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Press release
Cooperation between the Brandenburg Textile Museum Forst (Lausitz) and the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam
The cooperation agreement between the Brandenburg Textile Museum Forst (Lausitz) and the Department of Design at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam builds a bridge between historical and contemporary textile works. Looking from the past to the future, the University of Applied Sciences and the museum want to initiate joint projects in research, teaching and knowledge transfer.
The centre of the cooperation is the textile laboratory, called "Tex Lab", of the department of Design. Here, the technologies of sewing, embroidery, weaving, knitting and tufting are taught, which are applied in designs or deepened in the form of material developments. In order to design textile products in sustainable material cycles, knowledge of textile processes and fibre science is essential.
The lab is supervised by Silvia Knüppel, Professor of Product & Perspective at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam, and her research assistant Samira Akhavan. The lab's equipment includes hand knitting machines, dobby looms, an embroidery machine and industrial sewing machines.
About the museum
The Brandenburg Textile Museum Forst (Lausitz) is currently closed and is being restored and remodelled in keeping with its listed status. The content of the museum is also being fundamentally redesigned and the range of content expanded. "The new museum will be an industrial museum with a focus on textiles and will focus on the past, present and future.
Various production processes in the textile process chain can also be experienced in the future museum," says museum director J?rn Brunotte. This makes the museum an exciting addition to the learning experience for students at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam and offers important insights into industrial processes in the textile industry. "This interplay between historical textile machines and the machines and production of the future is what makes the future textile laboratory so appealing," explains Brunotte.
About the cooperation
"From our point of view, the new museum will be an important centre for scientific communication and cultural education. For this reason, we are very pleased about the cooperation with the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam," emphasises Simone Taubenek, Mayor of Forst (Lausitz). A central part of the cooperation between the two educational institutions in Brandenburg is the area of exhibitions. In the form of a satellite of the FHP "Tex Lab", the FH Potsdam will incorporate textile student work into the museum's permanent exhibition in order to give museum visitors a glimpse of the "textile future". In addition, temporary special exhibitions will be organised by the university at regular intervals, giving the museum a high-profile stage for the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam.
Furthermore, workshops by museum workers for students of the university on topics such as working on traditional looms, deepening knowledge of material cycles and fibre science and the further processing of specially designed yarns are part of the joint, networked educational work of the museum and the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences. In addition, students themselves can act as workshop leaders for pupils on the importance and potential of textile craft techniques and textiles in the context of sustainability.
Further information on the Brandenburg Textile Museum