Fabrications: Using knitted artworks to challenge developer narratives

In this film, artist and researcher Sam Meech explores how the South Asian knitwear community has been overlooked at Crusader Mill in Manchester to facilitate gentrification.

Meech, who had a studio based in the building, created textile artworks in collaboration with resident factories to comment on the displacement of these businesses. 

Meech explores the selective storytelling in the marketing material produced by Capital&Centric and how it fetishises the Victorian industrial heritage of Crusader Mill as though the building did not have a useful life after this era. In contrast, Meech’s artist studio and neighbouring South Asian businesses were evicted from the building. Many of these businesses closed shortly after relocation. 

While some of Meech’s artworks reference signage destroyed during redevelopment, serving as a record of the community’s erasure, other pieces explore commercial knitwear as an art medium. The film also reveals a joyful collaboration between the artist and local textile business, Unique Knitwear.

With experts now realising the importance of industrial spaces as centres for urban economic growth and community, Meech’s work shows how industrial communities can be dismantled and disappeared. The film questions the prioritisation of luxury housing over the cultural and economic importance of places where things are made.

The video was presented at the recent Textile and Place conference in Manchester in October 2023 and the narration is drawn from an article written by Meech and first published in Then There Was Us magazine.