📣 This Summer, see the work of Textiles MA at #RCA2026 – a series of exhibitions and events and activities, showcasing the work of graduating RCA students, running from 18 June to 19 July!
✌️ RCA2026 will take place across four parts
Textiles MA will be taking over the Hangar Space, at the RCA Battersea Campus. More soon
📆 School of Design EXPO, 16–19 July 2026.
Learn more: rca.ac.uk/rca2026
@royalcollegeofart
Working at the creative interface between materials, making and meaning. Join a Master’s programme operating at the intersection of design, craft and fine art.
At the RCA, we actively challenge the role of the modern Textiles practitioner. Practice-led research is fundamental to our approach. We embrace a ‘thinking through making’ approach, exploring materials and processes to uncover new insights in the physical and digital domains.
The programme unites diverse practitioners, from commercial designers and individual craft and gallery-based practitioners to smart textile innovators. Be part of this vibrant community, whose broad membership is fertile ground for critical debates and questioning.
You’ll develop an individual creative identity through personally driven initiatives, collaborative work, and industry-orientated interdisciplinary projects. With a focus on radical experimentation and material exploration, we encourage an exploratory, non-linear approach that embraces the conceptual. You’ll critically engage with all aspects of the discipline to demonstrate your creative capability. We value all approaches and promote responsibility and ethical values.
To find out more, visit: /study/programme-finder/textiles-ma/
Are you a UK applicant for our MA Textiles or MA Fashion programmes?
The Kay Cosserat Scholarship covers full fees for a Home fee status student with a knitwear specialism 🧶
All you need to do is apply to the RCA by 18 May, and any applicants that meet the criteria above will be eligible for consideration.
Find out more ➡️ https://bit.ly/48gLs8h
#Knitting #Knitwear #KnitwearDesign
@rcatextiles student @cherieleungart was awarded the Gee’s Bend Scholarship, supporting a unique research and making journey in Mississippi.
Through this opportunity, Cherie worked alongside the world-renowned quilters of Gee’s Bend - learning directly from these extraordinary artists and developing her own practice through making.
Alongside this, she explored quilt archives at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, visited exhibitions across Jackson, and connected with contemporary artists working with quilting today.
These experiences were facilitated through MA Textiles lecturer and artist @Lukeanthonyrooney , who also coordinated the Gee’s Bend Scholarship supporting this opportunity.
A powerful exchange of histories, practices, and communities - and an inspiring example of how textile practice can connect across generations and geographies.
@visitgeesbend@geesbendquiltmakers@royalcollegeofart
Thank you to @richardmcvetis for delivering his lecture “Mapping Heat: Textiles, Coal, and Time” to our students as part of the RCA Textiles lecture programme.
Originally presented at the PARSE Biennial Conference, the paper explores coal as both material and metaphor, tracing geological, political, and personal forms of heat through hand embroidery. Drawing on ideas of cosmic background radiation, the work reflects on how histories of labour, migration, and industry leave lasting residues.
The 6th biennial PARSE conference (November 12-14, 2025) hosted by the Artistic Faculty at the University of Gothenburg will address the topic of HEAT. @hdk_valand@parsejournal
In an era of escalating ecological crises and ever-increasing intensities, heat has global but unequal impacts. Driven by advanced capitalism, fossil-fuel dependency, and digital consumption, heat is a literal threat to the lives of many. Yet heat can also be the manifestation of embodied exuberance, generative pressure, and a catalyst for transformation. As such, heat is a tangible warning, a symbol of urgency, an ingredient of change, and an attribute of pleasure.
Richard McVetis is Artist and Educator. He is currently Interim Co-Head of Programme for MA Textiles, RCA.
Image 1: Coal Seams, detail, 2021
Image 2: A Portraits of Coal
Image 3: Studio view
Image 4: Process
Image 5: A Portrait of Coal
Image 6: Research documents
#RCATextiles #TextileResearch #Embroidery #ArtAndEcology #MappingHeat
Such a great day! Huge thanks to the @artworkersguild for running such a powerful and immersive day for our current MA Textiles Students.
This year, AWG hosted a one-day immersive programme for RCA Textiles students, exploring material practice and professional pathways across disciplines. Featuring contributions from Brothers of the Guild, Taslim Martin, Sarah Corbett, Dan Heath, Jazmine Miles-Long, Rob Ryan and Kendall Clarke, the day opened up generous conversations around making, craft, activism and creative careers.
Huge thanks goes to…
@robryanstudio@craftivists@jazmine_miles_long@_kendallclarke@danheathstudio@taslimoo
Art Workers’ Guild (est. 1884) — founded by leading Arts & Crafts architects and designers, and formed by the principle of learning by doing. Today, it brings together 400+ makers across 100+ creative disciplines, celebrating craftsmanship in which traditional skills meet contemporary practice.
Through talks (curated annually by the Master), public events, and outreach, the Guild continues to champion making as an important, humane force in the world.
Images and videos courtesy of RCA Textile Students and staff.
#PowerodMaking #craft #RCATextiles #ThinkingThroughMaking
@royalcollegeofart
🧶 "Cloth carries history in its fibres.” @_tyreis_
🧵 “A single textile was never made by one person." @jasminedhika
Two MA Textiles graduates, Tyreis Holder and Jasmine Dhika talked to us about their practices – shaped by Indonesia and the Caribbean diaspora respectively – and how the study and practice of textiles can weave new visions of care and sustainability.
Tyreis Holder is an artist, poet and community arts educator from South London whose socially engaged practice moves between textiles and poetry, embracing cloth as a form of language in itself. “My work centres on healing within Black women and the wider community.”
Jasmine Dhika, a London-based multidisciplinary textile designer originally from Jakarta, grew up in a multigenerational household where gardening and composting were daily rituals. This informed her practice later when she became familiar with industrial scale textiles "Sustainable futures don’t always come from new inventions, but from re-learning how to work with what already exists.”
🔗 Read the article at the link in the RCA bio to find out more about their work.
#Textiles #TextileDesign #TextileArt
Last week the Staff Lecture Series continued with Bine Roth, Textiles Tutor, material specialist & jewellery designer ✨
Bine shared insights into her practice and collaborative projects, positioning textiles at the intersection of past and future, where tradition meets innovation. Her work treats textiles not as static objects, but as interactive, personal, and culturally charged materials.
She asked how textiles might respond to touch and movement, becoming dynamic forms that evolve with the body. What role could haptic technologies play in deepening our sensory relationship with materials?
The talk challenged textiles as more than a medium for expression — instead framing them as soft systems and evolving interfaces connecting body, craft, and technology.
@bineroth@peut_porter
#Textiles #MaterialThinking #SoftSystems #HapticDesign #CraftAndTechnology
Images: Thailand Residency (Soft Shapeshifters), Japan Collaboration (Nishijin Weaving with and for the body), Unfixed (woven machine sample), Dazzle
✨ Last Thursday, we welcomed a group of @rcatextiles students into the studio as part of their RCA Grand Challenge - a cross-disciplinary academic project focused on sustainability and material responsibility.
We talked about their ideas, shared stories around local sourcing and circular design, and supported them with remnant fabrics for their research and prototyping.
We also had a quick interview with @ponni_ash@flavia.nistor.portfolio , stay tuned to hear more about what they’re making and why projects like this matter 💚
#ReFABStudio
Thank you so much to Fiona Curran for the beautiful lecture today, On Being Absorbed: Light, Colour, Landscape, Practice 🌿✨
Using examples from studio, exhibition, and public commission work (encompassing painting, tapestry weaving and sculptural installation), Fiona spoke of our entanglements with the non-human world. Her talk wove together threads connecting the memory of trees with the movement of snails, the transformative power of a solar eclipse with the suspension of time, and the impermanence of form with the transience of all things. This was a poetic and uimmersive meditation on light, colour and landscape that reflected on absorption as a metaphor for practice.
@fiona_curran_ is Senior Tutor in Mixed Media Textiles at the RCA. She has been practicing as an artist for three decades working between studio and site.
#RCATextiles #contemporaryart #time #colour #landscape
Huge thanks to Celia Pym for such a thoughtful and inspiring lecture about her recent group exhibition @penlandschool ✨ Perfection: A Question of Repair celebrated the quiet power of mending — the stitches, scars, care, and stories that live in everyday acts of repair. Loved how damage was held, not hidden, and how perfection was gently unravelled and reimagined. A really generous reflection on making, curating, and care 🧵
Celia Pym is an artist, curator and author living and working in London. She has been exploring damage and repair in textiles since 2007.
Image 1: Installation view of exhibition Perfection: a questions of Repair - @wasteyarnproject WYP PYM test sweater, collaboration between Siri Johansen founder or Waste Yarn Project and Celia Pym, original WYP sweater with various wool patches and darning, 2022-23 and WYP PYM
Blanket 2, 92 x 132cm, mended jacquard knitted blanket various yarns,
Image 2: @rachael_matthews_textiles Metzmama’s Dishcloth
@celiapym@royalcollegeofart
#CeliaPym #PerfectionAQuestionOfRepair #VisibleMending #CareInMaking #Textiles
