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At the heart of Amanda’s Research are the human stories that unfold as you converse with people about fashion and textiles. The passion, the memories, the love that people have when you talk to them about the process, their memories and family connections to the textile industry. It is with this ethos that Amanda has led two highly successful Arts Council Funded projects, Hidden Gems and Heirloom which were both exhibited as part º£½ÇÊÓƵ British Textile Biennial in 2017 and 2019 respectively. Amanda has a keen interest in modest dress and stories of migration surrounding the textile industry in Lancashire. She is passionate about the textile heritage of Pennine Lancashire in particular and this passion has seen her work on Research projects that aim to highlight the amazing wealth of textile history in the region. Hidden Gems, which was a collaboration between UCLan and Gawthorpe Textile Collection, resulted in an exhibition of powerful portraits showing local women and girls from the Asian community, wearing hijabs they designed using fabrics from the Gawthorpe textile collection as inspiration. She presented a full paper on the project along with Co- Researcher, Bev Lamey at the Association of Fashion & Textile Courses (FTC) conference Futurescan 4: Valuing Practice, University of Bolton, UK, 23rd-24th January 2019, also writing a paper for the Valuing Practice publication. Heirloom was the second Arts Council funded project led by Amanda working in collaboration with Queen Street Mill, in Burnley. Heirloom’s key aim was to examine different perspectives and reach out to men who had worked within the textile industry, to share stories, which were then interpreted into intricate, hand embellished designs on unique and highly personal shirts for each participant. The cloth used came from the heritage, steam powered looms at Queen Street Mill, which is the last remaining steam powered weaving mill in the world. The project culminated in a photoshoot capturing the men proudly wearing their heirloom shirts in the surroundings º£½ÇÊÓƵ heritage mill that created the cloth. The images, stories and shirts were exhibited within the main weaving shed, using mannequins to display the shirts lined centrally in the atmospheric space which connected the exhibition to a fashion catwalk feel. This created a powerful sense of occasion and became one º£½ÇÊÓƵ main highlights º£½ÇÊÓƵ Textile Biennial programme of events in 2019. Amanda also lead the team in creating an exhibition catalogue to capture all º£½ÇÊÓƵ stories, with stunning images º£½ÇÊÓƵ mill and creative process which became highly sought after and has been recognised as a high-quality outcome.