The Yorkshire Film Archive collects, preserves, and shows film made in, or about Yorkshire. Our collections are non-fiction, dating from the 1890s to the present day, and providing a rich and visually compelling record of all aspects of lives, cultures, landscape, industries, major events and everyday activities, many of which are available to watch, free of charge, on our website.
This film is part of Free
Thinking of Textiles
Students at Leeds are taken from the wool on the back of sheep on the Yorkshire moors to pyjamas in Marks and Spencer’s, learning everything that happens in between.
From the collection of:
Overview
With the pressure to do a vocational course at university rather less in the 1970s than today, Leeds University do their best to sell their textile courses to prospective students. Before the trend towards short, snappy promotionals, here we have a fairly full account of what students are likely to expect if they choose to study textiles at Leeds, with students out working with industry and expressing their pleasure at finding satisfying jobs.
This is one of a number of films made by the Audio Visual Department at Leeds University throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, under their head, John Murray, including several promotional films. Leeds University, being so close to the West Yorkshire textile industry, has always had a thriving textile department, which today has branched out into new fields of architectural textiles, intelligent textile materials, medical and sports uses, and the environmental impact of textiles. After a large rise in the 1960s, the numbers of students in HE was pretty stagnant during the 1970s and up to the conversion of many polytechnics into universities from the early 1990s.
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