What we want:
We aim to secure funding of £5.000 towards our Award winning natural dye garden #theindigoplot in Glasgow. Set up in 2021 during the Covid Crisis to grow Japanese Indigo and Woad. It is a annual dye plants to grow blue pigment dye plants. We want to share it its knowledge with a wider public. We will organise workshops, school engagement during the 2024 season and a public exhibition/demonstration in September 2024 with a specialist speaker.
When you pledge to our project, we will give you rewards in the form of a dyed items, visits to the garden and my dye studio and online workshops all centred around Indigo dyeing.
Our project is sustainable, inclusive and very educational. We hope you will support us and follow the work Elisabeth if you are interested in Natural dyes, Indigo and sharing knowledge.
Who I am:
My name is Elisabeth Viguie Culshaw, I am a textile artist, I was born in Northern France (Flax country) but I moved to Scotland in the early 1990's.
I studied Decorative Arts in Glasgow and was a conservation stenciller for years in heritage buildings, I loved using pigments.
I believe in a sustainable world and I started a Natural dye plant garden in Glasgow in 2021.
The word pollution was created when I was in my teens and I believe in a sustainable world. I live my artist life remaking and reusing and I promote anything to do with sustainable natural fibres and dyes from home grown and foraged plants.
I am a people's person, I love connecting and sharing my knowledge to help making this world a little better and more sustainable. I have many friends locally and in overseas's locations. I regularly travel to share skills with other artists. Through this project I want to share with my local community the connection between plants and colour.
But I feel I want to do more. I want to share with people outwith my network, with people who just walk in the part, with children that are just starting their journey in this world. With people that have forgotten about seasons and growing for colour, medecine and scent.
I want them to get the joy of collaborating with a garden. It is great gift for a happy mind.
Can you help me doing that?
The world is my village and I want all people in it to be safe and happy... and I want to share my love for the Blue colour with them.
I want to share with everyone the connection between plant and colour. It is so simple and yet so remote from our daily life.
About my Blue World:
My favorite colour is blue and I have spent the past 10 years learning all about Indigo dyeing, from the humble tie dye teeshirt in a small bucket to the most skilled print resist wall hanging.
I work with it, teach it, learn it and grow it now. I have spent years travelling to South East Asia to learn about how to extract it from the Indigo plants, how to use it to make items beautiful and blue, I learned about how slavery was used to cultivate it and how in some more recent project it is used to finance some
I love making vats (Indigo dye bath), and for many years I have travelled the world to learn about the dye plants who are used to create the Indigo pigment.
In Covid times, my travelling came to a halt and I started growing it from home in 2020, it was a big adventure... one year on in 2021 I received the loan of a small growing space in the ground of the Glasgow Botanical Garden. I selfed funded a natural dye plant garden.
What I want to achieve with the Crowdfunding:
Since 2021 I have been sharing my knowledge through a few workshops and visits to the dye garden to a small number of individuals.
Last year's September exhibition "Feeling Blue" gave us an award for best attended event within the Glasgow Doors Open days with over 1000 visitors in 2 days. We were very proud to have inspired that many visitors... with a completely free event. I want to go further this year.
But on my own I can only do so much... I need your help.
I want to share my knowledge of Indigo growing and dyeing with a large public of all age who wants to discover about Natural dyes and how to work with them.
I want to set up a number of workshops and shared knowledge free of charge to the public.
Establishing the dye garden #theindigoplot done on the spur of the moment as a temperary project, a reaction to the Covid crisis. Unlike a long term project it was self funded and for three years now I have been supporting the costs out of my practise.
I want to help creating a more sustainable world by educating those around me (young and old) to the beauty and simplicity of using colour from plants we grow:
There is something magical about putting a seed in the ground and creating a piece of dyed blue cloth a few months later, but should it be unusual or should we try and normalise it?
Is there a good age for teaching the public about the merits of natural dyes?
I believe in life we have to lead by example and normalise in young people's mind what should be in their adult's life a normal thing to do... eat more vegetable, less sugar, not polute, recycle, eating Spinach, making colour from plants...
My first target is for £5000, this will allow us to:
- Organise FOC 4 workshops during the summer season to educate participant to Indigo dye.
- Organise for 4 local schools to engage with the dye garden, from planting, harvesting to dyeing with Fresh leaves.
- We will organise a larger quantity of seeds with new dye plants for this year's growth.
- In the 2024 "Feeling Blue" natural dye and fiber exhibition mid Septembre in Glasgow we will offer demonstrations in dyeing and weaving.
- In the 2024 "Feeling Blue" natural dye and fiber exhibition mid September in Glasgow we will invite a speaker to talk about Indigo.
- We will offer a speaker during our week end exhibition.