Blackburn’s National Production Festival celebrates collaboration between art and industry – Huge
Every year, in Blackburn Township, Lancashire, a vibrant festival bursts with creativity to celebrate arts, crafts and industry. This year is the seventh edition of the National Production Festival, with the theme of “Manufacturing Art”. Acclaimed artists and designers work with industry leaders to create works using a wide range of materials, from Morag Myerscough and Crown Paints to a vibrant new mural to Liaqat Rasul’s partnership with textile manufacturer Herbert Parkinson to provide optical installations.
Local artists play a central role when pairing with Lancashire manufacturers. Lewis Jones’ design practices collaborated with Darwen Terracotta and Faience, which focused on traditional glazed pottery (Shinhua is a tin glass pottery) used for home products and restoration.
The material at hand creates a large-scale installation titled “The Earth of the Pouring” which uses the architectural approach of materials from the north of Blackburn Cathedral. The work invites visitors through wooden crates and arches of castings of various shapes and sizes, emphasizing the eternity and continuity of earthy building materials and patterns.
Morag Myerscough transforms a corner building into a vivid, geometric floral mural with complementary garden boxes and water tanks. Rasul’s work is a multifaceted textile combination hanging in the basement of Blackburn Cathedral, featuring friendly faces made of separate elements that when viewed from the front, merge into a complete look.
Titled “Umeed (Oh-Meed)امی育-Gobaith-Hope”, the work was made by scrap saved by Herbert Parkinson’s factory floor, except for the artist’s own archives. Rasul gently embroidered Urdu, Hindus and Welsh words with “hope” in various elements such as ropes and safety pins.
The national “Production Festival” program consists of more than 100 workshops, performances, artist speeches, markets, and programs at more than 20 Blackburn venues. The festival emphasizes the power of collaboration, interdisciplinary exploration and community, aims to enable people of all ages to integrate into curiosity and gain creativity.
The works of Rasul and Lewis will be unfolded by July 12, with the murals in Fort Myerscough aiming for a long-term display. Find more on the festival’s website.
