Liberty and IWM London: Creativity in Conflict & Confinement
In times of war and confinement, when freedom is curtailed and daily life stripped to its essentials, acts of making can become powerful assertions of humanity. Creativity in Conflict & Confinement, a cultural partnership between Imperial War Museums (IWM) and Liberty, brings this truth into focus, illuminating how craft and textiles have sustained identity, hope and resilience across generations.
Imperial War Museums has partnered with world-renowned retailer and design house Liberty to explore how creativity can flourish even in the most challenging circumstances. The project unearths the role of making as a source of hope and empowerment during experiences of conflict and incarceration, grounded in in-depth research across the IWM collection and the Liberty archive.
Liberty x IWM Obscured Landscape Tana Lawn™ Cotton. A Liberty archival geometric motif, layered with sketches by war artist Anthony Gross from the IWM collection.
Voices sit at the heart of the collaboration. Through creative exchanges, workshops and shared research, expert insight and lived experience shaped the development of the new fabric designs. The project also sheds light on the story of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, now Project Ambassador, who turned to sewing and craft during her six years of arbitrary detention in Iran. Working with small pieces of Liberty fabric sent from home, she created clothes for herself and her young daughter, maintaining a tangible connection to life beyond the prison walls.
Dress made from a mosquito net, Second World War. Charles Woodhams. Courtesy of Imperial War Museum.
A new Creativity in Conflict & Confinement trail at IWM London highlights objects that speak to the sustaining power of making under extreme conditions. These include a miniature cello carved by Klara Rakos for fellow Ravensbrück inmate Eva Hamburger; a dress fashioned from mosquito netting and worn by Gunner Charles Woodhams during musical revues staged in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps along the Burma–Thailand Railway; and a wooden figure made in 1919 by a disabled ex-soldier employed at the Lord Roberts Memorial Workshops, where craft was framed as dignity rather than charity.
Liberty x IWM Stitch and Community Tana Lawn™ Cotton. A Tree of Life–inspired design combining Liberty botanical studies with prisoners’ letters and stitching, expressing growth, connection and the need to create in confinement.
Working closely with IWM, Liberty’s design studio developed three new fabric designs — Passage of Time, Obscured Landscape and Stitch and Community — informed by the breadth of stories encountered within the museum’s collection and Liberty’s archive. Rather than illustrating individual objects, the designs respond to recurring themes: repetition and rupture, obscured horizons, the endurance of nature and the importance of community.
Installed as large-scale banners in IWM London’s atrium and exterior spaces until February 2026, the designs transform the museum into a site of reflection and continuity. Extending beyond display, the project supports Fine Cell Work, a UK-based charity and social enterprise committed to the rehabilitation of prisoners through providing purposeful activity, reinforcing the belief that craft can restore agency, purpose and dignity.
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Further Information:
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Liberty x Imperial War Museum Shop Collection
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Image Credits:
Lead: Liberty x IWM Passage of Time Tana Lawn™ Cotton. An Arts and Crafts–inspired design that contrasts rigid structure with natural motifs, using doves, cypress trees and glimpses of rooftops to suggest repetition, resilience and a limited view of freedom from confinement.
All further images as credited in photo captions.