Image: Oldham Council
‘Follow the Thread’
Gallery Oldham, Oldham Cultural Quarter, Greaves Street, Oldham OL1 1AL
Runs 27 May – 8 July
Over 150 years ago in 1865 Godai Tomoatsu, one of the Satsuma Students from the western Japanese island of Kyushu and agent of the Prince of Satsuma, secretly came to Oldham, the world’s greatest cotton mill town, to see Britain’s Industrial Revolution.
Godai visited the famous Platt Brothers’ Works of Werneth, Oldham and placed an order for textile machinery and spindles and for the support of local engineers to come to Japan to set up the country’s first modern textile mill – inspiring and igniting the Japanese Industrial Revolution and helping to create Japan’s first ‘economic miracle’.
Now, more than 150 years later, the exciting ‘Follow the Thread’ Project remakes Oldham’s historic Japanese cotton connection.
The Project and Exhibition brings together Oldham’s Crompton Primary School and Hashima Elementary School in Ichikikushikino, the city from which Godai first left Japan, as well as Gallery Oldham and partners Spin180 BV, to show a joint picture, produced by the schoolchildren in Oldham and Japan, celebrating Oldham and Ichikikushikino and their cotton ties. A supporting exhibition highlights the history behind the link and how it is being renewed in 2017.
The ‘Follow the Thread’ Project has the financial support of the Daiwa Foundation and the Japan Society of the UK.
