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.

School programme and Educational film 1978 25 mins

From the collection of:

Logo for Yorkshire Film Archive

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.