Start with your hands. At Field to Fashion, visitors to Derby's Museum of Making can touch real fleece, supplied by British Wool, and find out how it is spun. From that first handful, the exhibition follows raw British fleece to the clothes we wear. It runs until to 3 January 2027.
The show brings together farmers, designers, artists and makers to reveal the people and processes behind wool, from shearing and spinning to contemporary fashion and sustainable design. For Andrew Hogley, CEO of British Wool, that reach is the point. "Wool connects agriculture, craftsmanship and fashion in a way few materials can," he says. "From the moment a fleece is shorn on farm to its transformation into yarn and clothing, it supports rural livelihoods and highly skilled manufacturing across the UK.”
Wool samples investigated by the students of Derby Moor Spencer Academy. Photo: Derby Museums
A visitor at the Field to Fashion exhibition, admiring the John Smedley Uniform Project. Photo: Chris Seddon
Fine art installations and interactive displays sit beside work by graduate artists and local students. Fittingly, the Museum of Making was once a silk mill, and local company John Smedley, knitting in Derbyshire since 1784, anchors the history.
A highlight is the uniform project, first imagined by Abigail Wastie of Thread of Life and Jess Mcguire-Dudley of John Smedley. GCSE textiles students at Derby Moor Spencer Academy took on a live brief: could wool return as the fabric for a school jumper? They traced the wool from Laxton's spinning mill in Bradford to the Smedley factory, working with Wastie and Smedley head designer Pip Jenkins to reach prototype. Mcguire-Dudley calls the programme "a truly immersive education".
Research for Laura Harrington's Sphagnum Bog Jumper, screening at the exhibition.
Then there is the bog jumper. Artist and researcher Laura Harrington's Sphagnum Bog Jumper began as upland fleece and passed through many hands: wool grader, scourer, carder, spinner, knitter and weavers. Its making is the subject of her film Wearing the Uplands (2025), screening in the exhibition. Set in Teesdale and running to 31 minutes, the film treats the jumper as inseparable from the landscape that sustains it, gathering conversations with farmers, ecologists, conservationists and knitters. Northern Heartlands produced the film for Creatively Connected, and Harrington also gives an artist talk at the museum.
Field to Fashion exhibition at the Museum of Making, Derby Silk Mill. Photo: Chris Seddon - Derby Museums
October is Wool Month across the textile world, and Derby knows the territory. The wider programme continues to January alongside the Earthbound exhibition, with sessions on how fabric is built and a workshop inspired by World 240, an imagined 2029 in which fast fashion adopts a farm-to-closet strategy.
Art Fund's Reimagine programme granted £45,000 to make it possible. Charlotte Convey, Head of Learning at Derby Museums, hopes the exhibition "gives you a taste of what we have discovered." This October, pull on your warmest wool jumper and think about the long line of hands behind it.
. . .
Further Information:
Field to Fashion is on show now at Derby's Museum of Making until 3 January 2027.
. . .
Image Credits:
Lead: LAM Farm in North Kent Downs. Photo: Joss McKinley
All further images as credited in captions.