We are please to announce Lesley Millar as our second external judge for the Future Makers.

Lesley Millar has been a practising weaver with her own studio since 1975, has work in the permanent collections of both The Crafts Council England and Arts Council England, South East, and is listed on the Crafts Council Index of Selected Makers. She has exhibited throughout the UK, in Europe, the USA and Japan.

Please visit her website for more information – www.transitionandinfluence.com

She has worked as a curator specialising in textiles since 1994 and has been project director for 6 major international touring exhibitions featuring textile artists, with particular focus on contemporary textile practice in the UK and Japan. In 2005, as an outcome of an AHRC Fellowship, she established the Anglo Japanese Textile Research Centre at the University for the Creative Arts.

Her project ‘Cloth & Culture Now’ (2008) explored the transition from traditional to contemporary textile practice in countries where textile has played an important role in the expression of cultural identity. She is currently leading a collaborative research project (outcome 2011) between the University for the Creative Arts and Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, in which she is investigating the relationship between lace and the built environment.

She writes regularly about textile practice in Britain and Japan, including a monograph on Chiyoko Tanaka. In 2007 she was appointed Professor of Textile Culture at the University for the Creative Arts and in 2008 received the Japan Society Award for significant contribution to Anglo-Japanese relations.