My friend Hilary, not any longer a lacemaker but involved in textiles generally and my co-conspiritor organising our Lace and Textiles weekends at Dover has had this sent to her by Anna Crutchley, author of "The Tassels Book" and I feel sure that some (hopefully all) of the UK Arachnes will sign it as it takes very little of your time to do so.
Having been into the site to sign it myself, I see that although you must be a British citizen or resident to sign it, those of you not in the UK but who have still retained British citizenship can also sign. I can think of several of you who probably fall into this category. The wording of the petition is shown on the site, and perhaps if there are any of you who don't qualify to sign but feel strongly about this threatened closure, you may feel moved to send an e-mail to Downing street, either personally or as a representative of an official body (IOLI perhaps?) as according to the petition this is an international organisation. Because I feel this is an important issue, I am posting to both boards. I hope this doesn't offend anyone. Please spread this to anyone who you believe may be interested and ask them to sign; we never know when the work they are doing may affect our personal lace addiction! Many thanks, Jacquie in Lincolnshire Subject: Petition to prevent Textile Conservation Centre closing. Have you heard that the TCC (Textile Conservation Centre) is threatened with closure by Southampton University? There is a grand old fuss about it and if no one has asked you to sign a petition to try to save it, could I? Its academic skulduggery of a grand kind, not at all deserved. The web site for the petition is: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/TCCClosure/ If you can get anyone else to sign we'd be very grateful. It might just help to tip things to a more positive outcome. I apologise to anyone who has signed up already, or seen this elsewhere. > > - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]