Nima Poovaya-Smith

Director, Alchemy
Senior Visiting Research Fellow, School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds

Nima Poovaya-Smith is Director of Alchemy Anew, a National Portfolio Organisation of the Arts Council. Alchemy has a particular interest in exploring cultural confluences. It conceives, brokers and programmes a range of arts activities exploring different cultural narratives and traditions.

Examples of recent projects curated by Alchemy in 2015 include the hugely successful Loretta Braganza: Clay Journeys; Sacred Sounds: Sikh Music Traditions and the First World War; The Hidden Diamond: The Many Facets of The Leeds Library. Earlier projects include Love Beyond Measure: The Legend of Sohni and Mahiwal (2014) and Silk: Bradford and the Subcontinent (2012).

Previously Nima was Head of Special Projects at the National Media Museum, Director of Arts for Arts Council Yorkshire and Senior Curator, International Arts, Bradford Museums and Galleries. She has contributed to numerous publications on subjects ranging from contemporary art, Indian jewellery, textiles, and curatorial practice and has presented papers at numerous national and international conferences. Nima is a Trustee of Opera North and the International Institute of Visual Arts.

Abstract

Bradford, India and Silk

Silk: Bradford and India explores the story, in brief, of the textile links between Bradford and the Subcontinent – which is older than most people realise. Samuel Cunliffe Lister (1815-1906), entrepreneur, inventor, captain of industry, refined the conversion of silk waste, mainly sourced from India, into textile products. In addition, the textile students of Bradford Technical College in the 19th and early 20th centuries were heavily influenced by Indian design vocabularies and weaving traditions. The emergence of a South Asian community in Bradford from the 1950s onwards, largely as productive textile workers, takes on a different kind of continuity in the light of this little discussed history.