Cotton Connections: Exhibition Tour and Film

Join the curators and film makers involved in the curation of the Cotton Connections exhibition at Lotherton.

You will receive an exclusive tour of the exhibition with detailed insights from the exhibition’s curator and watch a screening of Cotton’s Hidden Stories, a series of films highlighting the people who work in the cotton industry. The event will include refreshments.

Cotton Hidden Stories is a University of Leeds and Goa Institute of Management project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

The project, taking place at Lotherton, is exploring the complexity of sustainability for fashion from the perspective of the workers who make the clothes we wear.

There are over 250 million workers in the supply chain who have an intimate connection with consumers through these clothes, but these connections are hidden from view because the supply chains are complex and opaque.

As a result, discussions about sustainable fashion fail to explore sustainability from the perspectives of the workers; workers who grow the cotton, make the yarns and fabrics, dye the fabric and manufacture our clothes.

This project aims to illuminate these connections and to cross the geographical and cultural divide between textile workers in India and UK consumers, to facilitate debates and discussions about the connections between the clothes UK consumers wear and the workers who made them.

The project has been developed to reflect the importance of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, particularly:

  • SDG 5 Gender Equality
  • SDG 8 Decent Work and Economic Growth
  • SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production