16th & 17 May 2026
Find out more about our speakers and book onto a talk as part of our annual Textile Festival!
Museum & Archive / Bobbin Room
Saturday 16th May & Sunday 17th May | 10:00 – 17:00
Join us in the Museum & Archive and Bobbin Room on the launch week of our 3 year National Lottery Heritage funded Dyevolution project – an inspiring journey into colour, cloth, and collaboration.
We will be hosting lively drop‑in sessions throughout the weekend, where you can get hands-on with the project, meet the passionate project leads, and enjoy live demonstrations of traditional and experimental dyeing techniques. Discover the magic behind natural dyes, delve into our dye garden, and uncover the innovative ways Dyevolution will connect people, plants, and textiles.
Whether you love history, gardening, textiles, or just trying something new, there are plenty of chances to get involved and be inspired. Pop in, ask questions, watch colours come to life – and maybe even imagine what you could create next!
Explore parts of the permanent Collection, buy merch and see a pop-up showcase as part of the West Yorkshire Calico Dress Project from WOVEN in Kirklees.
£2 suggested donation entry to the Museum & Archive | Assistance dogs only
Touchlines by the 62 Group
Saturday 16th May & Sunday 17th May | 10:00 – 17:00 | 3rd Floor 1912 Mill
This summer, The 62 Group of Textile Artists returns to Sunny Bank Mills with its 2026 exhibition, Touchlines: The Delicate Boundaries of Care and Cloth.
Each year, the group responds to a new brief for their annual exhibition. This year’s theme was developed in collaboration with Anna Turzynski, the Mills’ Arts Director, drawing on the site’s rich industrial and cultural history.
In Touchlines, artists explore the subtle thresholds where contact is felt, withheld, or transformed. Set within the historic spaces of Sunny Bank Mills, the exhibition draws connections between textile labour, sporting cultures, and human relationships, asking how boundaries shape intimacy, care, and collective identity. Across a range of material-led and process-driven practices, the works foreground acts of repair, preservation, and making. Cloth emerges not simply as a medium, but as a site where emotional and social histories are embedded and reworked.
The exhibition invites viewers to slow down and reflect on the quiet gestures, fragile edges, and resilient connections tracing the points where making meets lived experience.
Free entry | Assistance dogs only
Bradford School of Art BA Textiles Collective
Saturday 16th May & Sunday 17th May | 10:00 – 17:00 | 2nd Floor 1912 Mill
Graduating textile artists from Bradford School of Art exhibit the work leading to their final major project artwork.
This exhibition showcases work by the first cohort of students from this recently launched degree course. Providing a “behind the scenes” look at how Jo, Jenny, Mary and Sharon worked from their initial concepts, towards their final artworks. These fine art, contemporary works cover themes of self-awareness, self perception, displacement and the impact of the colonial past in modern day textiles. These themes have been explored through a diverse range of media and approaches including weaving, ceramics, repurposed materials , 3-D wire work and sculptural textiles. The final artworks will be exhibited at the Graduate Show, Bradford College in June.
PLEASE NOTE – Talks are also being held in the room, and the exhibition will not be accessible during these sessions.
Free entry | Assistance dogs only
Interchange by Ellie Sanders
Saturday 16th May | 12:30 – 14:30 | Sunday 17th May | 15:00 – 17:00 | Spinning Mill Loft
Interchange is an interactive installation using unfired clay, yarn, paper, beeswax and pigment.
‘Hagstones’ are stones with holes through them, made by water or non-human animals. The ones used in Interchange are imitations, handmade from unfired clay, in colours similar to those found in old bricks.
The clay of the hagstones will, over weeks/months, change colour as it responds to moisture in the air; eventually they’ll break, crumble to dust or be washed away. The hagstones hang from beams, nails, pegs; some are strung between uprights, others rest against walls.
Further into the loft is the centrepiece of the work. White paper on the floor – a stark contrast to the industrial heritage of the room – and wax pebbles. Visitors to the installation are invited to interact with the pebbles – to study them, handle them, move them around, pile them up…
In exchange for their interaction with the pebbles, visitors will be invited to choose a hagstone to take away with them (until the hagstones have all gone!)
Ellie Sanders is a textile artist influenced by the Romantic. She records movement in line, stitch and sculpture, incorporating found objects, writing, and unfired clay. Her delicate, abstract work combines serene palettes and negative space, imparting a feeling of calm. In addition to exhibiting regularly with Craven Arts, Ellie is part of North Yorkshire Open Studios, and had work included in their selected ‘From The Earth’ exhibition in April. She is a member of the Gathered Threads textile group, whose annual exhibition this year is to take place at Nunnington Hall, near Thirsk, in autumn.
Free entry | Assistance dogs only | Step-only access
Unfolded Theatre Group Performances
Saturday 16th May & Sunday 17th May | 10:00 – 17:00 | Red Lane Mill, Mending Rooms & Spinning Mill
Join Unfolded, a group of second-year BA Theatre & Performance students from the University of Leeds, for live performances across the site during Threads.
Unfolded surfaces the hidden histories and social aspects of the mill. It spans across 3 different groups. First, check out Sunny Bank Shorts, a trail that span across Red Lane Mill, the Mending Rooms and the Spinning Mill.
Throughout the day, visit Mending Room 1 to experience the immersive history of the mill. Alongside this, we are creating a movement piece for you to watch that is centred around community and the big risk that makers have to take!
Free to watch!
Me-Made Competition
Saturday 16th May & Sunday 17th May | 10:00 – 17:00 | 1st Floor 1912 Mill
Wear your handmade outfit to Threads for a chance to win:
- A £30 Sunny Bank Mills workshop voucher
- A selection of textile themed books from our friends at Batsford Books
- A £25 from the our friends at the Fold Line to spend on patterns for your next creation
Take your pic in the photo spot inside the Textile Market and follow the submission intructions to enter!
£4 entry to the Textile Market (carers & under 12s free) | Assistance dogs only | Free to enter the competition
Photographed: Last year’s winner, Hayley
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