Felt: Haptic Materiality (Patricia Brien) (part of doing together 25)

Felt: Haptic Materiality8th April 2025Wool is an ancient textile material that has extensive contemporary use in industry, design, craft and art practices. Fleece - from sheep, is the material foundation of an animal-human relationship that is elemental, mythological, complex and often complicated. The felting of fleece creates felt. This primary fabrication process (Barber 1991) where fleece becomes compacted and useful for structure, support and warmth is created today with the same basic felting process.In this workshop, participants learned the basic felting method which is a tactile-textile experience with application to multiple material enquiries, to create a piece of felt; it is. Inspired by felt's 'spiritual warming' capacity (Beuys, 1970), this haptic workshop enabled a space to consider the practicalities of wool production and its use in textile and archi-textile contexts. The workshop considered the provenance of fleece (and wool) in extant agri-industrial complex and alternative farming approaches.doing together 25doing together is a yearly two-day making and sharing practice symposium at Locksbrook Campus, hosted by the Art Research Centre (Bath School of Art, Film and Media) in collaboration with Bath School of Design and the Centre of Cultural and Creative Industries.doing together is a platform to connect staff, students, and the community through making, collaboration and experimentation.Workshops, delivered by staff and PGR students from across the University, share practice-based research methods and a broad range of approaches to practice. doing together is proposed as a generous space to make/do/share and discuss practice with colleagues from a range of different Schools.Throughout the symposium, facilitators – alongside participants – test out ways of doing together in an effort to make their practice-based research explicit, rather than simply describe it.