SFTW online exhibition, Leeds Industrial Museum (February 2021)
To coincide with celebrations of 2021 Chinese New Year, Leeds Industrial Museum is hosting the online exhibition Song of the Female Textile Workers between 15th and 26th February 2021; the exhibition consists of six short documentary films created by the UK-China project team.
Each documentary features a different facet of China textile in/tangible heritage, highlighting the interwoven development of Shanghai All-Female Yueju and the Shanghai Textile Industry from their initial formation in the early 20th century to post-industrial new millennium digital transformation.
Leeds and Hangzhou are twin cities; Hangzhou, the capital city of Zhejiang province where the majority of Shanghai female textile workers migrated from, along with the female singers from the same region. The patronage of the textile female workers saw the development of their hometown folk singing to become a modern theatre - Shanghai all-female Yueju.
This digital exhibition is the first step of an ambitious project which aims to evoke the shared memories of textile in/tangible heritage across the UK and China as a way to bridge UK-China creative communities.