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It Takes a Village This summer, Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft is reimagining what a museum can be. 5 July 2025 – 1 February 2026 This summer, Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft invites visitors behind the scenes with a new exhibition that re-examines its extraordinary collection of over 20,000 arts and craft objects from fresh perspectives. Marking 40 years since the museum’s inception, this living curatorial experiment will shape the museum’s major redisplay planned for 2028.

The museum is collaborating with over 50 contributors to bring together rarely seen discoveries from the collection alongside familiar works, presented in new ways. Featuring pieces by renowned artists and craftspeople - including Ethel Mairet, Eric Gill, Joseph Cribb, David Jones and Amy Sawyer - It Takes a Village offers new ways of looking at these objects and the connections between them. Visitors will also be invited into the process, contributing their own local items into the museum’s Wunderkammer, with each object's origin marked on a map of Ditchling designed by illustrator Neil Gower - building a unique, community-sourced collection.

Over 100 objects from the museum’s collection, with many never-before-seen items will be featured, including a limestone relief carving by Joseph Cribb, vibrant screen printed textiles by little known artist Grace Denman and a handwoven silk wedding dress, made and worn by Petra Gill, daughter of Eric Gill. The exhibition features a display co-curated by members of the Methodist Survivors’ Advisory Group (a group of people who have lived experience of abuse) and the Methodist Modern Art Collection Management Committee addressing the complex legacy of Eric Gill. Meanwhile, visitors can experience a sensory reimagining of Ethel Mairet’s home and workshop, Gospels. Created using inclusive design techniques, the display offers a multi-sensory way to engage with Mairet’s world. Interventions created with community members, museum conservators, Ditchling craftspeople and local schoolchildren will nestle next to live residencies with contemporary craftspeople using equipment from the museum’s collection, including a100-year-old loom and the museum’s resident 200-year-old Stanhope printing press.

Oral histories drawn on in the exhibition were gathered as part of Sussex Retold, a project based at the University of Sussex. The aim of this project is to bring together multiple stories about the region, drawing on arts, crafts, music and folklore: https://www.sussex.ac.uk/clhlwr/research/sussexretold

Steph Fuller, Museum Director and CEO, said, “We're thrilled to present this exhibition, inviting both longtime supporters and new visitors to experience our collection in fresh, interactive ways this summer. It’s an opportunity to engage with the stories our collection holds, sparking dialogue not just among museumgoers but also across the sector. Together, we’ll explore the questions these objects raise and consider new ways of understanding them.”

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