mill to develop The Red Thread and explore collage, print, stitch and reclaimed textiles more experimentally. I want to give myself permission to play, take risks and make work without every piece needing to have a community outcome attached to it. I’m also keen to strengthen the business side of my practice, developing sustainable income streams, building new partnerships and continuing to apply for funding that will allow me to take on ambitious community projects. Ultimately, I want the next year to be about finding a healthy balance between the community work I love and making space for my own creative development.

 

Is there any further information you would like to share?

Perhaps the most important thing to say is that I’m really excited to be here. I’ve spent the last five years building a practice around bringing other people together through textiles, and I’m now at a point where I want to give myself permission to explore what making means to me as an artist. Banks Mill feels like the right place for that next chapter, a space to experiment, to learn from other creatives, to share ideas and, hopefully, to make some beautiful mistakes along the way. My mantra has always been “connection, not perfection”, and I’m looking forward to bringing that spirit into the studio.