The Broadway Textile Group

The Broadway Textile Group

The Broadway Group is a collective of textile artists from the Midlands and North of England. We bring together a variety of experiences, histories and skills to create work that responds to the world around us through exhibitions and a range of courses, workshops and other participative events. We are particularly attracted to socially engaged practice, have undertaken work in heritage contexts and in response to objects and narratives in archives and collections. We also have experience of using our textile practice to collaborate with other academic disciplines in higher education and elsewhere. While the members’ individual textile practice is distinctive and varied, responses to landscape and to social justice concerns are common themes.

We are:

Jean Draper

A member of both the 62 Group of Textile Artists and the Textile Study Group, exhibiting widely in the UK and abroad. Jean's work is in public and private collections worldwide.

Formerly she held a number of higher education posts in art and arts education and, more recently, she has taught on a freelance basis throughout the UK as well as in Australia, Canada, the USA, Italy and the Netherlands. Much of her two- and three-dimensional textile art work has been made in response to landscape, and includes references to the people who have historically inhabited places and left their marks upon them. Some of her more recent work has focused on the physical and social barriers that exclude people and silence their voices.

Jean's recent publications include: Stitch and Structure (Batsford, 2013) and Stitch and Pattern (Batsford, 2018)

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Janis Firminger

Janis's textile work is mainlv abstract and draws on features of urban and rural landscape in the UK and elsewhere. She has exhibited in galleries in London and the Midlands.

Time spent in the industrial archeology sites of Derbyshire has also given rise to work in response to the horrors experienced by child labourers in the cotton mills. In 2014, together with Jean Draper, Janet Read and Margaret Taylor, Janis contributed to LB's Justice Quilt, a large participatory textile piece created as a memorial to Connor Sparrowhawk, that has been exhibited widely including in the Peoples History Museum, Manchester; the Yorkshire Sculpture Park; the Peter Scott Gallery, Lancaster University; the University of Warwick Arts Centre and Coventry Cathedral.

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Janet Read

Janet Read's individual textile work is mainlv abstract and is connected either to places that have made a lasting impression or to social justice issues that are important to her. She makes machine and hand stitched pieces using a wide range of collaged fabrics, yarns and other mixed media. When she's developing an idea, she relies heavily on drawing, taking photographs and sampling with cloth, thread and paint. Depending on the subject, she often does quite a lot of library research, too. In addition to her individual practice, she has a long-standing interest in the social and historical role of textile art and craft as a medium of political commentary, protest and resistance. Janet's work has been exhibited in a range of public and private galleries in the UK.

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Sue Reddish

A theatre director for many years, she now works in textiles and film making, mainly in the North of England. As an artist, her primary focus is in textiles, creating abstract urban landscapes influenced by the city around her. She also has extensive experience of creating socially engaged work, in both textile and film, with diverse groups of participants.

Sue has been the lead artist on many Arts Council England and Lottery funded projects, including being commissioned to facilitate the making of a large banner for the Tate Liverpool as part of an installation by Christopher Kline who was Artist in Residence. Sue herself has been Artist in Residence with The Gawthorpe Textile Collection, establishing Valley Street Textile Studio, a community textile space in Burnley.