Every piece of fabric tells a story. A linen tablecloth passed down through generations, a textile pattern from a factory floor that once employed an entire city, a hand-woven scarf carrying the colours and symbols of a culture that could disappear. These objects are fragile — not just physically, but historically. Once lost, they cannot be recreated.
Across Europe, thousands of textile collections sit in museum storage rooms, community archives, and private hands — undocumented, deteriorating, and largely invisible to the public. Small institutions often lack the technical knowledge or resources to digitise and preserve what they hold. Local artisans who carry generations of craft knowledge are ageing, with fewer people learning from them. The connection between communities and their material heritage is weakening.
FABRIC — Fostering Accessible Best Practices in Restoration and Innovation for Collections — was born from a recognition of this urgent need. It grew out of a previous Erasmus+ collaboration called “Patterns,” through which several of our partners had already begun exchanging knowledge around textile heritage and industrial history. What became clear through that experience was that the challenge went deeper than any one institution could tackle alone: the field needed shared standards, practical tools, and a broader human network.
This project is our response to that challenge. Over 30 months, six organisations from Poland, Estonia, Romania, France, and the Czech Republic are working together to modernise how cultural heritage is preserved, shared, and taught — combining expertise in digitisation, museum education, community engagement, and traditional craft to build something lasting.
FABRIC is designed especially for museum and gallery professionals, heritage sites, cultural institutions, and community organisations seeking to digitise, document, and preserve textile collections for future generations. But preservation alone is not enough. The project also aims to keep local textile heritage alive by reconnecting communities with the skills, stories, and traditions behind these objects. Through multigenerational art and craft workshops organised by participating partners, local communities will have the opportunity to learn traditional techniques directly from artisans and heritage practitioners. By bringing together professionals, volunteers, craftspeople, and young people, FABRIC strengthens both the safeguarding of collections and the living cultural knowledge that gives them meaning.
Dgitise and document fragile textile collections across partner institutions
Train professionals, as well as museum and gallery staff, volunteers, and community members, in 3D scanning, digital archiving, and collection management
Run hands-on multigenerational workshops where artisans pass traditional techniques to younger audiences
Exchange expertise across five countries to build universal conservation guidelines
Develop freely accessible open-source resources : guides, webinars, and educational tools for institutions
Involve adults, seniors, families, and educators as active participants in heritage preservation
Many textile collections suffer from inadequate storage — wrong temperature, poor packaging, lack of documentation. Deterioration is often silent and irreversible. A central goal of FABRIC is to help partner institutions significantly improve how they store and care for physical collections, by exchanging expert knowledge and developing practical, replicable solutions that even small organisations can implement.
A collection that cannot be seen cannot inspire, teach, or connect. By training our partners in digitisation techniques — including photography, 3D imaging, database creation, and inventory management — FABRIC enables institutions to make their holdings visible and accessible online. This dramatically expands their reach beyond physical walls, bringing heritage to schools, researchers, diaspora communities, and curious people anywhere in the world.
Traditional textile techniques live in people, not just objects. Weaving patterns, dyeing methods, embroidery traditions — these are embodied skills, passed hand to hand over centuries. FABRIC documents this living knowledge through recorded interviews with artisans from each partner country, creating a permanent digital record that future generations can access, learn from, and build upon.
There is a significant and growing skills gap in heritage preservation, particularly around digital tools. FABRIC addresses this directly through expert-led webinars, hands-on training workshops, and two comprehensive open-access guides. Professionals working in museums, galleries, and cultural associations will leave the project with practical, applicable skills — and the materials to train others in turn.
Heritage preservation cannot remain the exclusive domain of specialists. FABRIC actively involves local communities — adults, seniors, families, young people — through a programme of hands-on textile workshops in each partner country. These sessions are designed to be inclusive and intergenerational, creating spaces where knowledge flows in multiple directions and participants of all ages discover their own connection to cultural heritage.
No single country or institution holds all the answers. Estonia brings deep experience in digital archiving. Poland brings expertise in working with seniors and oral history. The Czech Republic contributes advanced knowledge of textile conservation and museum storage. France brings strong communication expertise and a tradition of regional craft heritage. Romania brings experience preserving the cultural identity of minority communities. FABRIC exists to connect these strengths — building a European network strong enough to develop solutions that transcend national contexts and serve the whole sector.
