The Barkcloth Research Network (BCRN)
ao is committed through practice-led research to exploring future avenues for plant-based colour. One of these avenues is the exploration of bark cloth.
A group of researchers, artists, environmentalists, farmers and fashion practitioners in the UK and Uganda is investigating, analysing and developing the full potential of an indigenous and endangered textile: Ugandan barkcloth, produced from the mutuba tree (ficus natalensis), considered a Masterpiece of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The Barkcloth Research Network (BCRN) was formed in 2016, with an initial membership of fashion and textiles researcher and design-maker Dr Kirsten Scott, embroiderer and natural dye researcher Karen Spurgin and textile technologist Dr Prabhuraj Venkatraman from Manchester Metropolitan University. Due to new opportunities, the scope of the project has expanded to become increasingly multidisciplinary and international: there is now MMU microbiologist Dr Jonathan Butler on board and Ugandan environmentalist Fred Mutebi, agroforestry expert Stephen Kamya, and US textile researcher Lesli Robertson on board. In order to understand what barkcloth is, what it might mean for restorative fashion, for indigenous textile traditions and communities that they belong to, and what it might become, we use our diverse lenses, resources, and skill-sets to examine, analyse, test, explore, experiment, manipulate, weave, applique, dye, coat, reinforce, shape, design with, and stitch barkcloth.
