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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Stephanie Convery

A new room for a doomed loom – and the battle to save Australia’s slowly dying crafts

RMIT Australia John Brooks Ella the University of Tasmania
Daisy Watt sits with her laptop in front of the loom
Textile artist Daisy Watt with the Jacquard loom decommissioned by RMIT in 2022. She has been using her coding skills to update its electronics. Photograph: Stuart Walmsley/The Guardian

“Rachel, bad news,” the text message read. “They’re disconnecting the loom tomorrow.”

Rachel Halton still doesn’t know who made the decision, in October 2022, to summarily decommission the $160,000 Jacquard loom that had been a cornerstone of RMIT’s renowned weaving and textile design courses for 20 years.

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